5 Top Tips to Nail your Content Strategy

In my last article, Content or Lead Generation – which one yields better results?, I promised a bit more depth around these two topics, since you really need to consider them carefully as part of your marketing mix for 2019.

So let’s start with content… And for my 2 cents, it does indeed start with content. It's not that content is more important that lead generation campaigns, but these need solid foundations to work.

Here are my 5 top tips to nail your content strategy:

1. Size does matter

Always a controversial statement but the success of your content is very much dependent on size. And by that I don’t mean “bigger is better” – although it sometimes is. A lot is said about how people no longer have time to read, how they require bite-size pieces of information. For those of you who see content creation as a chore, this would be great news… except it’s just not true. Well, not entirely.

While the digital age has brought about more diverse types of content, and while social media loves quick bites, I’m afraid it doesn’t mean we can do away with long-form content. In fact it seems to have had the reverse effect: the increasingly vast amount of short-form content available means people – customers and consumers – crave access to content that will really help them in their daily professional or personal lives.

So short-form content hasn’t replaced your usual guides and white papers. And businesses are really starting to catch on to the fact that in-depth pieces of content that truly showcase their thought leadership and expertise should constitute the basis of their content strategy. They also support your SEO strategy, as search engines favour the abundance of words.

But what’s really important to note is the incredible diversity of platforms you have in your arsenal when it comes to sharing your thought leadership with the world (well, with your target audience at least). This means there’s truly no one-size-fits-all strategy – you’ll need bespoke content that’s adapted for the different channels you target to reach your customers and prospects successfully. Fear not, it’s all about repurposing! Not easy as it seems, but a great way to ensure you leverage your content “to death”. This will help you stay consistent, save time and money, and create the right content for the right channel, every time.

2. Quality trumps quantity, every time!

It might now seem like you should produce a lot of content to cover all your channels, but you need to do this properly. Focusing on quality will pay dividends in the long term as your audience will associate your content with your brand. If they feel they’ve wasted their time, even just once, they probably won’t bother again. Remember your prospects and customers might lack time but they don’t lack choice, and they can easily turn to your competitors’ content or industry publications instead.

So what do I mean by quality? This is about standing out in the crowd, making it a worthwhile experience for your audience, sharing true thought leadership, educating the market... And it’s not easy to get all this right. The topics of course need to be relevant, current, well-researched. For this I highly recommend a content calendar, showing which areas you want to share an expert perspective around, and in what format. This calendar will only work if it stays completely agile throughout the year. New trends will inevitably come up, and it’s crucial you stay ahead of your competition when it comes to discussing the topics that are front of mind for your audience.

Quality also matters when it comes to the execution: great writing that incites action for the reader, beautiful design for an infographic that summarises your key positioning, professional video production to share what your thought leaders have to say… It does take time and investment to get quality right, just like in many aspects of life and business, but it’s worth it. Every time.

3. It’s all about people

A common mistake when coming up with a strategic content plan is to think inside out: what content can we build to get our message out? Not a worthless question per se, but the starting point should be: what content does our audience need from us? This forces content marketers to map out content requirements against:

• key stages of the buying cycle – for example, topic-driven ebooks for the awareness stages, product fact sheets for evaluation, client testimonial videos for conversion, etc.

• buyer personas – understanding your key buyers is crucial as they require tailored content depending on their specific requirements

At the core of it all, your prospects and customers are people and you need to find a way to improve their lives or they’re likely to ignore you. Often that means being generous with your content. Don’t make your audience struggle to find the information they need or enter endless personal details to download a simple document. Share freely and they’ll reward you by using your organisation as a resource centre. Meaning they’ll also see you as thought leaders who can help them as and when they need to partner with a supplier.

4. To SEO, or not to SEO

Now that I’ve [hopefully] convinced you it’s all about people, we need to discuss the importance of algorithms… My apologies! But if you care about web rankings, for example appearing on page 1 in a specific Google search related to your activities, then you can’t ignore search engine optimisation, or SEO. These days search engines – in particular Google – is the number one source of information for people, particularly buyers in early stages of the buying cycle. That means they’re using this platform not only to research information but also to shortlist suppliers – and if you don’t appear high in rankings, they might only see, and later consider, your competitors.

It has become quite a specialised skill in recent years to write content that satisfies both target readers and search engine algorithms – and it turns out to be an ever-evolving skill as the complex criteria that play a role in the ranking of a page do change over time. Not just for web pages but any document that you host on your website like pdf’s, videos, etc

Generally if you write with the reader in mind, and cover a topic accurately, you’re already playing the SEO game. Google and other engines don’t try to trick you – they genuinely want you to score well if you’ve got the right kind of content. But their definition of what that means might not fit your style. A great deal of in-depth information exists to guide you through the SEO maze, but for my 2 cents, I’d advise you start with:

• Writing great content for your readers, and making sure you include words and phrases your audience use, not just your organisation’s terminology

• Inserting specific pages in your website for the sole purpose of fitting SEO criteria. You might for example focus on SEO when covering a specific topic in your website (rather than product pages where messaging might take priority).

5. Content is no ivory tower

Writing is an art and it would be easy for the people who produce your content to operate in their ivory tower, independently from the overall business and marketing plan. Although content strategy should in my view sit above tactical requirements, it shouldn’t be above other key marketing strategies like lead generation, awareness, PR, product marketing, digital, etc. It's never a simple task to get different people with different perspectives and targets in the marketing team to agree on a common overall strategy “to rule them all” but with strong and clear marketing goals, underpinning strong and clear business goals, it’s all achievable, I promise!

At the risk of over-simplifying matters again, I’d recommend taking the following approach, at a high-level, to ensure an optimal mix of creativity, initiative, and cross-departmental interactions:

• Communicate your overall vision and key goals across the team

• Get separate marketing leaders to submit their strategic plan for the year

• Share these across your team to check for opportunities, issues, etc.

• Finalise each strategy to take this input into account

• Derive the different tactical plans

I did say “high-level”! There will, and should be many intermediary steps to include all team members, and key stakeholders in other departments (sales, product management, operations, etc.). Maybe the topic for a future blog again?

In summary

Your content strategy and execution won’t work in a vacuum. It needs to come together with other key marketing strategies to achieve the right marketing and business goals. Saying that, it shouldn’t “serve” these other strategies. Content is too important to simply fulfil a need – and I see this happen too often in companies, particularly when resources are tight. Which is why I recommend in my approach above that strategies are first built independently.

Maybe a bit of an ivory tower then, just at the beginning of the planning process, to allow your team’s creative juices and innovative ideas to flow freely, before they’re channelled (or shall I say optimised for fear of offending fellow content marketers) within the context of the overall marketing strategy and plans, and more importantly, business goals.

So there you have it: my 5 top tips to nail your content strategy. Size, quality, audience, SEO, collaboration. And don't forget to define and measure success, like in any marketing specialities. Content marketing metrics are getting more sophisticated and they can really help to keep you focused on what matters.

Hopefully this article will help some of you with your 2019 plans. Always happy to provide tailored guidance to companies looking to continually inspect, improve and innovate!