Why You Need a Content Strategy and How to Get Started
I have a secret for you; you CAN start creating content without a strategy (I can’t believe I just said that out loud!) But seriously, no one is going to stop you, and your non-strategic content development might even get you a few clients.
HOWEVER, it’s not a sustainable way to use content to amplify your brand. If you want to get real, long-term results from your content, you need to know what your goals are, and how you’re going to get there. Otherwise, your content efforts will eventually fall flat.
Common Objections
One of the most common excuses I hear from business owners about why they aren’t investing in content marketing is:
“We just don’t have the time or the budget for content strategy and development.”
Unfortunately, because getting tangible results from content marketing requires strategy, consistency, and time, it’s difficult for many people to see the potential long-term value in creating strategic content for their business. I’m not going to sugarcoat it…
It takes an average of four hours (+/-) to create a quality blog post.
That’s half of a standard workday! Spending four hours, or paying someone to take that time to write a blog post is a hard pill to swallow. Plus, this average only includes the writing and editing piece of blog writing. Before any writing begins, there’s the pre-writing work, which typically starts with a brainstorm session to come up with:
Topics to blog about
Angles to write from
Keywords to include
Resources for finding information
An outline
Title options
Then, once the blog is written, you’ll need to:
Find relevant images to go with it
Publish the blog to your website
Share it via social media and/or email
With all the work (and time) involved, it’s not surprising that many businesses opt not to focus on organic content strategy and development. Even companies that have someone dedicated solely to marketing the business tend to focus their efforts on paid advertising vs. organic content development.
Why? Because the results are easier to measure and analyze. Messages are short and sweet, and proof of results are delivered in pretty reports with key performance indicators (KPIs) like click-through rates (CTRs), website views, conversion rates, and more.
While paid advertising certainly has its place, it shouldn’t be the ONLY thing your business is doing to create brand awareness and generate leads.
Why Invest In Content Strategy and Development?
When it comes down to what consumers want, the fact is,
70% of people prefer to learn about brands and their offerings through reading articles vs. being served ads.
When you consistently create relevant, impactful content for your target audience, your brand visibility grows exponentially. The more people who know about your brand, the better, and the more they see you out there spreading your message with authentic content, the more they will like and trust you.
And you know what happens when people not only know of your brand but also like and trust it — and you? They want to do business with you.
People relate to real people and businesses that are out there sharing the truest versions of themselves.
If you’re not out there telling your story, you can bet your competitors are, which means people are getting to know, like, and trust them. The good news is you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time. While it does take some effort to create quality content, you don’t have to start from scratch every time. But you do have to be strategic in how you write about your business from the beginning.
Developing Your Brand Message
If you want to reach your intended audience and inspire them to do business with you, you need to put your brand identity out there for everyone to see and hear, and it all starts with creating (and documenting) a clear brand message, along with some basic guidelines for how to talk about your brand online.
Identify Your Brand Personality, Values, & Voice
What’s your brand personality? If you’re not sure, take some time to brainstorm the words that you might use to describe how you want others to view your brand. Create a list of words to use, and not to use in your messaging.
Next, define your brand values. What’s important to you personally, but also to your brand, and why? It’s important to clearly define these values and to highlight them throughout your messaging, so your customers understand the driving force behind your brand.
Next, identify what tone you will use in your messaging. This is your brand voice. Is it more conversational, or more professional? Is it funny or more serious? Is it inspiring or educational? Your brand voice should reflect how your target audience would expect you to share your message with them.
Of course, the tone will differ slightly for each piece of content you create, but you should have a general idea of how your audience prefers you to communicate with them. Having a document to reference will help you ensure all your brand messaging is consistent and recognizable to your audience.
Tell Your Brand Story
Once you’ve identified your brand personality, values, and voice, you’re ready to start uncovering and telling your brand story. Yes, people want to know your story. In fact, they might be hesitant to work with a company that isn’t willing to share their story of how they came to be and why they’re still here.
About
Create a document that tells the story of how and when your brand came to be, what you offer, why you’re qualified to offer your products or services, why you do what you do, and how you’re different than the competition.
Team Bios
You should also include bios for each key member of your organization, because the people are just as important, if not more so than the organization itself. If there are only a handful of team members, you should include bios for everyone!
For brand consistency purposes, try asking each team member the same questions, so the bios flow similarly and have approximately the same word count. If your company has 25+ employees, including a full bio for everyone could be a bit much. In that case, you can simply include the key stakeholders within your organization.
Solutions
Finally, don’t forget to include a document that identifies the solutions you provide to your target audience. It should not only list everything you offer (products and/or services), but it should also unique features and the benefits of each offering, and most importantly – what specific problems they can solve for your target audience(s), and how.
Once you have your brand story outlined, it can be lengthened, shortened, tweaked, cropped, or edited depending on where you need to include information about your brand and/or the people behind it. For example, you can use this information for your About page on your website, for your social media profiles, for social media posts, for print and digital brochures, etc.
Customer Testimonials
A great way to back up your brand story is with some raving customer testimonials. If you already have some great reviews and testimonials, gather them together and put them all in one document, so you can grab from it whenever you need to. If you don’t have any reviews or testimonials, now is the time to start asking for them from your happy customers.
Add a simple testimonial request to your email signature, or send a quick email to a recent or existing customer, asking them to give you a review on Google, Facebook, Yelp, or some other online review platform. Written testimonials are wonderful, but if you can also get a few customers to video testimonials, even better. If you can get real statistics from actual customers, indicating how your offerings have helped others like them, it will enhance the power of those testimonials even more.
Sometimes all it takes is a couple of nudges, and you have yourself a positive, thoughtful testimonial displayed for everyone to see. Creating a library of testimonials to choose from will allow you to repurpose them for your website, social media, case studies, and any other marketing materials that you develop down the line.
Creating a Simple Content Strategy
After you’ve documented your brand message guidelines, it’s time to get started on your content strategy. To create a simple content strategy, start by identifying:
Topics to create content about and different angles to write from.
Content formats (blogs, emails, social, etc.) to develop.
Which platforms you’ll use to share your messaging.
How often you’ll create and publish each type of content.
From here, you’ll need to put together a schedule that outlines specific deadlines and who is responsible for each aspect of content creation, such as writing, editing, publishing, and sharing each piece of content. This schedule or calendar often takes the form of a spreadsheet or an online content calendar, so it can be implemented and managed easily.
Once you’ve got your brand message defined and your content strategy created, then you can dive into developing content for your brand. Sure, it’s a lot of prep work, but if you do it in the right order, you’ll get so much more out of every piece of content you create.
Let’s Create a Content Strategy Together
Do you need help defining your brand message and creating a content strategy to help you increase your brand presence and get more leads? I’d love to help. Let’s chat!
