When executed effectively, a strong content strategy can increase your visibility, growth, and your campaigns’ overall performance. But it’s about more than just posting aesthetically-pleasing Instagram content or writing one high-quality blog post every month — valuable content requires planning and research to ensure that it feeds into other business activities and drives engagement.
Not sure where to start? Here’s all you need to know about researching and planning a content strategy.
1. Set goals and objectives
You must first consider what you’re trying to achieve through your content strategy. Start with larger goals; for example, your aim to increase sales of a certain product or perhaps to become a thought leader in your niche. You can then break these down into smaller action points or objectives, and start creating a detailed plan of what you want to achieve in the next 3, 6 and 12 months.
It’s a good idea to have an initial brainstorming session with your colleagues to figure out which content marketing tactics can be used to achieve your goals across your marketing platforms. For example, let’s say your main goal is to boost sales of your new skincare product — here are a few content ideas that might come to mind:
- TikTok how-to videos and tutorials showing the product being used.
- Instagram carousel posts explaining the product’s main features.
- SEO-optimized blog posts providing advice on specific skincare types.
- Relevant industry influencer collaborations for high-value endorsements.
You might also want to set quantitative goals, such as reaching a specific number of sales or securing a certain number of followers. Having a mix of quantitative and qualitative goals will help you achieve a balanced approach to your content strategy.
2. Understand your audience
As a marketer, you should know your target audience better than anyone; but if you feel a little lost or that your campaigns are not quite hitting the mark, it might be time to reevaluate who you’re really talking to so your content resonates. Creating a buyer persona — a hypothetical profile of your ideal customer — is a good place to start, as you can refer back to this at every stage of your content strategy.
Understanding your audience is crucial for several reasons. When you know who your audience is, you can tailor your content to their specific needs, preferences, and pain points, making it more relevant and engaging. This leads to higher engagement rates, better user experiences, and ultimately, increased conversions. Additionally, detailed personas can help you identify the best channels and formats for your content, ensuring that it reaches your audience where they are most active.
Here are some important details to think about when creating your personas:
- Demographics: Age, gender, income level, education, and marital status. These details help you understand the basic profile of your audience.
- Psychographics: Interests, values, lifestyle, and personality traits. Psychographics give you insight into what motivates your audience and what they care about.
- Behavioral data: Online behavior, purchasing patterns, and preferred communication channels. This information helps you tailor your content and marketing strategies to their habits.
- Pain points: The challenges and problems your audience faces. Understanding their pain points allows you to create content that addresses these issues and provides solutions.
- Goals and aspirations: The objectives and desires of your audience. Knowing this helps you create content that aligns with their ambitions and adds value to their journey.
- Preferred content formats: The types of content your audience prefers, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, or podcasts. This ensures you deliver content in formats they are most likely to engage with.
Personas ensure that your content is consistent across all channels. Whether it’s a blog post, social media update, or email newsletter, your messaging will be cohesive and aligned with your audience’s expectations.
3. Conduct market, platform, and competitor research
Next, it’s time to do some research. This provides essential insight that can help you adapt your strategy to better serve your audience and competitively position yourself. Start by looking at your closest competitors’ social accounts, blog pages, and websites to see what types of content they’re posting. What’s doing particularly well? What type of content are they posting that you’re not? Are there gaps in their strategy? Compare the similarities and differences between your strategies to identify opportunities for improvement.
Next, it’s time to conduct industry research. Staying in the know about trending topics, discussions, and themes that will potentially see an increase in interest will help you decide the direction of your strategy. You can use keyword research to figure out which topics people are interested in related to your niche.
Tools like Ahrefs can provide you with keyword ideas and topic ideas which help you know what your users are looking for and therefore, which content you can make to outrank your competitors. Equally, conducting a content gap analysis can reveal opportunities where your competitors are lacking, allowing you to fill those gaps with valuable content.
Partnering with digital marketing experts can enhance your research process, too; the comprehensive SEO Solutions by Seeker, for example, combine in-depth SEO knowledge with content marketing expertise. You’ll gain access to advanced analytics and insights that can identify the most effective opportunities and tailored strategies that align with your business goals. This means your content won’t only attract traffic but engage your audience and maximize ROI!
4. Create content pillars
Creating content pillars is an essential step in organizing and focusing your content strategy. Content pillars are broad themes or topics that are central to your brand and resonate deeply with your audience. They provide a framework for all your content, ensuring consistency and relevance. For example, if you run a fitness blog, your content pillars might include nutrition, workout routines, mental health, and lifestyle tips.
These pillars help guide your content creation process, making it easier to brainstorm ideas, maintain a consistent voice, and ensure that all content aligns with your brand’s goals and audience interests. By establishing strong content pillars, you can create a cohesive and strategic content plan that supports your overall marketing objectives and addresses your audience’s key needs and interests.
5. Build a content calendar
The last step is to map all of your content out in a content calendar. This is a schedule that outlines when and where you plan to publish your upcoming content. It helps you stay organized, maintain consistency, and ensure that your content is distributed evenly across all your channels.
To create a content calendar, start by listing all the key dates, events, and campaigns relevant to your brand. Then, map out your content ideas according to your content pillars, assigning specific dates for creation, review, and publication. Tools like Trello, Asana, or Google Calendar can help you manage your content calendar efficiently, and creating social media templates means you can speed up your content creation process, too.
By planning ahead, you can ensure a steady stream of content, avoid last-minute rushes, and align your content efforts with your marketing goals. Creating a new calendar every quarter will give you time to make improvements and monitor your progress.
Creating a content strategy is a big task that’s well worth the effort. Remember that content is an important asset across all areas of business growth, whether you’re aiming to be discovered by new audiences or hoping to give others a little push to make a purchase. Start strategizing today and you’ll be one step closer to meeting your content marketing goals!