Not long ago, we wrote about the difference between a content marketing strategy and a content strategy, but what is a content strategy? What’s more, why is it important to have one?
The exact definitions vary, but a content strategy is the overall vision that will drive the creation, publication and governance of content in a way that will meet a defined business need. It determines the sort of content you will be generating and avoids producing large amounts of generic content, which simply isn’t good enough these days. Moreover, without any unifying core themes to tie it all together, the various freelancers and copywriting services you use may be producing content that will confuse your audience and actually have a negative effect.
How do you determine a content strategy?
A good content strategy will derive from research into your company, your customers, and your competitors. From a company perspective, you will want to be highlighting your core strengths. What does your company excel at? What is its mission, other than to generate profits?
You then need to establish the needs and wants of your customers. What sort of content do they want, and how and when do they prefer to consume it? Choosing efficient ways to deliver content is as important as the content itself.
In addition to direct business competitors, you should also include any outlets with competing content. For example, let’s say you’re a ticket sales company that publishes a website news feed about upcoming music events. Naturally, you need to consider all the other ticket sales companies, but on a content level, you will also be competing with news outlets, band blogs, concert promoters and so on.
The aim of all this is to find somewhere distinct where you can position your brand in the way you want by providing useful, usable content to customers.
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