Content Strategy: The Ins and Outs of Establishing One for Your Business
You have launched your business. You have a growing brand. You even have used social media, email, and e-commerce effectively to market your business. Now what? Have you considered what your content strategy currently looks like and how to improve it?
You might have heard this marketing phrase used before and thought to yourself, “A ‘content strategy?’ I thought everything I do with marketing is content!” Well, yes and no — depending on what you share and where, not all content can be useful for your long term strategy.
What is a Content Strategy?
In its simplest form, a content strategy is how you use photo images, videos, and words to engage with your target customer audience. A more descriptive way to think about a content strategy is that it involves multiple stages—development, planning, creation, distribution, and management of all of your business’ content—to provide audiences with continuous and consistent reasons to believe you are a brand they can trust and love. How is this different from brand voice? Ultimately, what you include in your messaging to audiences is your content strategy, while how you tailor your messaging is your brand tone and voice.
The primary goal you should aim to achieve with your content strategy is providing unique and useful information about your business.
Who Needs a Content Strategy?
Everyone! If you have a brand, you should have a content strategy. Whether you create a physical product or offer a professional service through your business, you need to create content for the benefit of your target customer audience. Audiences love to watch, read, and listen to content and you are likely already feeding that love through blog content, email campaigns, creative organic social media, or dropping new product videos once a week. Why not put those efforts together in a cohesive and sustainable way?
By accepting your business needs a content strategy, you will be able to put your business goals front and center.
Why Do You Need a Content Strategy?
Without a content strategy, you are essentially throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. A content strategy offers a deeper look into your audiences so that you are better able to know how to deliver the right message. While the word “strategy” might seem overused, or meaningless, creating content based on a content strategy means making calculated, well-thought out decisions about the content that you make.
Take this blog post for example. Because we know we are talking to small businesses who might not know what a content strategy is, we have strategically written a blog post that will answer those questions.
You might be wondering, “If I hire VVITCH to do a content strategy for me, what happens after that?” There are two wonderful ways we can work together. First, you can be empowered to take your content strategy and get to work creating your own content, armed with the knowledge of how to make content that serves a purpose. Or, second, you can hire us to make the content for you. We know from experience that creating content is time-consuming and we would love to take it off of your plate. Whether it’s email marketing or social media content creation, we create meaningful, results-focused content for you.
By having a content strategy, you can attract customers, engage with them, and build trust. If your content is of high quality, you might find it outperforms your paid marketing efforts.
Where Should You Ideally Distribute a Content Strategy?
This will be determined by the type of content formats you plan to focus on with your strategy. You might have infographics, videos, blog posts, podcasts, and more based on the topics that feel relevant to your brand and audience. You will need to decide the formats that work well for your budget so that you are able to express your brand’s position on the topics you select.
Once you have decided the most feasible formats to create content for, you will have a greater understanding of which marketing channels to distribute to. More than likely you are using some owned channels to market your brand—such as your business’ Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Your website and blog are also your owned channels and make it easier for you to distribute your content at little to no cost—except for the production costs for the content itself (i.e. audio and video editing, photography, copywriting).
It is important to remember that you should not force yourself to have content for every possible channel, especially if you do not have the bandwidth to create and/or your target audience has no interest in every channel.
How Do You Get Started with a Content Strategy?
If you plan to more forward on your own, you should consider a few things—1) make sure you have defined goals, 2) conduct research on your audience to understand what they care about, 3) audit your existing content to determine new formats or restructuring, 4) decide to use a content management system or establish your own if costs will deter you, and 5) begin brainstorming ideas for content by analyzing headlines, well shared content, and track trending topics online.
If you would prefer to have a team of marketers handle your content strategy for you—look no further than our VVITCH team! Have questions? Want to get started?
Learn more about our services.
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Meet the Authors
Jen Siomacco, Founder and UX Designer
Jen has worked in technology, marketing, and publishing for ten years. After years as a CX/UX designer in the corporate world, Jen put her skills to work as one of the owners of Catalyst Wedding Co. After seeing both the corporate and entrepreneurial world, Jen is committed to helping feminist small businesses grow into revolutionary brands.
Kate Schaefer, Brand and Marketing Strategist
Kate has worked in digital marketing and publishing for seven years. In 2013, she identified a hole in the wedding market and started H&H Weddings, a wedding resource specifically for the LGBTQ+ community.
Kate believes every business should thrive and is dedicated to helping marginalized folks even the financial playing field because capitalism is a bitch.
Brittinee Phillips, Copywriter
Brittinee has worked in marketing for a little over ten years. She has a passion and talent for storytelling. Brittinee's philosophy is that storytelling is the most integral part of the consumer and product experience, which is why she makes it a focal point in her approach to product and brand messaging.
