Everything That’s Included in a Content Strategy
Content Strategy might feel like an amorphous, marketing jargon-y term to you and we totally get that. But we are also firm believers that every business, no matter what size, needs a content strategy. It is the foundation for all content creation — from blog posts, to emails to social media posts to website content. If you don’t know who you’re talking to and why you’re talking to them…then what’s the point?
In this blog post, we talk about who needs a content strategy, why you need one and where to start. But if you’re left wondering what a content strategy from VVITCH Digital entails, then you’re in the right place.
So, WTF 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. At VVITCH, when we create a custom content strategy, we are constantly talking about the who, the what and the where — as in — who you are talking to, what you are talking to them about and where you are reaching them (or, in the case of SEO keywords, where your products or services are available).
Content Strategy and Your Audience
When we start a content strategy for any client, we send a questionnaire for the client to fill out. The questionnaire asks questions about audience demographics (you know your clients/customers best!), competitors and goals for your business. Taking all of this into account, we create audience profiles.
What is an audience profile?
“Audience profiling is the process of getting customers' data and segmenting them into groups with similar behaviors.” - Rock Content
An audience profile, pen portrait or persona (these all mean more-or-less the same thing), is a way to group similar people and give you a clear picture of who you are talking to when you’re publishing content. Most businesses have more than one audience profile because they usually serve multiple groups with different needs and demographics.
At VVITCH, when we are identifying and mapping out audiences, we are looking at a few key factors:
What are the audience's pain points? What issues would your product or service solve for?
What are the audience’s goals? What are they hoping to achieve when they book your services or purchase your products?
What are your touch points with that audience? Where, digitally and IRL, will you or your business come in contact with this group of people?
All of these factors are important to consider when making content. Let’s use an example. Let’s say you’re a photographer and one service you offer is at-home family and kids portraits. We have identified that one of your audience segments is Queer Stay-At-Home Parents. So let’s do some thought work answer the questions above:
What are Queer Stay-At-Home Parents pain points? Well, we’d imagine that it’s pretty isolating being a stay at-home-parent in general, but probably even more so for marginalized groups. So, finding a community with common values is probably critically important. We also bet that this group of folks is busy and bound to the schedules of their little ones.
What are Queer Stay-At-Home Parents goals when they are searching for a family photographer? Welp, it might be as simple as photos. But consider how important it would be to them that they work with someone who is respectful of their family dynamic. What if they are using gender neutral pronouns for their child and they don’t want them to be misgendered? Feeling safe is critical for the whole family, so they are more likely to hire someone who is either part of their community OR who has extensive experience with the community.
What are the touch points you might have with Queer Stay-At-Home Parents? If you’re a parent, too, it could be at school functions or at the park. But if you’re not, they can still find you online on social media or by searching for someone that offers family portraits for queer families.
As you can see from this example, getting crystal clear on who your audience is makes your job easier when it comes to content creation. Based on this information alone, there is a number of content types that would likely resonate with this group.
Content Strategy and Content Objectives
After we create audience profiles for a content strategy, we ask the big question: What’s the point? Because if there is no purpose to your content, then does it really need to exist?
What is a content objective?
A content objective refers to the desired outcome of the content. We break these out into 4 main objectives:
Brand Awareness: “the extent to which consumers are familiar with the distinctive qualities or image of a particular brand of goods or services.” - Oxford Languages
Conversions: a conversion refers to someone completing a desired action. This could be an email list signup, a purchase or a lead magnet download.
Community Growth: growing your community of followers/users/clients/customers
Engagement: this refers to someone interacting with your brand — this could be online or in-person and could range from liking a social media post to taking a business card from you at an event.
After we define what our content objectives are, we need to find a measurable way to know if we are meeting them.
KPIs
We use KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, to tell us whether or not we are meeting our content objectives. We want to make decisions based on data, not feelings, and KPIs achieve that. Each content objective has KPIs that coordinate with it so that, when assessing performance, there is a clear way to measure success.
KPIs are any data points that we can put a number on to measure progress towards your goals. Some examples of KPIs are impressions, page views, new clients, revenue, followers, likes, comments, and email rate.
When VVITCH creates a content strategy, we make sure to map the KPIs to the content objectives so that it is clear what constitutes success because one of the questions we get asked most often is “How do I know if I am succeeding?”
Content Strategy and Content Type Ideas
Thanks to our collective decades in spaces where we had to create content, our team knows that often, the hardest part of content creation is coming up with ideas about what to post. Rather than doing mental gymnastics and recreating the wheel every time you post on social media, we want content creation to be simple, streamlined and as stress-free as it can be. That is why when we create a content strategy, we include content pillars and specific content type ideas within those pillars.
What is a content pillar?
Later defines content pillars as “topics your brand will consistently discuss, amplify, and create content for.” Sometimes, people call these content buckets content types or content categories. They all mean the same thing.
When you hire VVITCH Digital to create a custom content strategy, we include key content pillars and then, under each pillar (or content type), we go into more granular detail. An example of a content pillar might be “Mission, Vision and Values.” Under that content type, we can get granular about what sort of content falls into that bucket. So, using our example of a family photographer trying to work with Queer Stay-At-Home Parents, some examples might be:
Talk about why you (the photographer) started this business
Talk about what it means to support marginalized communities and how you do it
Talk about the company’s values
Content Strategy and Keywords
We would be remiss if we did not set our clients up for SEO success when we put together a content strategy, which is why we include keywords. We structure our keyword research the same way that we do the rest of the content strategy — by focusing on the who, the what and the where.
What is an SEO Keyword?
Your SEO keywords are the words and phrases in your web content that describe your services and location and make it possible for people to find your site via search engines. A website that is well optimized for search engines "speaks the same language" as its potential visitor base with keywords for SEO that help connect searchers to your site.
So, how do we identify the keywords to include in your content strategy? We start by doing some competitive research and then taking key insights from your questionnaire and combine it with our own industry research. All of this comes together in sets of recommended keywords that we think you can and should try to rank for, if you’re not already. Getting a set of 40-80 keywords that you can try to rank for helps guide your web content creation process.
Working with a digital marketing agency to create a custom content strategy is a great way to set your business up for success. If you’re interested in working with VVITCH Digital in order to set a solid foundation for your business, you can reach out here.
A Framework for Creating Modular Content
Finally, we share a framework for how to pull all the pieces together and create content that can be split into different chunks and formats to be shared across different channels. This allows us to make the most of our content and create more efficiently.
In addition to allowing us to save time while creating content, this approach also ensures that we are delivering only the right information to our audience at the right time. This often leads to increased engagement and a better customer experience.
Bite, Snack, Meal
This approach is often referred to as a “Bite, Snack, Meal” approach in content marketing. This is a mental model for how to break down your content into digestible pieces, such that your audience is able to get the key pieces of info with every “bite” and, depending on their hunger for more, they can decide whether they want to consume the whole “meal”.
Here’s an example of how this breaks down when you’re creating content (source):
A “bite” is info on a given topic you can digest in a matter of seconds, such as a headline, subtitle, and image thumbnail for a longer blog post, or a 10 sec video or TikTok that shares the equivalent of this information.
A “snack” is a slightly longer piece of content related to the same topic, like a blog post expert, an Instagram post with a multi-paragraph caption, or a 30-60 second video or TikTok that highlights a particular point.
A “meal” is the full, long-form piece of content on the topic. This could be a full in-depth blog post, a ten-minute YouTube video, or the complete list of FAQs on your website.
This approach is followed by content creators across industries in order to make the most of their content. For example, a YouTube creator might make a full 30-minute video for the “meal” and then crop the video into multiple “snack-sized” clips for sharing across Instagram and TikTok. The video’s title, description, and thumbnail are the “bite-sized” pieces that someone might discover through a search.
No matter what size the piece of content, you should keep your overall business goals and your audiences’ needs in mind while creating your content. The more your audience relates to the content, the more likely they are to engage or to seek out the full “meal”.
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.
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 was a former owner of Catalyst Wedding Co. prior to starting VVITCH Digital Agency. Now, Jen is committed to helping small businesses grow into revolutionary brands.
