What is Content Strategy?
Most business owners understand that content (even if they don’t know what content is) is a powerful tool that helps them engage with their customers. But even if business owners understand the value of content, many abandon their content efforts fairly quickly. Why? Frankly, it’s because they’ve neglected to implement a solid content strategy that will make the content creation process easier and more efficient.
Content strategy is perhaps one of the most important things you can do for your marketing efforts. So how’s your content strategy looking these days? The surest sign is this: the consistency of how often you produce content. So let’s dive in!
Let’s Start with Content
In the simplest of terms, content is creating and distributing valuable knowledge to your target market wherever they are. Another way to look at content is by demonstrating your expertise, industry knowledge, and thought leadership to your audience. Content exists in many forms, including website service pages, blog articles, YouTube videos, Facebook posts, Pinterest infographics, eBooks, and so much more. Your content should always be unique, authoritative and true to who you are as a brand and business. If you’ve tried producing content and you always stop after a few months, it’s because you haven’t focused enough on the integrity of your content strategy.
How RSM Marketing Defines Content Strategy
RSM Marketing defines content strategy as the system or process of creating and distributing content. It’s how you add content to your online channel mix (website, social media, etc.). It’s how you add indexable content to your site on a regular basis. Content strategy is the actual process of DOING content marketing.
Content strategy is all about developing a process built around ideation and repetitiveness so that you are continuously expanding your online footprint with awesome content. Content strategy challenges you to ask yourself: how will we do this over and over and over again?
Process > Goals
Your process should always take precedence over your goals. Your goals are always moving: You hit one goal and move on to another. With a sound content strategy in place, you’ll never have to worry about your goals because your strategy will always be there to support your goals, no matter what they may be.
3 Quick Tips for Developing Your Content Strategy
You might be tempted to not even bother with content strategy because you don’t know where to start. But don’t let that stop you. Even the smallest steps will help you craft your process until it works best for you. So start small: one blog post a month. One social media post a week. Watch it grow and remember:
1. Don’t strive for perfection. Strive for some version of done and refine it later. When all else fails, lean on your process.
2. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else. Only look at how you can improve yourself.
3. Don’t overlook tiny victories. This could be someone leaving a comment on a blog article or sharing your Facebook post. All victories are worthwhile ones and should motivate you.
With content strategy, you’ll make small adjustments over time. Content strategy comes with built-in refinement. A perfect process is one that isn’t so rigid that you can’t make changes—you’re constantly improving so that you’re always trending in the right direction: Up.
