Content Strategy: Starting an e-commerce business can be very exciting. You need to first create a website for your business and upload pictures and information of all your products or services. It might take months to make everything perfect. If you think that you have done the hardest bit then you are wrong. Creating the website was the easiest part of it all. The hard part is getting customers to visit your site and find the products or services that you are offering. That’s where the importance of content strategy comes in.
What is Content Strategy?
Content strategy is the plan that helps a business in its content marketing efforts. It provides the goals the content must achieve, the type of content that must be included, and measuring the performance of those content. A good content strategy will help you to make various tactical decisions. The content strategy will help to boost your business reputation, increase website traffic and build trust in your brand. For any online business, content strategy is now the key to success.
Why is Content Strategy Important?
If you are looking for a gift for your mother, the first thing you will do is look for a guide that provides gift ideas for mothers. Once you read that you will probably click on the site that has provided you the guide to buying a gift for your mother. This is content marketing. By providing good content you are making it convenient for the customers to buy products. So, they will appreciate it and buy from you. Content marketing requires a lot of time and effort. You can have great content but if the target audiences don’t find it then it’s of no use.
A good content strategy will not only create good content but will place the content in front of the audience and also ensure that it meets your overall business goals. A great content strategy will attract the right audiences who have a high chance of converting into customers. It will educate these audiences about the benefits of buying your products. You will be able to convert customers and retain them using content strategy. The content strategy should be based on your business goal; otherwise, you will be wasting money and time.
Steps for Creating a Content Strategy
A good content strategy can get you more customers. Here are some steps for creating a good content strategy for your business:
- Clarify Goals
- Find out Budget
- Know your Audience
- Keyword Research and SEO Analysis
- Competitor Research
- Select Distribution Channels
- Make an Editorial Calendar
01. Clarify Goals
First, you need to find out why your business will use content marketing. You should decide what you want to accomplish from it. This will help you to create your content strategy to match your goals. If your goal is to make your brand visible, for example, then you should focus on SEO . If you want to build trust then you should create thought leadership content. Once you know your goals, you can figure out what kind of content you should put on your website.
Your goals can also be encouraging people to sign up for free trials, build customer loyalty, and more. Your goals will change with the growth of your business. For example, when you start your business, the focus is on developing brand awareness. As your business grows, you will focus on nurturing your needs. So, you need to adjust your content strategy according to your goals. As a result, you need to revisit the content strategy and make changes when necessary to ensure that it aligns with your goals.
02. Find out Budget
Content marketing can be costly. So, you should figure out your budget. It takes a lot of time to create good content and promoting it. You will need to hire content writers and marketing agencies for this work. You should decide on the budget early so that you know what you can do and what you can’t due to budget constraints. It has been found that about 26% of the marketing budget goes into content marketing. You should consider the useful life of the content, which is because you need money to maintain and retain the content.
03. Know your Audience
You must know your target audience. You should find out where they spend their time and money on. You should inspect their journey from the discovery phase, to the consideration phase, to the purchase phase, and finally to the repeat purchase phase. This will help you to create content that will attract your audiences. You shouldn’t try to reach everyone. You should only reach your target audiences. You can communicate with your existing customers to know about their preferences and habits. You should know about their demographics. This will help to understand what their needs are.
04. Keyword Research and SEO Analysis
Doing keyword research is very important for developing a content strategy. Keywords are the words people type in Google or other search engines to find what they want. Various tools can determine what words most people are typing for related topics. Keyword research can give insight into what the audiences want and it will help you to develop content related to those topics. You will know the type of language they are using to look for products or services. By knowing the right keywords you can optimize your site. Tools like Alexa provide search engine optimization data such as click-through rates, keyword volume, etc. This can give you an idea of how your site is performing.
05. Competitor Research
Competitor research can help you identify your top competitors so that you can keep an eye on them. It will help to generate ideas about the topic depending on what your competitors are doing. You can find out content gaps; that is, content that your competitors are not offering. So, you can fill out those gaps with unique content. That way you will be able to provide better value to your target audiences.
06. Select Distribution Channels
You should decide on the distribution channels for your content. You can choose a blog, social media, or YouTube channel , for example. You should find out where your audiences spend most of their time. If your audience works in the marketing and media sector then they will probably hang out more on Twitter. If they work in the financial sector then they will hang out on LinkedIn. This way you can decide where to put up your content so that you can interact more with the audiences.
07. Make an Editorial Calendar
To ensure that your content plan moves from idea to reality and is promoted promptly, you should make a content calendar. This will help you to organize the content. You can make sure that your content is ready before the target publication date. An editorial calendar will help you to stay consistent. If you want to post a new blog article every week then this calendar can help you to keep track of your schedule.
Lastly, you should carefully craft your content strategy so that you can attract more audiences to your site. A good content strategy will give you quality leads that can convert. It will keep you ahead of your competitors. You will be able to build brand awareness and trust using a good content strategy. Content marketing takes time and if you have the right content strategy you will be able to focus on the content that works best for your business.
