In this article we will explore a complex issue – how to develop a content strategy. Content is a relevant part of SEO and in order to build a proper content strategy a number of relevant questions need to be asked and answered. This article will explore these questions.
Broad Objectives
What is the broad objective of your marketing plan? What do you, as a whole, intent to achieve?
Specific Goals
How can content marketing help achieve those goals?
- Increase Traffic
- Increase Leads. Generate leads for follow up by sales and marketing teams
- Sales. Help sales team achieve more sales.
- Tough Leadership. Develop name leadership and respect, and influence the industry
- Community. Develop friends and fans who interact with the brand socially
- Public Relations. Help repair image of the company
Content Plan and Marketing Plan
- How to contextualize the content plan within the overall marketing plan?
Mission Statement
- What do you want for your customers and clients?
Core Message
Based on the mission statement, what is the big benefit we want our followers to get from engaging with your content?
If this can’t be decided we need to look for one central solution we provide our customers or one big question we answer when talking to them.
Buyer’s Persona
- Who are your buyers?
- Their Demographic and General Personal Psychology
- Where do they hang out?
- What do they aspire?
- What are their main pain points? What are their main problems?
Secondary Messages
Decide 5 to 7 secondary messages/sub-topics/core keywords that support your core message.
Tone of Voice
- What do you represent/want to represent has a company?
- What are your values?
- How can they be expressed in the content you produce?
External Audit: Competitor’s Analysis
Who are they?
What is their core message?
- List of topics they cover
- List of topics they cover
- Types of content produced
- Frequency
- The Gap
Internal Audit (Google Analytics, Screaming Frog and Ahrefs)
- What content has performed well organically?
- How many organic sessions from search engines the page has received?
- User engagement metrics for the page like Bounce Rate, Pages / Session, Avg. Session Duration, and any goal completions (posts may often have a high bounce rate)
- What keywords drive the most traffic?
- Word count (how long was the post?)
- Title, H1 tag and meta description
- Engagement metrics from Facebook, Google+ and Twitter
- Which content earned links?
Measuring ROI
Traffic
- What the PPC cost for that keyword
- How much traffic as your investment generated?
Leads
- What is the value of one e-mail address?
- How many sales have you converted through your e-mail strategy?
