Content Strategy 101

In this episode, we break down the fundamentals of creating an effective content strategy. Whether you're new to content marketing or looking to refine your approach, you'll learn how to identify your target audience, set clear goals, plan and create engaging content, and measure your results. This episode is packed with actionable insights to help you develop a content strategy that supports your business growth.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to the new School of Marketing podcast. I'm Bianca McKenzie and today we're diving into Content Strategy 101.

If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the absolutely endless possibilities of content marketing, you are really in the right place. In this episode, I'm going to break down the basics of building an effective content strategy, from understanding your audience and setting goals to planning, creating and measuring your content.

So grab a pen and paper and let's get started. Let's start by defining what a content strategy actually is. At its core, a content strategy is a plan that outlines how you will create, deliver and manage content to achieve your business goals.

So it's literally, it's a plan that shows you how you are going to create, deliver and manage content to get to your business goals. It's not just about posting on social media or, or writing blog posts.

It's actually about having a really well structured plan that guides your messaging across every single channel.

And why is it important? Well, really, without a strategy, your content really becomes scattered and ineffective.

And if you have been operating from this space, you probably will know that, oh, shoot, I need to post something on socials. Oh, just quickly do blah, blah, blah. And there is absolutely no real thought,

no working towards your business goals through the content that you put out there. So we don't want to have scattered and ineffective content.

A well crafted content strategy helps you reach your target audience more effectively.

It helps you build brand awareness and authority. It helps you drive engagement and conversions, and it also saves you time and resources because you're actually focusing on what works and not this, you know, scattered kind of stuff.

And when your content strategy is aligned with your overall business objectives, like your overall business goal, every piece of content that you create has a purpose.

And that purpose is to move your audience closer to taking action. And whether that is making A purchase, whether that is signing up for your email list or just engaging with your brand, every single thing you do has a purpose and we need purposeful marketing.

Now that we've covered the what and the why, let's dive into the key components of a solid content strategy.

Number one, and I come back to this almost every single episode. Number one is understanding your audience.

Before you create any content, you need to know who you're talking to.

You need to create buyer Personas, as we call them,

and you need to understand their challenges, their interests, and you need to know where they hang out online.

And knowing all of this is absolutely critical for creating content that is going to resonate the audience. If you don't know who you're talking to, if you do not know who your absolute ideal client is, then how on earth are you going to talk to them, right?

So this is so, so super crucial is knowing and understanding your audience.

Number two is setting clear goals.

So ask yourself, what do I want to achieve with my content? What is the purpose of your content?

Are you looking to drive website traffic? Are you looking to generate leads? Are you looking to build brand awareness or boosting sales? And at any one time you probably will be focusing on all of these,

but you need to look at that and go, well, what kind of content can I create to drive website traffic? What kind of content can I create to generate leads?

What kind of content do I create to build brand awareness?

And what does, you know, sales content look like? And you kind of need to have all of those in the mix. You cannot just go, I want to boost sales.

So I'm just going to say, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff. Because that is not social,

that is not what social media is for. That is not even what content creation is for. Your content creation should be there to inform people, to inspire people, to build authority and to build trust.

And yes, the sales component is there as well, but that is not the main thing.

So coming back to setting goals, your goals will actually help you shape your content strategy and it will also help you measure success. Because,

like, boosting sales is one goal that you could have that we would measure that differently to, for example, driving website traffic. So knowing your goals will help you create that strategy and then also it will help you measure it.

The next one, number three is brand positioning and messaging.

Your content should reflect your brand's voice and values. So you need to think about your unique selling proposition, or USP as we call this in the marketing world.

You know what Makes you different. What do you stand for? What is that unique thing that only you or your business or even your product has?

And you really need to make sure that every piece of content in a way reinforces that message.

Consistency in your messaging and your positioning is going to build trust and recognition. The next one. Number four is channel selection.

You need to determine which platforms are the best suited for your content.

But you also need to think about where your audience spends time.

So whether it's your blog, whether it's social media channels, newsletters, video platforms,

choose channels where your audience is most active but you want to think about, well also where do I want to spend my time? Because it has to feel good to you too to create and post content.

If you know, if you're not into like creating videos and things like that, and I'm not talking about because there's a fear,

I'm just thinking about, you know, if there's a lot of resistance, it's going to be hard for you to actually create the content. So think about what channels are suitable for your content like or the type of content you want to create.

What kind of content do you like creating and where is your audience most active? And I would say choose maybe two to three channels.

Don't spread yourself too thin because it can take up a lot of your time. And then, you know, we all know that it doesn't happen if that's the case.

Number five is a content calendar and planning.

A well planned content calendar keeps you organized and it keeps you consistent.

So really plan your topics, the formats and a posting schedule in advance because if you don't, we know that it slips off our radar. If we just ad hoc post, it's just not going to happen or it happens and it's kind of late, it'll be too late.

Like you know, be like, oh, I've got this event coming up tomorrow, let me just post something. You're going to be too late because a lot of people will not see that until after the event.

So really plan your topics, plan the format, whether that is a video, whether that is, you know, a blog post or something.

Have a posting schedule so that every piece of content fits into your bigger picture.

The other reason for planning and scheduling is because then you really have that time. You give yourself that time to think about your messaging and to thinking to think about what the goal is, what the purpose is for that piece of content.

And you just get better at creating content. When you think about it in advance versus on the fly doesn't mean that you can never create things on the fly, because I come up with topics on the fly, but then I use them later.

It's not a, I need to post something now. What am I going to post about?

It's just too chaotic.

And then number six is measurement and optimization.

So finally,

decide how you will measure success.

Identify KPIs or key performance indicators. And that could be like website traffic, engagement rates, leads, generated conversions. Most of the time we'll be tracking all of these kind of pieces, but those, you know, you want to look at that in terms of your overall content creation, your overall content strategy,

but also per piece of content. If one of the pieces that you're creating is really the aim is to create engagement, then you need to look at that piece of content and measure the engagement.

So also regularly look at your analytics to see what's working and where you can make improvements. If, for example, you have created a post on social media and it really is, you know, driving more leads or, you know, driving more sales, then look at that and go, ooh, how can I create more of that type of content?

What in what in that piece of content really resonated and made people take action. So now that you understand the components, let's talk about execution.

And I'm going to talk about some practical steps to build and to actually execute your content strategy. Because it needs to be simple for you. Because we're all busy or most of us are even I need, you know, a content strategy or a content plan that just keeps things easy and simple for me.

Otherwise, you know, we all just get busy. So number one, brainstorm. Start by listing topics that resonate with your audience.

Look at common questions, look at common pain points, maybe trends in your industry. And don't be afraid to get creative because variety is key. And whether it's a blog post, whether it's videos, infographics, podcasts, you.

You need to pick your channels and then you need to think about, well, how can I create content? And the other thing is create, cross, promote, like, cross create content that you can use on multiple platforms.

For example, I use content from this podcast in my social media channels because I talk about so much. There's like topics almost in every single sentence. So if you are going to have one sort of like long, long form content piece, like a blog or a podcast or YouTube videos,

reuse that content in your socials. You don't have to constantly reinvent the wheel. And the main thing is your messaging and your positioning. So in a way, you will be talking about the same thing over and over and over.

You just have to find different ways to talk about that one thing in different ways, because that will be your messaging and your positioning. And you don't have to keep coming up with new things.

You just have to come up with different ways of saying one thing.

Number two is develop a content calendar. Honestly, organize your ideas into a content calendar because it'll help you plan out what to publish, when to publish it, and on which channels.

And it will make it so much easier. Just make sure that you have a consistent presence because consistency is super, super important. And I'm talking about consistency in terms of frequency, but also messaging.

So be consistent in your messaging and your positioning what you say. But also you need some consistency in how many times you post.

And I would say on a platform like Instagram, three to five times a week.

And, you know, stay consistent. Don't just like, post one thing and then go AWOL for a month. And then you're like, oh, I've got three posts to share. I'll just share that in one day.

It just does not work. So consistency number three is focus on quality over quantity. Like, this is nothing new, right? It is actually better to publish fewer quality pieces than to overwhelm your audience with mediocre content.

Each piece really should offer value, it should educate, it should entertain or inspire your audience. Like, if it's just like, meh kind of content, just don't like posting for the sake of posting, then just don't, don't bother, really.

Number four, repurpose your content. It's kind of already mentioned this a little bit. So save yourself time and extend your reach by repurposing your content across multiple channels. So for example,

if you have a blog post that is like super well written, you've spent a lot of time on it,

you can turn that into a video, or you can turn that into a series of social media posts, an email newsletter. And I highly recommend repurposing your content in a lot of places because your audience will not see all of them.

They might see one of it, they might see two of it, they might see all of it, but most likely not. So do repurpose your content.

Number five is engage, Engage and interact with your audience.

Content isn't just about broadcasting your message. It's about engaging with your audience. Or respond to comments,

ask for feedback, really have a dialogue with your audience, and then use their insights to refine your strategy. See what people are saying, see what people are responding to. And number six is review and optimize.

Always review and always optimize. So look at your analytics.

It's really important. Look at analytics. What topics are resonating, which channels are driving the most engagement. And use the data the you get from all of this to like make changes to your strategy, to refine it, to dial it in even sharper, because that way you're going to make improvements.

And this is, I think the biggest thing that I see with people is they do all the things but they forget to actually look at the data. So they kind of just get on this hamster wheel and they keep moving and they're like, oh, just keep creating content.

But they don't even look at what, what's working. So look at what's working so you can create more of that content and that will start to have incremental effects.

All right, before we wrap up, there are a few things that I see that you really need to look out for when you're creating your content strategy. So one is a lack of focus.

Don't try to cover every single topic, stick to your niche, stick to your messaging and really talk that to the specific needs of your audience. I think this is where we get go wrong often is because us as the content creators get sick of talking about the same thing over and over and over.

But that's really what we need to do. Like we really have to just focus on the one thing and not all the things.

And it is like sharing the same message, but just in different ways. Another one is inconsistent inconsistency.

Like I said before, regularity is key.

So you really need to have a publishing schedule that you're going to stick to because having, you know, random posts pop up here and there, it's going to lead to disengagement.

People just not going to see it. The platform is not going to prioritize it and push it towards your followers because you're not keeping up with content and doing it consistency.

Another one I just mentioned is actually neglecting measuring it. So if you're not tracking your results, you won't actually know what's working or how to improve it. So make sure that you track and one that I see all the time is to overcomplicate things.

A content strategy should be a roadmap. A roadmap, not a maze. Like it needs to be just simple, keep it simple, keep it actionable and align it with your business goals.

It is literally a matter of what am I trying to achieve here, how am I going to get there? And if you need to visualize it or do it on a piece of paper where you literally have, you know you're at point A and you want to go to point B.

That's your goal.

How are you going to get there? What actions do you need to take and what kind of content do you need to share? Because it needs to be simple.

Start small and then gradually build your strategy.

So focus on one channel or a few topics at a time, and then expand on that as you learn what's actually resonating with your audience.

I hope that was helpful.

That's a wrap for Content Strategy 1 on 101. I hope you actually will be able to create a clear roadmap and not a maze for building a comprehensive content strategy, because I want you to get results.

And remember, knowing your audience,

setting clear goals and then staying consistent, those are the three things you need to write down is know your audience, know your set clear goals, stay consistent.

That is it. That is literally it. It might not go at the pace that you want it to go at, but we're not here to just race to the end.

We need to build something sustainable.

All right, if you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe, Leave a review. Reviews are absolute gold in podcasting and share it with anyone who could actually benefit from these insights. And as always, if you have any questions or you need help refining your content strategy, connect with me on social media or drop me an email.

I will put all the links in the show. Notes. Thank you so, so much for tuning in. And until next time, keep creating, keep strategizing, and most of all, keep marketing your business every day.