5 steps to a winning content strategy.
Review the org structure of most businesses with a digital presence and you’ll be hard pressed to see exactly where content management ownership sits. That’s because the planning and execution of an effective content strategy straddles a number of departments, let alone job roles.
Brand marketing teams will naturally be highly protective of brand identity and how this is reflected across published content, while digital marketing teams will be concerned about potential reach - does the content effectively respond to quantifiable online demand. Ecommerce trading teams on the other hand will be concerned about how the content works onsite to support the user journey through to conversion.
Content creation needs to work hard at engaging your new and existing audiences, increasing traffic to your website and ultimately driving incremental revenue. However, if your content strategy is dominated by just one of these goals it’s efficacy will diminish.
So how should you plan and coordinate a content strategy that ticks all these boxes?
1. IT STARTS WITH A BRAND PLAN.
It could be tempting to cherry pick the low hanging fruit - high volume, relevant search terms - but your content needs to fit seamlessly into an integrated marketing strategy. You should start by consulting your business' brand plan which will help you focus on producing relevant and timely content that supports and enriches multichannel communications. You’ll avoid friction between departments if you can align expectations from the outset. Marketing calendars are built around seasonal consumer trends as well as new season collections or product launches - so use this as the foundation for your content planning.
2. NEXT UP, REACH!
Once you’ve established the theme of your content, informed by a broader communications plan, you’ll then need to identify the opportunity for reaching new audiences.
Typically rich content will take the form of a blog article or editorial feature on your site. This content will need a title and meta description that bakes in a search query likely to be used by your target audience. Plugging a few terms in to AdWords will give you an idea of search volumes for similar keywords and phrases.
This will help you frame the entire piece of content ensuring the result is on-brand AND commercial. Note that it’s not always best to go after the highest volume search terms as these will often be the most competitive. If you find a longtail search term with less traffic potential but a high relevance to your product or service, you'll stand a better chance of reaching the first search engine results page (SERP), driving new users to your site, and converting them with your highly relevant and rich content.
If UGC is your focus, a social campaign that either involves carefully selected influencers to push your message out to their audiences, or a meaningful message that your existing audience can share with their networks could be the solution. Gymshark have been incredibly successful here - just see their “66 Days | Change Your Life” challenge that launched the brand on Tiktok - generating over 45m views of the campaign hashtag, or their #NHSSweatySelfie campaign, which raised over £180k for charity.
Paula's Choice blog posts consistently appear on page 1 of Google for skincare ingredient searches
3. AND NOW THE CONTENT..
You’ve drawn visitors in to your website with the promise of great content, now what? Well if the main objective is to grow your business then you’ll be looking to engage your audience and inspire them to take action, most likely resulting in a new sale or lead.
The content should of course be written to address your target search term, but not overtly - adopt your brand tone and add plenty of value with relevant info for your site visitors. Include visuals, video, quotes, diagrams... anything to enrich your copy and indicate to search engines that it's a page worth displaying on their search results.
Also, use this as an opportunity to build your internal site links. If you’re highlighting specific products, services or categories then link directly to them. Google will like this, and your visitors will be thankful of a slick and efficient user journey. Without even realising they will be falling through the funnel, ever closer to making that purchase!
4. BUT WHAT'S IT WORTH WITHOUT EYEBALLS?
So you’ve worked hard to produce an amazing piece of content that supports the latest marketing campaign and targets a highly relevant, high volume search term. Next up you need a plan for distribution!
Your metadata, rich on-page content and internal links will go some way to helping you rank on Google and drive new traffic to your website. But building external backlinks to your post from high-authority sites will increase your chances of success. A great way to facilitate this is to guest-blog on complimentary influencer sites and online publications.
Make sure you’re squeezing every last drop of value out of your content. Feature it in email and social campaigns, and possibly even in your PPC DSA campaigns. Add it to appropriate category or product pages - not only will your customers in the research phase find value through a rich user journey, but Google loves pages that are that are kept fresh with new and relevant content!
Anthropologie do a great job of working with influencers to create and distribute seasonal content
5. FINALLY, TRACK AND OPTIMISE
You don’t need to invest in a tool dedicated to tracking your organic search performance to understand the value of your content. GA reporting allows you to see how much traffic you're receiving on each page on your site, where it’s coming from (email, organic search, internal traffic) and the rate at which it’s converting. Depending on the size of your business and your team, this should give you plenty of data to refine and optimise your content strategy.
For a chat about how Digital Fit can help your business grow with an effective content strategy please feel free to get in touch.