When it comes to creating content consistently, it can be easy to get distracted by shiny object syndrome or trends. It’s fun to try new things and experiment, but too many random tactics can lead to random or scattered results.
Instead, I propose you create more strategic content that serves a purpose and feels more aligned with your marketing goals.
Creating strategic content helps you stay aligned with your specific business or marketing goals and ensures every piece of content and action you take moves you closer to achieving those goals.
Creating strategic content helps you stay focused on your brand’s message, your audience’s needs and your goals.
Your strategic content can help you create brand awareness, increase website traffic, generate new leads, boost sales or establish you as an authority. When you align your content with your business objectives, it can help you be more effective in reaching and engaging your target audience and creating more impactful and measurable results. Creating strategic content can also help distinguish you from competitors and establish you as an industry leader.
The result is that you can more easily generate leads or sales because your words, content and actions are all aligned with your audience’s needs and your goals.
Here are some ways you can start to create more strategic content that helps you capture new audiences, connects you with your audience and converts your audience into customers.
Understand your audience
Creating strategic content begins with truly understanding your audience. Instead of looking at what other accounts are posting or saving content inspiration online, focus on researching more details about your target audience.
To do this, imagine you’re trying to research as much as possible about a celebrity crush or entertainment gossip. You know what I’m talking about. You go down a rabbit hole of research and clicking through different articles and comments in forums.
Put on your investigative hat and go deep into a research session to learn as much as possible about your audience online through online forums, groups, social media posts and comments.
- Know who your audience is and what they need.
- What is their biggest problem, fear, or blocker?
- How do they describe their problem?
Related: How to Conduct a Content Marketing Audit
Clarity on Pain Points
Develop an understanding of your audience’s pain points. What are their dreams, fears and hopes?
Who or what is the villain in their journey? How can you position yourself as their guide to help them along on their journey? Think about obstacles that may be holding them back and how it relates to your offer, service or product?
Understanding your audience will make creating content, writing copy for your sales and landing pages so much easier because you’ll be able to effectively speak to their pain points and the transformation you can provide.
- Validate your research by talking to your audience.
- Visit and read online forums to understand how your audience describes their problems or obstacles.
- Analyze and look for common themes questions, DMs, and comments on similar groups or accounts.
Related: 14 Creative Ways to Conduct Content Research Online
Share your solution
Can you effectively describe what you offer and how it benefits your audience?
Once you have your sales pitch nailed down, incorporate it into your landing pages, emails, social media posts and all of your content marketing materials. It’s fine if you feel like you’re repeating yourself. Your audience will need to hear about your solution or offer multiple times before they take action.
Be sure to consistently communicate your offer to stay top-of-mind for new or existing customers.
- Clearly communicate your solution to your audience.
- Which results do you provide? Share testimonials, reviews or before and after examples.
- What’s the transformation that you can help them with?
Related: How to Create Content More Consistently
Anchor yourself to pillars
Review and revise your content pillars to be consistent in your message and develop brand awareness, trust and authority.
Content pillars help you focus on creating content relevant to your audience and their needs. These topics help to answer questions, educate or solve a problem for your audience.
Developing a strong brand voice and staying consistent with your brand’s messaging is important. Content pillars enable consistency in your messaging and help you build trust and establish authority on the topic.
Your content pillars give you clarity around your niche, your messaging and target audience. Your pillars also serve to complement topics around your products or services and also support your overall goals (i.e. audience growth or revenue goals).
- Narrow down your 3-5 content pillars
- These are topics that you will consistently talk about that complement your business and audience’s needs
- Your content pillars help you be consistent in your message
Related: How to Maximize Your Content Pillars for Your Marketing Plan
Content Calendar Using Airtable
Need help with your content marketing efforts? An effective content calendar is built with a strong foundation around strategy.
Using this Airtable Calendar Template will help you:
- Streamline your content creation process
- Optimize your workflows
- Help ensure your content mix is strategically aligned with your marketing goals
Clear marketing goal
Remember to have clear marketing goals written down so you know what to track each week or month and modify your marketing activities.
This allows you to focus on your long-term goals and execute short-term activities. Allow at least 3 months for your consistent efforts to start paying off.
- Write down and identify your marketing goal
- Create marketing activities that support your goal
- Make sure your marketing goal is measurable
➜ Set aside time this week to review your marketing efforts and focus on creating strategic content that is intentional and helps you achieve your business and marketing goals.
