How To Effectively Plan Your Content Strategy from Scratch? Competition in the markets is growing, and it’s pretty hard for companies to stay afloat. An effective marketing strategy can become a magic wand, which will boost marketing efforts and will let the business survive. It can help to increase engagement, improve brand loyalty and generate high revenue.

If you want to enjoy all the opportunities, which content marketing provides, you should make your strategy perfect.

If you have no idea how to plan a strategy from scratch, check the following tips. You will learn what steps you should take and how to avoid making mistakes.

1. Set Your Goals

What is a “strategy”? It’s a concrete plan on how to achieve goal X.

So, what is your content strategy is all about?

You should set clear goals, which you will be able to measure with the help of Google Analytics. It will help you to understand what type of content you should create.

Keep in mind that your objectives should be ambitious, yet realistic and achievable. You can reach one or a few of the following goals if build an effective content marketing strategy and stick to it:

• Increase Web Traffic
• Boost Engagement
• Generate Leads
• Raise Brand Awareness
• Improve Customer Retention & Loyalty
• Facilitate Marketing ROI.

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2. Know Your Audience

Who is your target audience?

You should conduct research to know the demographics: age, gender, marital status, education, social status, level of income, etc. Even more, you should precisely analyze the online search behavior and content engagement cycle.

Only when you know who looks for information related to your niche, you will be able to create a worthy information product. You should follow the principle of marketing: find a need for specific content and then satisfy it.

3. Research Keywords

When you know what your target audience look for, it’s time to analyze what kind of queries it creates. Your primary task is to make a list of 10-15 low competition short tail keywords.

[su_highlight]For example, if you own a veterinary clinic in New York, then your basic keywords will be “veterinary hospital” and “veterinarian New York”.[/su_highlight]

After that, you can go further and define long tail keywords, which consist of more than 3 words. These are very specific search words, which people use to find a very concrete type of content.

[su_highlight]For instance, “veterinary wellness center in Brooklyn”, “best veterinary hospital West Village” or “complete pet care New York City”.[/su_highlight]

Long tail keywords will not help you to boost traffic, but they will significantly increase conversion. Content, which contains these words, will be more relevant and useful for the users.

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4. Choose Appropriate Types Of Content

Now you need to decide which type of content you will produce. There are a lot of options to consider:

• Blog posts
• Social media posts
• Infographics
• Templates
• Checklists
• Case studies
• Guides
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Memes
• Webinars
• Whitepapers
• Press releases
• Ebooks
• Interactive content (funny quizzes, online calculators, maps etc.)

You shouldn’t stick to only one kind of content. Try to diversify your strategy. It will help you to grab and hold the target audience’s attention for longer.

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5. Select Reliable Software

Whether your content strategy is ambitious or not, you will not be able to put your plan into action without adequate software. You need to use a tool or a program, which will help you to manage all the processes in one place.

Software should cope with such tasks as content creation, content publication, and content analytics. You can take a look at such popular providers as HubSpot, GoSchedule, WordPress, or choose any other similar options, which meet your criteria and budget.

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6. Chose Your Channels

Now you need to think about how you will distribute your content. Will you post it on your own blog or on another platform? Will you also write guest posts for popular blogs in your niche?

And you should never forget about social media. You should make a plan of how you will distribute your content on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you are going to create video content, YouTube will be the best choice for you.

Must Read: Step by Step Guide for Successful Social Media Marketing Campaign

7. Find Talented Content Creators

If you have very ambitious goals, you will have to produce a lot of high-quality content. It’s unlikely that you will be able to cope with an overwhelming workload on your own. So, you should decide who will become your helper.

There are a few solutions for you:

• Hire an in-house content creator. This is the most costly approach. The major benefit is that you will have face-to-face communication and will be able to discuss the project in details.
• Hire a freelance blog writer and visual content creator via platforms like Upwork and Fiverr. It will cost you less money and will provide you with more flexibility.
• Utilize one of the top editing services. Content will be created by a specialized company, which cares about its reputation. So, you will get good value for your money.

8. Brainstorm Brilliant Content Ideas

Even if you think that you are genius, don’t try to make all work by yourself. When you need to come up with content ideas, you should invite your team for a brainstorming session. There is no room for a doubt, that your team members can surprise you with something new.

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t put pressure on your employees. Make them feel comfortable discussing their ideas. You should listen to them carefully and show that you valued their opinions.

The major goal of brainstorming is to start thinking in a new direction. Even if you will not want to accept the ideas expressed by your team members, you will see your problem from a different angle. You will get inspiration to find better topics for your content strategy.

9. Build A Content Calendar

If you want to make your content strategy works perfectly, you should schedule content production and publishing. You should find out at which time of the month/week/day your customers want to get fresh content from you.

For example, if you plan to publish a blog post “How to choose Christmas present for nephew”, you should make all preparations in advance. This post should appear at your website at least 1 month before the holiday. If you will publish it two days before Christmas Eve, no one will find it useful.

For this reason, you should build a content calendar. It will help you to set the priorities and produce new content without any delays. It’s highly recommended to use software to facilitate the scheduling process.

In Conclusion

Planning process seems to be a little bit sophisticated at first sight. But don’t worry; you will see that everything is much simpler in real life. You should plan your content strategy step by step without rush.

If you want to make your strategy works as effectively as possible, you should ensure high-quality of every piece of content. You should be ready to invest your time and money in the market researches as well as content production and publishing. Great achievements start from the outstanding plans, so you should make every important decision deliberately.