Make more out of the content you have by using content strategy.
Search engines are smarter than ever (definitely smarter than your SEO keyword nerds). Customers are more sophisticated than ever, and advertisements are easier to skip than ever. That’s why content continues to be king—with the right content, your customers won’t just let you message them, they’ll volunteer to engage with you. But with the wrong content, you can spend millions to get your message out and you’ll just be buying a bigger megaphone. Which is obnoxious! And ineffective.
The key to getting your marketing messages heard is the same as it’s always been—write smarter, not harder.
But creating the right content is easier said than done. (Unless you’re us, of course—we’re pretty awesome at it.) The first move many companies make is to ratchet up their content frequency. More social posts. More blog posts. More everything! Speak louder!! Listen to us!!! But do that and you’re quickly just another voice in the mob. Plus, start throwing money at creating tons of content and you’ll end up with an astronomical bill pretty quickly. The answer is the same as it’s always been: write smarter, not harder. That’s content strategy.
Here are three things content strategy can do for you:
1. Make all your company’s messages work together.
When different teams are running your marketing, your social and your website, your messaging is likely getting fractured. Even if your creative department is doing a great job maintaining brand standards, all the subtle choices your content developers are making matter. Great content strategy ensures you’re sending the same messages across all platforms. That makes every word work harder for you.
2. Make every content acquisition dollar go farther.
If each of your teams is procuring its own content, you’re paying too much for all of it. It always costs more money, for example, to create a blog post, and then start from scratch creating emails to publicize it, and then start from scratch writing social posts around it. Great content strategy will streamline that production. It can also make every photo you pay for go farther, every ad you build get in front of more eyeballs, and every video you create break up easier into smaller packages for cross promotion. But if all your teams are working independently of each other, you’re going to pay more for content that does less for you.
3. Make your content ROI easier to track.
If all your teams are working in individual silos, it’s harder to determine what content is working. But with a comprehensive production strategy, results are a lot easier to track. If a particular theme or message resonates with your audience, you’ll see it across all platforms. That way, when your KPIs rise or fall, it’s a lot easier to identify what’s moving the dials.
You have a great product. You’ve built a great company. But if you’re not getting the word out about what you’ve built, nobody is going to buy what you’re selling. And without the right content strategy, you’re going to overpay for a message that won’t even be heard.
