Do you want to increase your online reach to help grow your business? Consider how an excellent digital content strategy can help.
A digital content strategy includes a look at the audience and offers for a business. It also consists of the right content types and platforms to use to promote that content. The strategy should cover how to evaluate the content to make sure the strategy is successful.
Key Takeaways
- A digital content strategy is essential for marketing your business online, encompassing audience analysis, content types, and platforms for promotion, aiming to convert followers into customers through educational and engaging content.
- Benefits of a robust digital content strategy include expanding your online presence to attract more leads and diversifying marketing efforts across various digital channels to reach a broader audience, ultimately growing your business.
- Developing a digital content strategy involves setting clear business goals, reviewing existing content, considering budget constraints, understanding your target audience, and leveraging unique selling propositions to create content that stands out and effectively reaches your intended audience.
What Is a Digital Content Strategy?
A digital content strategy is your plan for how to market your business online. B2B digital marketing can be an effective way to get customers and clients. You can create content that falls in line with your business objectives, and you can share that content with your target audience.
Assuming you follow a good content strategy, the content will help your followers and fans. If they learn something, they can start to like and trust your business. Over time, you’ll be able to use your digital platforms to turn fans into buyers.
Your digital content strategy can span multiple platforms, from your website to social media. For example, you might use one content strategy on your website and change that strategy to fit on Instagram or Facebook.
Why Your Digital Content Marketing Strategy Matters
Having a good digital content strategy can make a huge difference for your business. Even if you have a brick-and-mortar store, building your business online can help you get more leads.
It may even become the primary means of attracting customers. You can use a few different content formats to form a sound content strategy.
Consider a couple of benefits you can enjoy after you build your digital content strategy.
Build Your Online Presence
Whether you have an online or in-person business, you should use the internet for marketing your company. The internet makes it super easy and affordable to reach your target audience to help build brand awareness and get customers.
You can use your website content and other content formats to reach people. With a bit of keyword research, you can increase the chances of your site showing up when people search for relevant topics.
Then, they might click on your site and learn more about what you do. Soon enough, you’ll be able to bring in new leads and customers consistently to help generate more sales.
Diversify Your Marketing Strategy
Perhaps you have a traditional marketing strategy, such as radio or newspaper ads. Or maybe you already market yourself on one platform online. Either way, using multiple digital channels can give your customers more opportunities to find you.
You don’t have to rely on people listening to the radio or using Facebook. If you can build a successful presence on a few social networks and your website, you will reach more people.
As long as you have enough time or people to help create a strategy for each platform, you can build a successful digital marketing campaign. Then, you can grow your business.
How to Create a Digital Content Strategy
Creating an excellent digital content marketing strategy can seem overwhelming at first. You have to understand digital marketing and the various digital channels.
Learning about your ideal customer is also essential for developing your content strategy. That way, you can make sure your strategy will help attract the right people.
Here are some steps to help create a documented strategy for content marketing.
Start With Business Goals
Before you can create any content strategy, you need to know your business objectives and goals. That way, your content team can compare the best content strategies and eliminate other marketing tactics to help you reach those goals.
Perhaps your goal is to simply find potential customers and get them to know about your brand. Or maybe you have a strong following and want to use it to generate leads. Either way, you should consider your audience’s personas and where they are in their journey.
That way, you can create the right type of content for your audience. For example, you might share more educational content when building awareness. But you might create more promotional content if you want to turn your followers into leads.
As your business goals change, so can your content strategy. That way, you’ll be able to attract the right people to help build your business with content marketing.
Review Existing Content
Another crucial part of creating a content strategy is to look at the content you’ve already created and shared. Take a look at the content on your website and social media accounts to see what is bringing in leads and sales.
If nothing is doing what you want, you can use that information to change your content strategy. On the other hand, seeing some success proves what you already do is worth it. So you can include those things in your new strategy.
Be sure to look at your content marketing analytics. Your content management system should be able to tell you about any sales or leads generated from that platform.
Then, you can see if your current content creation plan is working. If so, you can maintain the same content calendar or adapt the editorial calendar accordingly.
Consider Your Content Marketing Budget
You could come up with the perfect content strategy. But it won’t matter if you don’t have enough money for it in your digital marketing budget. Be sure to consider how much all of your content marketing efforts cost.
That way, you can make sure you have enough money to create content. While you won’t need money if you do it yourself, you can hire someone to write a blog post or social post. That way, you can spend your time on other tasks.
You’ll also need to know how much you can spend on advertising. Organic digital marketing can be great, but paying for ad space may help you get quicker results.
Then, you can get the leads and sales you want to help grow your business. And you won’t have to wait as long to see significant results.
Understand Your Customers
Another vital part of any digital strategy is to know your target audience. You can learn about them through audience research so that your content marketers and sales team can reach the right people.
That research will also help you craft buyer personas for each business offering you provide. You can make sure your content marketing strategy reaches the right people.
After you learn about your customers, you can choose the right social media platforms to reach people organically. Then, you can craft a social media content strategy that encourages people to follow you and visit your website to make a purchase.
Different target audiences will require a separate content strategy. So what works for one business might not work for yours. Be sure to research your specific audience to create the best digital content strategy for you.
Create a Buyer Persona
As mentioned, a buyer persona can be very useful for your content strategy. This persona describes your ideal client or customer, including their age, gender, and interests. Creating this persona can help you figure out what your customers need from you.
Use that information to figure out how and where you can share digital content. For example, if your buyer persona is a business professional in their 30s, LinkedIn will probably be the best platform to reach them.
On the other hand, if your buyer persona is an 18-year-old, Instagram or TikTok might be better. There’s no best platform for every business. Make sure you use your buyer persona to help drive your content marketing strategy.
Leverage Your Unique Selling Proposition
Odds are, you aren’t selling something super new. But you do have a unique selling proposition (USP) that you can leverage when content marketing. Think about what makes you or your business different from your competition.
Perhaps you offer a free tutorial to all of your website design clients. Or maybe you create jewelry, and you include a handmade note with each order.
Be sure to create content explaining what makes you different. Add that to your other content calendars for your online platforms.
Use your digital content strategy to stand out from your competitors. Then, your audience can understand why they should hire you over another company that offers the same service.
Do Keyword Research
Search engine optimization (SEO) can be a valuable part of a good content marketing strategy. While social media is great, you want to get people to your website. If you can create good content that great SERP visibility, you can get more traffic.
You’ll need to create relevant content based on what you offer to help attract the right people. Using relevant keywords can help you target the correct search terms. Make sure the keywords you choose relate to your offer and that they have a decent search volume.
That way, you’ll have a better chance at lead generation with SEO. However, you should also use keywords that aren’t too competitive so that you have a chance at ranking first.
Because even if many people search for the term, they may not find you if you’re on the second or third page.
Choose Your Channels
Once you do some research and figure out where your audience is, you can select the best channels to use for your digital content strategy. Look back at those buyer personas you created from your audience research.
Maybe you found that a lot of your audience is on Twitter, so you build a presence there. Or perhaps you can get a lot of traffic through SEO, so you focus on creating good web pages to keep people on your site.
You might also use content syndication or guest blogs to promote your business on other websites. The site you share the post with can link back to your site to help build traffic.
Email marketing should be a part of your digital content strategy regardless of where else you market your business. You can share discounts or exclusive content with subscribers, and you don’t have to worry about an algorithm affecting your ability to reach people.
Keep Digital Marketing Simple
Creating a complex digital content strategy that takes up all of your time can be all too easy, But you don’t need anything fancy to meet your business objectives. Be sure to consider your target audience research and buyer personas.
Then, you can plan out your content creation strategy to meet your goals and reach your ideal audience. At first, you might want to stick to one or two platforms. That way, you can learn how those platforms work so that you can increase your reach.
As you learn how those platforms work, you can expand your content strategy to include other platforms. However, make sure you have enough people to create or repurpose content to share on the new platforms so that you can continue to grow your online presence.
What to Post on Your Website
Your website should be the main platform you use in your digital content strategy. It’s where people will be able to book your services, buy your products, or find your brick-and-mortar business.
A website is a perfect place to publish your blog posts and other long-form content, like industry reports. You can also embed an email list signup form on your site. That way, visitors who want to hear from you can sign up.
As you come up with content ideas, consider how you can use them on your site. A blog is the easiest way to post content. But you can also create free downloads that you offer to people who give you their email addresses.
How to Use Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing can be essential to a successful digital content strategy. You can use various social media networks to post different forms of content:
- Text
- Photos
- Videos
- Graphics
Whenever you can, include a link to your website. That way, people who follow you on social media can find your site more easily.
While you can create original content for different platforms, you might also want to repurpose your content. For example, if you write a blog post, you can break up the various sections and share them as individual posts on Instagram or Facebook.
What to Share in Emails
If you want our digital content strategy to be really successful, you need to include emails in your plan. As you build your email list, you can share exclusive content in your emails, or you can share content before you post it elsewhere.
That can give your email subscribers a bit of exclusivity and make them want to stay on your list to see what you have to say. Plus, you can share special promotions or coupon codes that you don’t offer to anyone else.
If you want to keep it simple, though, you can repurpose your website and social content. Then, you don’t have to create anything specifically for your email list.
Come Up With Ideas
Being able to brainstorm content ideas is also part of any good content strategy. You can use the results from researching your audience and keywords. That way, you can select the right topics to cover on your website, social media, and in emails.
Producing high-quality content will be a lot easier when you have a list of ideas. You may not always be able to think of what to post. But when you have an idea list you can pull from, you’ll have something to share.
You can also use those ideas to fill out your content calendar for the week or month. This can help you or anyone else working on your content save time and energy.
As you brainstorm ideas, you can also make sure the content you post is in line with the current stage of your business. So if you’re planning to launch a new product, you’ll be able to use that product to inform the content you create.
Plan Out Your Content
Once you have a list of ideas to use for your content strategy, you should create a plan. Consider the content formats you want to use, such as social media posts, video content, or written content.
Then, you can figure out when to create and publish a blog post or any other type of content. Having a plan will also help when it comes to creating content that your audience will love.
Not only can you choose topics that make sense, but you can create quality content. So think about the best way to express yourself and your ideas.
If you do well on camera, you might want to film videos. However, starting a blog might be better if you’re better at writing.
Consider Your Schedule
You also need to consider your schedule or the schedule of your content team. Developing quality content can take a lot of time. So think about how much time you have to work on content each day or week.
That way, you can create a schedule that works for your business and that you can stick to. It would be better to publish once or twice per week than to post every day and burn out within a month.
Choose a schedule that you think will work if you aren’t sure how much content you and your team can create. You can always change the schedule later if you realize you have more or less time to work on your content.
Then, you can adjust the schedule to meet your needs. You’ll still be able to publish content, but you won’t overwhelm yourself or neglect other tasks.
Publish and Share the Content
After you write content to share, it’s time to follow your content schedule. You can use your schedule to publish content and get into the routine of content marketing.
Make sure you share your valuable content on the right platforms for your business to help reach your audience. When that happens, you can get more organic traffic from SEO or social media.
It may take a while to get in the swing of posting content on a schedule. However, for your digital content strategy to work, you need to stick to a schedule.
Then, you can figure out if your strategy is working and if it’s helping you meet your goals. Knowing that will help you improve your overall digital marketing strategy.
Track the Analytics
After a month or so of using your new content strategy, you should do a content marketing audit. Take a look at your analytics and key performance indicators for your website and social media accounts. Figure out how people are entering your sales funnel or helping you meet another goal.
You should also consider if your current audience is your target audience to see how well you’re attracting the right people. Review your documented strategy from a month back to compare how you’re doing to how you want to be doing.
Then, you can see what you need to change, such as your SEO strategy. Or you might find that your current strategy is working, so you decide to stick with it for a while.
Just make sure to review your analytics each month. That way, you can recognize when a strategy stops working, and you can adjust accordingly.
Keep Experimenting
As you create digital content, don’t be afraid to experiment with a few content strategies. You can look at a few examples from your competitors to see what’s working for them. That way, you may get more ideas for how to produce content.
Over time, you might need to adjust your documented content strategy. Your business will probably change at least a bit, and your digital content strategy should change with it.
If you aren’t sure what to change, do more research on your audience and industry. Then, you can figure out what might work better for you and your business.
Whenever you change something, be sure to take note of your analytics before and after you make the shift. That will give you a good idea of how successful the new strategy is.
Conclusion
Having a suitable digital content strategy can make marketing to your ideal audience easy and affordable. But you need to consider where and how to create the right content. And you have to consider your specific audience and what you sell.
That way, you can develop a content strategy that will reach your target customers. Soon enough, you’ll be able to generate more leads and sales with your content.
FAQs
If you still have a few questions about digital content and content marketing, you aren’t alone. Here are a few things you may want to know.
Your digital strategy should include the platforms where you’ll market your business. It should also cover relevant keywords to help get your content in front of the right people. Finally, your content strategy should adapt as your business adapts. That way, you can connect with your customers.
You should always think of your current and potential customers when creating your digital content strategy. That way, you can create the right type of content and share it in the best places to reach those people.
Consistency and quality are also important for content marketing to help build trust with your audience and make them want to buy.