Small business owners know the importance of social media marketing and blogging. However, they may not realize just how important content is. While anyone can create content, having a content marketing strategy is key to ensuring your content gets seen.
You work so hard to create blog posts, infographics, videos, and e-books using your expertise to inform the public about a topic to teach them something new. However, how are you going to get people to read that content? If you leave it on your website and hope for traffic, you might not get very much. If you create a plan to distribute the content on social media or optimize your content for search engines, you're sure to reach more people.
But what is a content strategy, and why is it important? A content marketing strategy can help ensure your content gets seen by customers at the right time; it can do everything from informing your target audience about a specific topic, product, or service to convincing them to take action on your website.
Your content can help you attract new customers and retain current customers through organic traffic on several mediums, including social media and your company website.
Then, once visitors are on your website, your content can be used to educate and convince, getting you that much closer to reaching your business objectives.
Your small business’s online presence is made up of branding, marketing, social media, your website, and more. Content strategy ties these elements together for a cohesive brand experience.
What is a content strategy?
At its core, content strategy is a comprehensive plan for creating, releasing, and managing your content. It provides guidance for every step of the process, including:
- Writing. Whether you write articles, blog posts, or social media posts and comments (or hire someone to do it for you), your goal is to engage your audience and provide them with meaningful information.
- Curating. Besides creating original content, gathering content from other reputable sources can keep your audience engaged and create mutually beneficial relationships within your industry.
- Presenting multimedia. Just like the written components of your content, images, videos, and other media need to engage, inform, and entertain your audience in harmony with your business goals.
- Releasing the content. An essential aspect of content strategy is to schedule and post your content regularly to keep your audience engaged.
- Maintaining the content. Once the content is published, you have to manage it. Some content is permanent, some needs to be updated occasionally, and some is only relevant for a period of time (after which it needs to be removed).
- Engaging with your audience. Additionally, it’s best to acknowledge feedback and engage in conversations with your audience.
In addition, you can use several content formats in a content strategy, and a successful content strategy will rely on a mix of blog posts, videos, infographics, case studies, and more. Using these different content ideas can ensure you reach more people.
Content strategies must be comprehensive and include a method of delivery. How you distribute your content may be just as important as the content you create. After all, you have to ensure your target audience sees your content.