Connect with your audience by covering the topics they care about the most.
Plan out a network of interlinked blogs that answer related questions and help each
other rank.
Write and publish content that helps people, and watch your rankings go up!
Find topics and outlines catered to your business.
"We don't advertise, at all,” says Howdy Holmes, President and CEO of the company that makes Jiffy mix. “No coupons, no sample packaging, no billboards, no radio, no TV, no celebrity endorsements. Nothing." As much as we all wish we could be providing a low cost baking staple that flies off the shelf with no advertising, the truth is that none of us are in the same position as Jiffy mix. In order to move our products or sell our services, advertising and marketing is a fact of life. And, in today’s world, most of us have turned to content marketing. This inbound marketing technique attracts customers by providing them with the information they’re looking for. By giving valuable insights around the topics that customers are interested in, businesses can establish themselves as an authority. This, in turn, funnels leads into the sales pipeline.
However, in order to do content marketing well, you need a strong content marketing strategy. What is content strategy? Well, in this brief guide, we’ll answer that question as well as help you create one and even provide a free template for you to use. Let’s get started.
A content marketing strategy is the approach you take when figuring out who to target, what content to create, when to distribute it, and which channels to use. Think of it like your itinerary—when planning a complicated trip with many different destinations, you would want to put together a plan that includes all the details, like where you’re staying the night and what time your flights are. A content strategy is similar because it is the framework of your content, but not the content itself.
There are, of course, more than three components that go into making a content strategy, but these three are core to creating a good one. In order to create a strong content strategy, you need to:
These three elements will help you put together strategies and campaigns that do what you need them to: attract leads and retain customers.
With those three elements top of mind, it’s important to remember all the other bits and bobs that should be incorporated. Your content strategy should include:
Content Strategy ExampleOne brilliant example of a content strategy is IKEA—yes, the place you go to buy furniture and meatballs (and maybe get lost inside the store). Their content marketing strategy spans across multiple channels, focusing on visual social media sites like Pinterest and Youtube, intentionally showing how their products fit into their customers’ lives. For example, they have created the Smörgås Pinners Pinterest page where IKEA employees can contribute to building visual inspiration boards(“Smörgås boards”) for public consumption. Rooted in nostalgia, these boards feature IKEA products from the past through the present, showing how these products help improve people’s lives.
Another successful content strategy has been to create “How To Build” assembly videos. We’ve all heard the jokes about IKEA furniture being so simple and yet so difficult to put together correctly. Some of us have even experienced the frustration of having three little thingies leftover or a bunch of doodads that definitely can’t fit where the picture says they go. IKEA identified this pain point, and created a content marketing campaign to address it. They put together “How To Build” videos that showed step-by-step how to put their furniture together. To make these videos more versatile, they did not include a voiceover but had superimposed text that could easily be translated into any language.
As you can see from this example, content strategy will vary depending on your unique business. What works for IKEA won’t necessarily work for a Jiffy mix or your unique company. It’s important to identify both the aspirations and the pain points of your audience so you can effectively target them.
Alright, it’s time to get into the nuts and bolts of how you actually make a content strategy.
Now that you know the steps, you may be asking yourself, “how do you structure a content strategy?” It’s all well and good to talk about broad strokes, but how do you actually write down the information on a page? One of the best ways to get started is to use a content strategy template. These tools help you categorize the types of content, create calendars, pull together sources, and give you a place to hold all of the information you need to create content.
We’ve got you covered! Click here and we’ll send you a free content marketing template and PDF that is specific to your company. You’ll find information about competitive gaps and opportunities, what areas to focus on, and the exact pieces of content to create.
Remember that SEO research we talked about earlier? There’s a reason we’re so passionate about SEO—because looking at what people are actually searching for online gives you direct insight into your ideal customers. Here at DemandJump, we’ve created a content marketing platform that does just that. We gather all of the keywords and questions around topics so that you can meet your audiences where they are and give them the value they’re looking for.
From our insight reports that give you the big picture view to the ability to see how your competitors are ranking to our content briefs that help you outline and write content, we’ve got the tools to help your content marketing strategy succeed. With DemandJump, you can create content marketing strategies that are successful, with content that leaps to the top of page one. Try it today and experience the DemandJump difference.
