Home / How to Work Out Your Brand’s Content Strategy in Five Steps
Building a solid content strategy isn’t just about churning out posts. It’s about creating valuable, engaging and optimised content that connects with your audience and moves the needle for your business.
A well-executed content strategy can achieve multiple things at once. It can boost your brand’s visibility on search engines (also known as SERPs) and establish your business as a thought leader in your industry, which is powerful when people need a name to look to for new products and services. It also acts as a line of customer service answering frequently asked questions and providing buying guides, and is a helpful node of top-of-funnel marketing to bring in new customers looking for information, help and inspiration.
However, creating said content strategy can also feel like a maze with no map. It’s easy for your blog to get lost in the endless scroll of internet content if made without care and, let’s be honest, a little bit of luck. But without a quality strategy, you will ensure that you’ll get lost in the abyss.
By following these five steps, you’ll set the foundation for a content plan that delivers long-term results for your brand, boosts your SERPs and keeps your customers coming back for more.
Before doing anything, it’s vital to establish what exactly you’re trying to accomplish with your content. Content is often most effective for brand awareness and lead generation, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all. According to Forbes, content leads to a 74% uptick in lead generation, which is mighty impressive. This is why nailing down your goals upfront is crucial.
Whether you want to grow your audience, boost conversions or position yourself as a leader in your field, your content needs direction. Any how will you know if you’re succeeding? Establish clear metrics to track success, like engagement rates for brand awareness or conversion rates for lead gen.
You’ve got your goals defined, so the next stage is to assess where you’re currently standing. A content audit is a spring clean for your content, reviewing existing blog posts, articles and other content to see what’s working, what’s not, and what could use a polish.
Keep an eye out for gaps or opportunities. Are there trending relevant keywords you’re not ranking for? Could you improve your domain authority with higher-quality backlinks? Take stock of your keywords (ranking, branded and localised if applicable), track market trends, and identify any performance issues. It’s like giving your content a health check-up, and the results will give you a clear plan of action.
One key area that is often overlooked is the marketing funnel and how your content fits into that. As you will have countless people finding you at different stages of their journey, it’s key to ensure you are providing content that meets the needs of all of them, and not just those ready to convert.
With your audit results in hand, it’s time to start building a content calendar and filling it with valuable, relevant content that resonates with your audience. Remember, your products are there to solve a problem, so your content should present those solutions – this is where blog content works its magic.
A great tactic? Link to your product pages within your content. It’s simple, effective and, if structured to deliver the solution to readers’ problems, is a fantastic way to nudge them towards conversion.
Looking for blog inspiration? Dive into keyword research tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush to uncover the questions and terms people are asking about your products, are related to your products or even being picked up by Google already. Consider creating content clusters – interconnected blog posts that delve into related topics, centralised by a piece of directory-style pillar content. It’s a brilliant way to build a strong fortress of authority on a subject, but be cautious that you have enough mileage to do this – keyword cannibalisation is a danger if you use a keyword too often across blogs. Don’t bite off more than you can chew!
Lastly, don’t forget to check out what your competitors are doing, but keep in mind – you’re in this to stand out, not live in the shadow of your rivals.
Once you’ve got a plan, it’s time to make sure your content is working hard for you behind the scenes. Optimising for SEO is where your content can go from a drop in the ocean to a mighty splash that lands on Page 1. These quick fixes include:
Start by targeting your main keywords and incorporating relevant variations throughout your blog post. Your meta title is your blog’s first impression, so make sure this is catchy and also includes the primary keyword.
Strong visuals are an ally in communicating the quality of your content. Be sure to include engaging images throughout the blog to separate large chunks of text and keep readers hooked, then optimise the alt tags so that they can also appear for image searches.
Finally, linking to internal pages on your website points the user in a direction that keeps them browsing the site, while adding authoritative, relevant external links on other websites rubs off on your site as a reliable source that references its facts and figures. These tweaks help improve your ranking while offering readers extra value and a reason to stick around.
Refreshing existing content is an easy win, as it can extend the shelf life of your posts while boosting your SEO efforts. Give them a lick of paint with some updated statistics and examples, add new information, or switch up the structure to new formats of presenting information (if there’s a long section with a few key points, why not add a brief bullet point list to give the audience and Google a quick breakdown?).
Repurposing old blogs for social media is also an excellent way to breathe new life into it. Get creative and transform key areas of the blog into snappy infographics or Instagram-friendly slideshows. You’d be amazed at how far your content can go when you adapt it for different platforms and spread the word. Call that teaching an old blog new tricks.
Want to know the amount of blog content you should ideally be making? Read our guide to how much blog content is too much.
For more information on how Brave can help you engage your customers and boost your content marketing campaign, contact us today.
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