With inconsistent market trends and the ever-changing needs of online users, the need for a strong content strategy has become even more crucial. Well-defined goals, knowing your buyer persona and defining timelines for content deliverables is just the beginning. The intent and format of your content plays a major role in cementing the foundation of your content strategy to make it more robust, sustainable and relevant.
Here’s more on how to build the right content strategy-
Your intended message to the targeted audience –
The first and the most important element of creating content is defining the ‘intent.’ This crucial step will help define the several elements of your content strategy and will result in an effective outcome.
A few best practice recommendations of what your content must deliver-
- Address your audiences’ business challenges and suggest solutions for those challenges
- Educate your audience on topics relevant to their business
- Create share-able content that is holistically relevant to a larger audience
- Evangelize best practices around specific topics of interest to your audience
- Finally, your over-arching intent through your content is to ‘help’ and be of value
Choosing the most effective format for distribution-
Your intent and your targeted audience drive decisions on choosing effective formats for content distribution. Each format is intended to make a specific impact and serve a purpose. Thus, you may choose from blogs & articles, e-mailers, website content, case studies, videos, infographics etc. You may even choose unique formats such as SlideShare decks, Quizzes, Video Storytelling, Podcasts, Gamification and many more. Whichever format you choose, the content that goes out should be both consistent and relevant enough to make the right impact.
Bottom line – It doesn’t matter if one has great ideas. If the content doesn’t reflect the intent and is not channelized through an appropriate format, one is likely to fall short of the expected results. This is the reason why marketers wonder why they could not keep their audiences engaged despite seemingly great thoughts.
Hope this piece helps you take a step back and think through your understanding of the audience profile and thereby, your content strategy.
