Lindsey Komson

Photo by Kindel Media

From social posts to video tutorials and everything in between, I have had exposute to a fair share of content, having worked in social media and marketing. While I’ve had experience creating content, I haven’t had much experience working on the strategy behind it all.

Recently, I’ve done a bunch of research surrounding content strategy, and I’m going to share some of the best practices I’ve come across. Let’s go on this journey of becoming content strategists together.

What is content strategy?

I’m currently reading Content Strategy Toolkit by Megan Casey, and she explains that “Content strategy helps organizations provide the right content to the right people at the right times.”

Content strategy is extremely important to any business or organization. It helps to make sure content is relevant, organized, and effective in reaching its intended audience. After all, that’s why we’re creating content in the first place – to reach our intended audience and encourage them to take action.

We know what content strategy is…but what is content?

There are several types of content organizations use to reach their intended audience. While they all exist to resonate with an audience, each type has somewhat of a different purpose. According to Superdream, there are 4 main purposes of content: entertain, inspire, educate, and convince.

Here are some types of content that are beneficial for businesses, why they work well, and what their purpose is:

Blogs
Blogs attract traffic to your website, which is good for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes. Blogs exist to educate and inspire readers.

Photos/Videos
According to Wyzowl, 88% of video marketers value video as an important part of their strategy, and 90% of marketers say video marketing has given them a good ROI. Additionally, 88% of video marketers say video has helped them increase user understanding of their product or service. Photos and videos can be used to entertain, educate, and inspire viewers.

Social media posts
Social media posts are an easy way to get your organization in front of your target audience. The best part about social media posts is that they’re versatile in terms of purpose. A well-executed post can entertain, inspire, educate, and/or convince users.

Podcasts
Nowadays, podcasts are one of the fastest-growing content types in existence. According to Cue, podcasts are great to promote products and services, grow loyal audiences, and drive website traffic. Podcasts can entertain, educate, and inspire audiences, depending on the theme or topic.

E-Books
E-Books are a great way to present research or any other long documentation that would otherwise provide a negative user experience on a blog or other online forum. E-Books are usually intended to educate and/or inspire users.

White Papers
White papers are great ways to establish your company as a thought leader and present research in any industry. These documents usually exist solely to educate readers.

So how do we keep it all organized?

Today, there are so many ways to organize content. Content calendars are great tools for organizing when and where your business and organization will publish their content. Whether you use platforms built into your regular internet use (Google Calendar, iCalendar) or dedicated apps (Loomly), content calendars help organizations stay on track and post their messaging at optimal times.

Tagging systems are also a great organizational tool for keeping track of the content themes you post. Personally, I’ve used Hootsuite as a tagging system for social media posts. It’s really insightful to track metrics for each content theme to see what resonates with audiences the most.

Content Management Systems (CMS) exist to keep track of all content created/distributed by a business. This site you’re reading my blog on right now is a CMS! WordPress, HubSpot, and Wix are all Content Management Systems I’ve used, but a quick Google search will show you the endless options available to you.

An easy, low-cost way to organize your content is a good folder system. I have done this at several jobs, and it creates good habits for every person to access the content after you. I know it sounds simple, but creating folders and sub-folders is a surefire way to keep everything organized.

To keep or not to keep

Once you have a large amount of content, it’s necessary to weed through and decide what’s necessary to keep and what you can take down for the time being. There are several factors that will indicate whether it’s time to keep or delete content.

• Relevance
  
  According to Redefine Marketing Group, timely content only brings temporary gains. Whether that’s in followers, page views, profit, etc., you’ll reach your goals quickly, and then the post may not be relevant anymore. After KPIs are reached, your organization can remove the post to avoid clutter. A way to avoid this is investing more time in evergreen content, since it’ll stay relevant for a long time.

• KPIs
  
  Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are determined by the organization distributing the content. Some examples of common KPIs are likes, engagement, reach, and video plays. By assessing content in the context of KPIs, you can discard the underperforming content.

• SEO Value
  
  Content that attracts organic traffic to your website will continue to be valuable to your organization because it will boost SEO. If you find that certain pages are doing poorly in terms of SEO, it may be time to reevaluate or discard.

As we continue on our journey of becoming content strategists, it’s important to remember what content strategy is, why it’s important, and how we can implement it into our work. By understanding content strategy, we can create content that’s relevant, organized, and effective in reaching its intended audience.