Knowing your message and how best to deliver it is arguably one of the most important aspects for any business or organization. Central to your overall branding, your content strategy really paves the way for your marketing efforts, giving you a consistent, deliberate, and effective voice when communicating with your audience.
For many, the very thought of tackling the elusive 'content strategy' seems super daunting - so daunting in fact, that they stop before they even start.
"I'm not a writer!"
"How am I supposed to organize all the information I want to communicate?"
"Content, schmontent. There are more important things I could be doing."
Leave this attitude at the door! You can do it, I promise. You can reclaim and enhance your brand with awesome, well-planned content!
The very first stage in this process is, of course, doing a thorough audit. To make it a bit easier for you, here are a handful of actionable steps to get the ball rolling on your content strategy.
Quantitative Assessment
There are a tonne of handy site crawl tools that will help in this step or your could go ahead and tackle it manually. The objective here is to create an inventory; determine all the pages of your website and how much content is on each page - this includes images, videos, and meta-data. You should be able to identify a general structure to your content based on your site map.
Qualitative Assessment
Once you have identified what content exists and where. It is time to start thinking about the web quality of that content. Take out your fine toothed comb and begin scanning through all your content to determine the following:
- Can it be found?
- Is there an action you are encouraging a reader to take?
- Is your content accessible (screen readers, mobile responsive, etc.)
- Is it useful, valuable content?
- Who is this content intended for?
Talk To Your Stakeholders
This may very well be the funnest part of the process! You get to talk to your team and target audience to identify what your overall business goals and customer expectations are. Dig in deep and ask those hard questions. The purpose of this exercise is to uncover how things are going currently, to identify frictions, and to discover opportunities.
Inform Yourself With Data
Dive in to your Google Analytics account and see how users are actually accessing and using your website. There is a wealth of information available to you in planning your content, such as: Identifying your most popular pages, understanding how users move through the site, where the bounces are, and how people are accessing your site. By understanding your audience behaviours and how your pages are performing you will be able to make maximize conversions and enhance the usability of your site.
Check Out What Your Competitors Are Up To
By doing a competitor analysis you will naturally find areas of opportunity for yourself. See what is working for them and what isn't. Remember, your goal is to be unique in the market.
Identify Key Messages
This is essential for your Content Strategy. What are the primary things you want to communicate? All content should align with these key message.
How Do You Measure Success
Identify your KPI's at the onset of this process - performance indicators could be anything from social engagement to high-conversion page visits. Make sure you remain on top of tracking your KPI's, the great thing about online content is that it is dynamic and you will be able to actively adjust your content strategy ensuring it is effective.
Follow these preliminary steps and you will be well on your way to mastering your brand's content. Stay tuned for more content strategy tips!