Do you have a content strategy for growing your business?

What’s a content strategy, you ask?

The simple definition is that a content strategy is a plan for how you create, publish, and manage your content. It should include the overall goals for your content, who will create it, what type of content will be created, and when and where you will publish it.

When you have a content strategy, it ensures that ensures that all of your content is created with a purpose in mind. It helps you be consistent with your messaging and branding and keeps you from wasting time and resources on creating content that doesn’t serve a purpose.

But don’t make it harder than it has to be. Creating your content strategy doesn’t have to be super-complicated take up a ton of your time.  

Here is a 6-Step Content Strategy you can use to grow your business…

Step One: Know what you want your content to do

What do you want your content to do for you? It’s not enough to have bunches of content plastered all over the place just to look good. You need to have a definite purpose for the content that you create.

For example, you may want to increase brand awareness, or drive traffic to your website. Is its purpose to generate new leads? Get as detailed as you can here, even going so far as start with one specific piece of content. After you have that, then you’ll start creating the overall strategy for achieving your goals.

Step Two: Know your audience

Are you tired of hearing me tell you that you have to know your audience yet?

The reason I keep repeating myself is that it is absolutely crucial to your success that you know who your content is meant for.

Here are a couple of articles I’ve written on how to get to know your audience:

10 Ways to Confidently Understand Your Audience

6 Keys To Understanding Your Audience

Step Three: Create content that provides value

Your content should always be interesting and informative, and it should offer value to your audience. Ask yourself if your content is something that people would actually want to read or watch. Would it help them to solve a problem? Is it entertaining? If not, ditch it and start over.

Step Four: Promote your content

One thing we, as content creators, are really great at is, well… creating content.

But promoting content? Not so much.    

The thing is, your content isn’t going to get the results you want if you don’t get some eyeballs on it.

Promoting your content should be a key part of your strategy. At the very least you should be emailing your list and posting on your social media accounts.

Step Five: Analyze your results and make adjustments

Too many times we all (and yes, I’m guilty of this too) forget to check the results for our content. We have a tendency to “set and forget” and just create more content.

Another piece of your strategy should be to analyze the results of your content. Did you meet your goals? Why or why not? What could you adjust to make it work better?

Things to consider here are traffic, engagement, and conversion rates. And don’t be afraid to make the changes you need if it didn’t perform as well as you wanted the first time out.

Step Six: Do it all over again 

The best way to keep your content working for you is to create more on a consistent basis. Developing a content schedule should be the final piece of your strategy so that your audience knows when to expect new content from you.

By continually putting out new content, you’ll keep people coming back for more and eventually achieve your goals. Not only that, you’ll also be letting your audience get to know you as well you getting to know them better by what content resonates most with them.

Final Thoughts

Creating a content strategy will help you be more consistent and intentional with your content creation. And I really can’t over-stress the importance of being consistent.

Your content strategy will also help you keep consistent with your messaging, and keep you from creating content that doesn’t mesh with your overall goals. The six steps outlines here should get you off to a good start in creating a content strategy that fits your business, and leads to you achieving the goals you set for yourself when it comes to growing your business.