How To Create a Digital Content Strategy?

Anyone who has worked in business knows that marketing is the foundation of the dynamic growth of any company. All active companies need to adapt their infrastructure and content management to take full advantage of the opportunities provided by digital channels like social media platforms, video content, or live chats.

Despite this fundamental change in the Web 2.0 paradigm, many companies still rely on outdated content marketing strategies that have not been updated for the digital age. You need to think carefully about your new digital content strategy, because only by knowing your audience’s goals, methods, and interests can you create effective, high-quality content for your prospective customers.

A well-developed digital content strategy ensures that your brand’s objectives across all digital channels are on the right track and reflect your desired results, from the improvement of sales to the development of your brand. Content marketing efforts without this foundation are likely to be ineffective and a waste of time and resources, no matter what amount of content marketing you are going to work on.

Investing time and resources in developing a digital content marketing strategy may seem very tedious, but it is necessary for companies that want to see results from their content marketing efforts. You need to create a content marketing strategy that drives customer engagement, increases brand awareness, and drives organic traffic.

Regardless of what form will your digital content take, whether you want to publish content as a flip book or on your blog post, you need to prepare a sensible digital content strategy.

What is digital content strategy?

A digital content strategy is a meticulously developed plan for creating digital content that guides on what, why, and how to develop content across various digital channels, all in pursuit of business goals. Digital content is understood as any type of message that can be interacted with using the Internet and computer devices.

A digital content strategy helps corporations generate high-quality content for their audiences so that they speak a consistent language. It must constantly evolve to meet the ever-changing goals and needs of the company’s audience.

It is also a key to defining workflows, clarifying what content a company cares about, and consolidating content operations across the enterprise. You can incorporate content marketing strategy into wider models of work in your marketing department

Why do you need a strategy for your digital content?

Having a digital content strategy is extremely important for companies because it ensures that they create online digital content that provides value to their business by improving search engine rankings, attracting targeted audiences, and increasing traffic and sales.

The strategy defines the enterprise’s goals, intended audience, tone, content genres, and other aspects to ensure that the organization generates and publishes content that reaches audiences and supports your business goals. It needs to set key performance indicators and other measurable goals to be achieved – otherwise, it will be not useful.

It can be said that a digital content strategy serves as a roadmap that enables businesses to generate consistent and superior content across all digital platforms. In this document, you can delineate your main channels, goals, methods of achieving them, and indicators to measure whether a strategy succeeded or not.

How to create and execute your content strategy?

Set your goals and how to measure them

The first step in creating a content strategy is to set goals and determine how to measure them. Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). For example, the goal of your strategy might be to increase website traffic by 20% in six months or increase search volume by 25% in four weeks. To measure this, you can use Google Analytics to track site traffic and set specific tracking goals. With such a goal, you can then set specific methods to achieve it – linking, copywriting, and developing social media.

If you don’t have specific goals in mind, you might as well just produce content randomly. Think of what you want to achieve and only then start working on your goals.

Define your target audience

The next step is to define your target audience. This includes understanding their demographics, preferences, behaviors, and key concerns. You can even create a profile or customer persona – for example, “Elena, a mom aged 32, the occasional Instagram user.”

The better you understand your target audiences and customer personas, the easier it is to create content that resonates with them. For example, you know that for people like Elena, you can create graphic content about parenting, recipes, and home organization. Basing on your idea of potential customers, you can start thinking of what relevant content would attract them.

It’s also a good idea to know the capabilities of your target audience – for instance, some groups of people are less tech-savvy. You might even filter your customer personas with the type of device they use to access your web pages – people using expensive cell phones might use different keywords than PC users!

Conduct an audit of your content

Before creating new content, it is important to understand what content you already have and how it is performing. Conducting an audit of your existing content can help you identify content gaps and areas for improvement. A content audit needs to be verifiable and conducted by a specialist – or even a content marketing institute.

For example, you may find that your blog posts are performing well, but your social media content is not reaching your audience – that’s when you should consider hiring a new social media specialist.

Choose a content platform

There are many different platforms on which you can publish your content, including your website, social media, email, and others. It’s important to choose the platforms that are most relevant to your audience and in line with your goals. For example, if your audience is mostly B2B, you can focus on creating content for business on platforms like LinkedIn – but don’t forget Facebook or Pinterest. Other digital content strategies can put more emphasis on video media or blog content. We have prepared a guide to creating content maps, and you can learn more about it in our knowledge base.

Brainstorm ideas for new content

It’s time to discuss ideas with your team. These can be about topics that are trending in your industry, problems your audience is facing, or questions your audience is asking. For example, if you’re a software company, you can create content about the latest software updates, guides, and industry news.

It’s worth browsing forums, Facebook groups, or subreddits because that’s where people talk about problems that your company can help solve. All of these content ideas should be a part of your digital content strategy – but before you include them, it’s a good idea to conduct strategic keyword research using these crucial media channels.

Make topic clusters

Topic clusters are a way to organize your content around specific topics, while content pillars provide the overarching themes that guide your content strategy. The idea is to create a comprehensive knowledge base on a designated idea. This can help improve SEO and make it easier for your audience to find the content they are looking for. If you’re a fitness trainer, you could create a topic cluster around healthy eating, with blog posts on meal planning, recipes, and grocery shopping tips. The more recipes you post, the more interesting content the cluster will contain.

Develop a content calendar

A content calendar is a schedule that outlines when and where you will publish your content. It can help you stay organized, make sure you’re publishing content consistently and prevent you from missing important deadlines.

Many marketers rely on odd holidays, like National Hotdog Day. If you want to maintain more or less a constant flow of useful content, your content calendar might include a blog post every Monday, a social media post related to an unusual holiday every day, and a newsletter every month. You can learn more about using social media content in our guide.

Publish and promote your content

Once you’ve created your digital content, it’s time to publish and promote it. This could be sharing your content on social media, sending it to your email list, or using paid advertising to reach a wider audience. For example, you could share your latest blog post on LinkedIn, send a newsletter to your email list, and use Facebook ads so that as many as possible see it. Sometimes you can also rely on viral promotion, but there’s no point in counting on a good joke or video to go viral.

Ask for the feedback from non-marketers

It is important to get feedback on your content from people outside the marketing team. This can help you gain a fresh perspective and identify areas for improvement. For example, you could ask a client or friend to read a recent blog post and provide feedback on the clarity, tone, and relevance of the content. Sometimes you simply need to ask the person who designed or manufactures a product about its description – their perspective can create content that attracts attention.

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Ola Swiderska Author View profile

Aesthetics and minimalism enthusiast. Loves to explore the world, and travel is the meaning of her life. Amateur photographer and passionate about dogs. At work, she points her energy into crafting content that reflects her interest in literature and design.