If you want to rank first on Google, there’s a secret to improving your position: Have a great content strategy.
Your content strategy should focus on producing quality content, engaging with your target audience, and measuring your successes and failures. Don’t distribute content just for the sake of it.
Let’s review what a good content strategy includes and how to create one.
What is a Content Strategy
Table of Contents:
- Define Your Goals for Your Content Strategy
- Research Your Audience for Your Content Strategy
- Focus on Your Niche for Your Content Strategy
- Measure Your Results for Your Content Strategy 4.1. Consumption Metrics
- Listen to Your Customers to Improve Your Content Strategy
- Strengthen Your Content Strategy
Step 1: Define Your Goals for Your Content Strategy!!
Great content is created for a specific purpose, and this purpose needs to be clearly defined. Ask yourself whether you’re creating content to increase brand awareness, generate potential leads, convert users, re-engage existing customers, improve search ranking results, or something entirely different.
Once you’ve clearly defined your goals, you can determine if this content strategy is the best way to reach them. Don’t assume that content is always the best option in every scenario.
For instance, content might not be very useful for converting users at the bottom of the sales funnel; however, it can be quite valuable for drawing users to your site by boosting brand awareness and generating potential organic sales.
Different parts of the sales funnel call for different types of content. Therefore, you need to decide which content is most suitable for a specific person at a specific time. This way, you’ll be able to have the right conversation with the right person at the right time.
Step 2: Research Your Audience for Your Content Strategy
Your content strategy will only be effective after you’ve learned who your target audience is.
Gather valuable information by checking what type of sites potential customers are already visiting, what content they’re interested in, and which social media platforms they share content on.
This can be done by using Google Demographics for site types that potential customers engage with, utilizing Interests in Google Analytics, and calculating the most active social media platforms based on the demographic information of your users.
Understanding your audience and their behaviors will help you narrow down your content strategy without assuming you need to address every possible scenario. Creating content on social media works well for B2C businesses but might not be as effective for B2B businesses.
Step 3: Focus on Your Niche for Your Content Strategy
The internet is flooded with content that should never have existed. Much content is either copied from elsewhere, simply republished, or doesn’t provide real value. Most people don’t see about 99% of this useless content because it doesn’t appear near the top of SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
To prevent your content from getting lost in this pool, create standout, unique content with a distinctive voice that offers real value to readers.
The more specific and focused you are on your niche, the better your chances of positioning yourself as an authority in your field, whether your audience is seeking information or entertainment.
Step 4: Measure Your Results for Your Content Strategy
Measuring the results of your content marketing efforts is one of the most important aspects of developing an effective content strategy. Distributing content without analyzing user feedback is like making a phone call in silence. You need to know what your audience likes, dislikes, and why.
Here are some of the most important metrics to understand:
Consumption Metrics: This is the first layer of data you can gather when people view your content. You can get this data from Google Analytics by clicking on Behavior > Site Content > Content Drilldown. You can sort these data by different factors like:
- Average time spent on page
- Bounce rate
- Pageviews
With this data, you can find answers to questions like:
- Did you prepare a blog post that led to a significant increase in traffic?
- Did your users spend more time on a specific piece of content or type of content?
- Did a piece of content gather a lot of comments or shares on social media?
Social Sharing Metrics: Sharing content on platforms like social media can serve as a fantastic measure of how engaged your target audience is. Ask yourself what type of content is being shared, who is sharing it, which platforms are being used, and most importantly, which content is driving conversions.
Follow these steps to learn which content is driving conversions:
Log in to Google Analytics. Click on Acquisition > Social > Overview. Then, you will have a report (assuming you have defined goals). Here, you have three important criteria:
Conversions: This shows you the total number and value of conversions. It’s not just from social, but all traffic sources. Assisted Social Conversions: To record an assisted social conversion, a visitor must have visited a social media site at least once, even if they used another traffic source before completing the final part of the conversion. Last Interaction Social Conversions: These are attributed to visitors who came from social media and completed the assigned goal within the same session. With this data, you’ll gain insights into the style of content that needs to be created to achieve conversions. You can also uncover which social media platforms work best. (Keep in mind that some niches encourage more sharing than others, so compare your performance with competitors who have a similar user base.)
Potential Customer Metrics: If your content is part of a sales funnel, ask yourself which part of the funnel you’re creating content for. Your content needs to be tailored to specific target audiences in each section of the sales funnel. Your content might be attracting or leaking potential customers, so monitor performance and identify areas that could be improved to prevent users from leaving the sales funnel and areas that could generate new potential customers. The quickest and easiest way to track potential customers is by using goals in Google Analytics.
The easiest type of goal to set up is a URL destination goal. Here are the steps:
Log in to Google Analytics.
Click on Conversions > Goals > Goal URLs.
Click on “Set up goal”.
Click on “+ NEW GOAL”.
Select “Template” (shown in step 7 below).
Write a description for your goal (shown in step 7 below).
Select “Destination” and click “Continue”. In the goal details, you need to add the URL of the goal you want to track. You don’t need the entire URL, just the last part of the path. For example, if you want to track www.example.com/thankyou.html, just enter /thankyou.html. Here, you’ll have two optional details: Value: You can assign a value to the goal. For example, if you’re selling a product at a specific price, you can add it here. Funnel: It’s possible to track a specific section of the sales funnel by adding it to the goal. Click “Save,” and that’s it – you’ve set up a goal.After creating goals, click on Conversions > Goals > Goal URLs to view them.
Step 5: Listen to Your Customers to Enhance Your Content Strategy
While data analysis is an extremely valuable tool, it only provides black and white figures within a spectrum that encompasses many nuances. By truly listening to your customers, you can gain access to the rest of this spectrum. Your customers need to be heard beyond the confines of simple data. They should know that their voices are being heard in the realm of social media. Therefore, solicit feedback and suggestions from them, and engage with them regularly.
Furthermore, to better understand your customers’ needs, converse with other members of your staff. Sales teams and support personnel who regularly communicate with your customers are in a better position to understand how customers perceive your business. Then, reaching out to your customers and responding to their feedback allows you to gather valuable insights and demonstrate the importance of their ideas.
Virgin provided an excellent case study by showcasing how they utilized big data. They incorporated search terms used on the web and individuals followed on social media platforms. They also included expressed opinions and areas of interest shared online.
Using the data below, they delved deeper, integrated it into their communications, and successfully delivered the right message to target audiences in appropriate sections of the customer journey. Learn more here.
Step #6: Strengthen Your Content Strategy
A solid content strategy and targeted content creation constitute only the first part of the equation. The final part is content amplification.
Identify the places online where your audience frequently visits to expand your content, and then publish on these channels to reach them.
To truly harness the power of your employees, customers, and influencers that can aid in strengthening your content, strategic thinking is essential.
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