How To Create A Content Strategy (Free Guideline + Toolkit)

You wouldn’t plan a trip without knowing your destination. Assess your business objective and goals, Lead It to the Right Destination. Content Strategy involves defining how successful your content.

In this post, we’ll dive into what content strategy is, How It’s relate & help your brand, and guideline to make a good content strategy.

PS: We’ll give you a toolkit so you’ll be able to make a good content strategy, follow this guideline step by step.

Table of Content

Before you can create a good content strategy, you need to know the fundamental explanation about it, why it matter, and how to approach it with the right way.

What Is A Content Strategy

Definition :

Content strategy is a plan to achieve your business goals (driving traffic, leads, engagement, sales, and other content outcomes) by using content such as audio, visual, and/or written. You can say that content strategy is a bridge to content creation. A good content strategy it’s an approach how we speak as a business.

Content strategy is one of the most important componenf of your marketing strategy. It takes time to create a great content. It’s a whole lot easier if you have a blueprint that aligned to your long-term goals. It’s also the reason why so many content marketers struggle.

According to the Content Marketing institute’s B2B Content Marketing Survey in 2021, brands that have a document content strategy perform better and meet the goals.

 

Content Strategy Matters
43%

43% of all B2B content marketers have a documented content strategy.

60%

60% of the most successful B2B content marketers have a documented content strategy.

21%

21% of the least successful B2B content marketers have a documented content strategy.

Why You Need A Content Strategy

As already mentioned before, content strategy is like a bridge. Without a bridge, you dont have connection from content marketing with something that you’re trying to achieve.

The worst of it, at the end of your campaign, quarter, or annual cycles, you can’t even evaluate your success because you never had a strategy to begin with.

In short, with content creation you can:

Content Strategy Vs Content Marketing

Before we discuss in-depth about content strategy, we have to know what’s the difference between content strategy and content marketing.

Content strategy is a plan to achieve your business goals (driving traffic, leads, engagement, sales, and other content outcomes), its a bridge to content creation,

While content marketing is the strategic publication and distribution content across platform to deliver value for the audience. So, content marketing is the strategy that follow from content strategy.

What should be include in Content Strategy ?

How To Create Content Strategy

Content strategy takes time, effort, and research, but, it will reward you at the very end. This process will guide you how to create a content strategy.

We know that each brand has its unique selling point, with this, you can adapt it with your current framework on brand.

You may have some of the component that already documented, as long as it still up to date then you’re doing great, the more important thing is to follow the process sequentially.

Here is the link to download our toolkit for content strategy.

 
content categories

Note: Content strategy will affect the decision from your team. Make sure the right stakeholders are involved from the beginning and get their approval. Keep in mind that you should include the execution of your content strategy team as well, including copywriters, graphic designers, web designers, and etc.

Phase 1 : Search & Research

The first thing you do is take a step back, gather and reassess what you’ve done and what you’re currently doing. This step will affect what you’ll do in the future.

Step 1. Review Your Goals

Review your goal to ensure that your content is able to achieve it. with the right strategy.

When it comes from the start, we are going dive deep into the basics of business strategy, reassess:

  • What’s your business goals 
  • What problem do you solve
  • What’s your position in the marketplace
  • Who is your competition
  • What you’re trying to achieve

Almost all business goals can be defined throught SMART method (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Result, and Timely), fften, we’re examine SWOT of your business to learn the basic of it.

Also, you want to review the core element of your brand strategy, this is include

  • Brand Guidelines (composition, design, color palettes, etc)
  • Brand Heart (Purpose, Value, Vision, Mission)
  • Brand Messaging (message pillar, tagline, etc)
  • Visual Identity (Logo, Iconography, Typography, etc)
All of the brand strategies must be reflected in the content strategy, so when you deliver content your audience, it communicate about who you are (Read our guideline about How to Create a Brand Strategy if you don’t have one).
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Step 2. Content Audit

Identify the system that has been made. Look at what is missing, and what still does not perform well, and how you improve it.

The second step on creating a good content strategy is to take a holistic approach through content audit.

By looking throught what have you made, type of content you’re creating, what is working, and what isn’t, get the insight as much as you need (To gather the insight, look on Masif Toolkit about Audit Content). 

How you audit content ?

Content tent to generalize as the five categories below. Takes 5-10 What is the most succesful content you make from each category. Audit your own content takes all the categories, from Brand, Editorial, Performance, Product, and Talent.

While auditing your competitor content, you can select several categories, or all categories, or even focus one category. Track 5-10 successful content from your top 3 competitors.

content categories

Identify using these categories as your observation result. The question are include in the toolkit and see our guide.

Buyer

Journey

 

Persona

 

Format

 

Messaging

 

Topics

 

Formats

 

Distribution

 

Others

 

Phase 2 : Formulating Strategy

After you having a step back, search and research, gathering all the data that needed, now is the time to document how you will approach each element with your content marketing strategy.

Basically, you’ll be detailing what, who, when, where, and how your content will operate. Ensure

you’re having the data you need to execute the content strategy and use your resource efficiently as possible.

This step will help you to make collaboration easier, content creators within organization or outside organization such Content Marketing Agency.

Step 3. Define Your Content Strategy Goals

Identify and define measurable goals with content strategy to keep your team accountable. Weak strategies are either too broad or too vague, you need a clear goals that you can measure.

The Existence of having a content strategy is to help achieve you higher goals. When you define goals, make sure everyone on your team understand what the are involved to.

By these goals, every part of the team, from copywriter, graphic designer, to distributor will be influenced by these goals, make sure it’s a clear goals than can be measured.

How you define content strategy goals?

This document will help you summarize what you’re trying to achieve so that everyone can understand. Use our content strategy goals template to formulate it.

PS : You cannot proceed to next step until you make a clear measurable goals that articulated and approved by the team. This step will affect your team decision making and keep them aligned.

Three things that define your content strategy goals are

  • Content Statement from what you do, how you do, and what  connection to the goal
  • Objectives to define your content strategy goals
  • Key Result to measure your objectives goals (Easier measurement with Quantitative Approach)

PS : Follow this step with OKRs Method. Define high-level goal with quantified goals and approved your team. Take the time get it right, your goals are define in content strategy.

Step 4. Identify Your Audience Persona

 

Different business with different location can define their persona. Understand who your audience, what they’re interested, determine their needs, and how you can serve their needs.

Identify your audience’s (or target customer) demographic / psychographic traits, define them into unieuq persona. You can make several persona (each group unique) and come up ideas that drive them to completed their needs.

Question to ask

  • What motivates them?
  • What problem they need to be solved?
  •  What benefit that you offer from their problem ?

How you define your audience persona?

You can make 2-5 to distinct personas of your audience. For more information, use our guide to define audience persona, follow it step-by-step. 

  • Age
  • Gender
  • Job Title
  • Salary Estimation
  • Channels
  • Goals
  • Wants and Needs
  • How Your Product helps solve their problem

Step 5. Create A Map & Measurement For Your Customer Jouney

Identify what your customer need to hear from each stage, a path that lead to purchase.

After defining your audience persona, it’s time to map your customer journey from each stage.  This will help you to deliver the right message, in the right place, at the right time. Thus, it’s important yo map you customer journey from the start to finish.

Probably, while your completed auditing your content, probably you spotted some gaps in your message. Revisiting your journey will help to ensure that you give the right message from every stage.

What Are The Stage of Your Journey?

 Metrics to track stage of customer journey picture

Example of Metrics to Track at Each Stage of the customer journey. This will identify the Key Performance Indicator that help your measure the goals with Quantitative approach.

  • Awareness people are aware the existence of your brand
  • Consideration people consider your brand as a purchase option
  • Decision-Making, people decide whethet to purchase or not from your offer.
  • Loyalty & Advocacy, people might share their experience using what you offer, order again might lead to loyal customer.

How you make a map for customer journey?

Follow our customer journey template and read again the guidance to fill the blank.

PS : To figure out what you measure, refers to your OKRs from step 3. This will determine your metrics that relevant to your key result. These are the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that will help you identify your goals.

Step 6. Choose your Channel for Distribution

Identify what channels that help you reach your audience. Different platform determine the intention  of your customer.

With different platform come different result that lead to different KPI. This step will determine what kind of content will you make. Before you fill this step, make sure your decision are based on :

  • Audience persona, think about where they spend most of the time, which social platform they use, what time they’re most active, etc.
  • Take A Step Back and Read Your OKRs, you’ve already state your objective, make a clear objective, and key result as your guidance to your strategy. This should help you which platform that suit the best your content.
  • Type of Your Content Format, with each category content are suited for different channel. Editorial content are suitable for articles, infographics, etc.
  • Prepare for content distribution, It’s the strategy to maximize the delivery of your content, such internal emails, banner and other media, or outreach influencer. This wil help you to plan budgeting for content distribution.

Step 7. Create A High-Level Priorities with Content Pipeline

Identify what channels that help you reach your audience. Different platform determine the intention  of your customer.

After a 6 steps taken in developing a content strategy, you already know what you are trying to do, who you want to reach, and how you reach them. The next task you need to do is determine your main goal and the milestones you achieve planned for the next year (Based on your OKRs).

A good content strategy is comprehensive, solid, and flexible enough to adapt from any situation. Content Pipeline is a tools that help you build plan and simple timeline for the next year.

PS: Sometimes, content strategy doesn’t take a year-long, it depends on your need. Focus on your milestones and build strategy around it.

What’s Include in Content Pipeline Template

  • OKRs, all the decision you take are aligned with your objective and key result
  • Priority Action, Something that must be completed
  • Business Milestones, an important achievement throught every quartal
  • Major Event / Holiday, don’t forget to participate on major event in your country

Step 8. Assign Workflow with ARCI Matrix

Identify who’s role for accountable, who’s role for responsible, who’s role for consulted, and who’s role for informed.

At this stage, you want to assign roles and responsibilities for every person that involved in the project to make sure everyone has responsibility to achieve your project goals.

ARCI Matrix is an acronym for Accountable, Responsible, Consulted, and Informed. Is a responsibility framework designed to bring structure to the roles people play on a project.

content workflow

If you’re working with department full of people to execute your content strategy you need a team that is aligned, focused, and organized on the same goal. 

Whether it’s a small team or full department with full of people, they should be organized, understand the workflow who’s responsible for what that cover all area of the workflow, and do it efficiently as possible. 

Workflow should be designed aligned with your content creation task. Use our content workflow template and modify it on your current situation. 

Everyone that involved should have a roles on the team. This will help you get done with a little coordination on achieving your task.

Step 9. Prepare Your Tools

Equip your team with the right tools to do their job. Calculate the expense, how long the subscription, and the purpose having the tools.

Reviewing your tools is also important on content strategy. Calculating your cost for content marketing should be include in.

Not just using your tools to make your work easier, you probably will experimenting on different type of tools, what tools suit the best for the job and what tools you want to ditch. But, if you plan to experiment on the new tools, make sure you have capability to execute it.

Use Our Preparing Tools Template to identify what tools will you use to achieve your goals.

Phase 3 : Impactful Tactics

At this point, you should have a clear picture about your goals, how you execute your goals, and measurement for it. It’s time to create an impactful tactics that help you reach the goals. With the work you’ve done, you now have the information to come up with creative campaign.

Step 10. Build Your Marketing Campaigns.

A good campaign is a campaign that has strong concept, with the right format, and clear message that support your specific goal.

After all the data that has been collected to this point, you’ll craft a marketing campaigns mapped to the content plan you’ve done so far.

You may prioritize type of content category over the other (ex: More Product Content than Talent Content), because every category will play role in your strategy.

Use our marketing campaign template to start your work. Keep in mind that you need:

  • Create The Right Concept, brainstorm it with your team how you able to provide value to your audience. Focus on your audience persona, give them what they need, whether it’s educational, editorial, entertainment, or etc.
  • Right messaging, ensure you’re telling consistent story across all content.
  • Identify Your Keyword, Learn how you approach content with the right keyword opportunities. Use this approach if you publishing content on platform optimized for SEO.
  • Identify your budget, determine how much it will cost in this campaign to reach your marketing goals. For example, if you’re targeting for “5.000 organic traffic” on site, you probably need … to achieve it. 

Step 11. Build Your Editorial Calendar

Not just quality, it’s the consistency that makes you a great content marketing. Maintain your campaign with editorial calendar, so it help you keep on track with the involved team.

Whether you publish daily, weekly, or monthly, with organized editorial calendar, will help the team to keep on track what they do, and the most important one was to make sure they meet your deadlines.

An editorial calendar (also known as a content calendar) is a schedule of all the content you’re producing, explain how you work on it step-by-step, and state it from idea to publication.

Use our Editorial Calendar template to keep your team in track on creating content.

Future Of Content Strategy

Whether you have small business or big company, the requirement to create a great content is a challenging one, especially how you able to outperform your competitor.

What this means for your content strategy is that you need to play the role as main character in the game. Build a strategy that gets noticed, increase engagement, and escalate your conversion.

This guideline are helping you to think bigger than thinking about single piece content that you’ll make for tomorrow. Brand that provide best digital experience tends to win the long-term game.

One last thing, your creating a content strategy that similar to blueprint, your brand goals with shift and change over time, so your content strategy has to adapt over time-to-time.

Try to revisit your content strategy quartely– or when significant event happen that may affect it.

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If you get stuck, don’t have the time, and resources, creating a great content strategy on your own, we’re here are welcome to dig your problem and solve it with our creative strategy that involve creative team who’s expert creating content strategy for your brand.

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