Building a strong content strategy that will help you grow your business in the long term is no arbitrary task. Have you ever felt that your content deserves more traffic than it’s getting currently?
Then you’ve landed on the right article. Because today I will be sharing 10 of my tips on how to improve your content strategy to achieve higher rankings, boost your traffic, sales, and build a larger audience.
Speaking of audiences, the first tip is all about how important it is to know who you’re marketing your content to.
Know Your Audience and Cater to It
In order to get the most out of your content, you need to figure out who to market it to. Alexa, for example, besides being one of the best keyword research tools out there, also offers you the ability to run a scan of your site’s entire demographic.
By figuring out what your readers/customers are like (what is their age, which area they live in, what types of content they enjoy the most and what kinds of services they are in need of), you will be able to better tailor your content to appeal to their needs.
It can also be helpful to create an avatar, a persona of sorts that will be the representation of your user’s traits, wants and needs. Just imagine that your entire customer base is a single person and try to satisfy them as much as you can.
Set a Clear Goal for Your Strategy
This can be a single statement that you read to yourself at various stages of your work to remind yourself of the ultimate goal you’re trying to achieve. Some common content strategy goals are improving search engine optimization, boosting traffic, improving your presence on social media, increasing sales, etc. Decide before starting, are you going to hire an outreach agency (like OutreachMama or others) to help you with your growth or are you going to do this all by yourself?
This is a rather simple tip, but just a reminder of what your efforts are coming to can definitely help you stay on track.
Set Up Milestones
How do you know you’ve reached your goal? Well, there are those scary things called “key performance indicators”, but essentially they are just numerical values that help you track your progress.
Progress like traffic increase, amount of new customers, SEO metrics, and so on. And by making up milestones to achieve along the way to your ultimate goal, it is easier to actually monitor how well your strategy is working.
Check them off on your way to the end goal and you’ll find yourself reaching it before you even notice it.
Write Your Strategy Down
Of course, you can just remember the goals you’re trying to reach, but especially if you have a team of people working on your project, that’s not going to be enough.
The format in which you do it doesn’t really matter. It can be written down in your notebook or you can have a huge excel document with wordy descriptions of each step you plan on taking.
As long as it is readable and clearly conveys your goals and plans, a written copy of your content strategy will never hurt. In fact, not having it written down will hurt you in the long run and you will waste time and resources explaining the same things to members of your team over and over again.
Set Up An Editorial Calendar
Pumping out high-quality content on a regular basis is no easy task. However, if you organize your time properly and give yourself (and your team) specific times for when they should be focusing and on what, you can achieve much more than just working chaotically, faster.
Again, the format doesn’t matter, it can be a spreadsheet, a Google calendar, whatever is comfortable for you to use.
Take a Minute to Assess Where You’re at
That includes cataloging all of your content as well as running an SEO audit. By having a list of all your content it will be easier for you to take a look at it and realize what’s lacking.
Measure the impact of each article you post and compare them to figure out which types of content work the best for you.
As for SEO audits, you should be running those regularly regardless of your goals as you gain a world of knowledge by examining your metrics. That is your primary source of information on how well your site is doing online and which areas need improvement.
There exist tons of tools for measuring your metrics, but I suggest you start with Google Analytics.
Use Different Content Types
Blog posts are solid pieces of content that will undoubtedly help you gain traction in your niche. However, there is a whole world of content types out there that you can make until you figure out which one works for you the best.
There’s also no shame in repurposing your content into other types. Have a 10 000-word beast of an article? Create a video or an infographic, and vice versa. Experiment and implement various types of content into your resource to achieve the best results.
Stay True to Your Brand’s Personality
Every writer has a distinct way with words. Each person has their own personality, and so does every business. So, especially if you have multiple writers working for you it is important for you to convey that message to them efficiently so they understand what style they should be following.
Are you an ultra-professional, technically-savvy business that concentrates on exact data, or do you write your texts the same way you would speak as if it were a regular conversation?
Either way, formulating your identity and sticking to it will help you build a more recognizable presence on the Web.
Keep Track of Your ROI
Which stands for return on investment, but you already know that. It is probably the most important metric to measure the success of your content strategy and by just looking at your ROI you will be pretty much instantly able to tell if your strategy is helping or hurting you.
There are many ways of calculating your ROI, but I highly advise that you find a formula you like and stick to it for the sake of consistency.
Upload On a Schedule and Promote Your Content
Regular uploads will keep users invested in your content for longer. It both helps draw new users in and keep your regulars interested.
If you’re not using social media to promote your content, you should. Setting up an email newsletter that will notify your users about each of your new posts is a great idea.
Also, if you mention any influencers in your posts, if you notify them about it just as you release your content to the public, there is a pretty high chance they will share it on their own social media, which will definitely give you a nice traffic boost.
Good Luck!
Of course, there are no set guidelines on how to make the perfect content strategy that will make you take the Internet by storm in days, but I hope I managed to provide you with some useful tips in this article.
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