Where to Start Your Content Marketing Strategy

I’ve had many content marketing strategies over the years. Some have been successful, some never got off the ground, and some were in the middle somewhere.

So where should you start your content marketing strategy if you want it to be a success?

At the end, actually.

Here’s why:

Focus on your goal

What’s the end goal of your content?

For example, with this blog, my goal is to land more content marketing clients.

So I need to consider what types of things prospects will want to know before they reach out to me. This will include things like:

• My content marketing knowledge
• My skills and experience
• How I work
• How I think/my values

So I create content that centres around these things to give clients a feel for who I am, my knowledge in the industry, and what it could be like if we worked together.

List everything someone might need to know

It’s really important during this step that you list everything. Don’t judge your ideas. Let them flow and see what happens.

If you judge an idea before it’s had time to percolate, it can act like a plug to any other ideas.

So then you don’t generate as many.

But nobody has a great idea every single time. The more ideas you write down, the more likely you are to land on something amazing. That only comes with time, practice, and a hell of a lot of ideas.

So, consider information about—and around—your industry. What are some common questions? How can you put your own spin on those questions?

There are some really basic questions out there, like ‘what is content marketing?’ but there are still people out there who don’t understand basic concepts.

And when you can explain those things well, it can help you rank in search engines because your content is new and fresh.

It also shows you understand your industry and key terminology and gives your audience an insight into how you think and explain things, something which can help you stand out.

Organise those ideas into chronological order

Roughly speaking, what sort of order would it help someone to read your content in?

Grab some Post-It Notes and write down a theme/working title on each one. Then, start organising.

For example:

• What is content marketing?
• Why does content marketing matter?
• What does a content marketer do?
• Why should you outsource your content marketing?

Then, once you’ve answered questions like that, you can go into topics that are specific to how your business operates:

• How to work with a content marketer
• How to spot gaps in your content marketing strategy
• My blog post writing process
• How to be more inclusive in your content

Then you can move into content themes that are unique to you, for example:

• 5 things novel writing taught me about content marketing
• What Taylor Swift can teach us about content marketing
• How novel writing inspires my long-form content
• Poetic techniques to use in your content writing

As you sort your ideas, you may find some of the topics that are unique to you work well alongside some industry-specific works. Trust your instincts with this.

Begin with the basics, then scale up to more complex topics.

You need the foundations before you can build the house.

Start researching

Now, research your topics. What sort of things do your competitors cover in their content on those topics?

When you do keyword research, does your target audience phrase their questions slightly differently?

Are there any good statistics that you can use to prove your point?

Put these somewhere useful. This could be a spreadsheet everyone who needs them can access, or it could be in the next step.

Interview your experts here, too. These will give you unique insights that will help your content stand out.

Plan your content

It’s up to you what writing software you use. I personally use Microsoft Word, but you can use Google Docs, Scrivener; whatever works for you.

At this stage, I’d recommend one document per post and a folder you can put them all in so that they’re easy to find.

Structure your plan something like this:

• Title
  • Subheading 1
    • Stat
    • Explanation
    • Tips/takeaways
  • Subheading 2
    • Stat
    • Explanation
    • Tips/takeaways
  • Subheading 3
    • Stat
    • Explanation
    • Tips/takeaways
  • Conclusion

You may find as you structure and write that things work better in a different order, which is totally fine. This should act as a flexible form of scaffolding, not a rigid set of instructions that you can’t change.

Write, publish, and repurpose your content

I’ve covered the writing process before, so I won’t get into it here, but once you’ve polished your content, it’s time to publish it!

And when it’s up on your CMS and ready to go, it’s time to consider how you’re going to get the most out of it.

Idea generation is the hardest part, so you want to milk that idea as much as possible. Ways you can repurpose a blog post include:

• Podcast
• Video
• Short-form video (like TikTok or Instagram Reel)
• Infographic
• LinkedIn post
• Email

And so it goes…

If you find it hard to stick to a long-term content strategy where you publish every week, why not treat your content seasonally and take short breaks in between?

This allows you to treat your content almost like episodes of a TV show, giving you more time to plan and execute.

Need help planning your content season? Get in touch.