This lesson provides an overview of the course modules, what a content strategy is, why your business needs one, and the benefits of having a clear content strategy.
***
Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
Hello and welcome to this video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
My name is Martin Aranovitch. I’m a professional content writer and the blog editor of a global software company.
I also run a number of business training websites including ContentManagementCourse.com, where you can learn how to manage your content more effectively for free.
So, why a course on content strategy?
Well, in case you haven’t noticed,
Content is everywhere!
All businesses and websites need content, all content needs management, and all management needs a strategy.
So, whether you are a business or website owner, or someone who creates, promotes, or manages content for a business, or you work in any kind of business that wants to grow using content.
This course will show you how to create a content strategy that will help you produce more targeted content, drive more traffic to your website, generate more leads, and manage your content more effectively!
The aim of this course is to help you develop a sustainable way to grow your business by targeting the right audience, using the right content, at the right time, to get whatever outcome you set as a goal.
This could be buying your products, subscribing to your newsletter, or signing up for a membership.
I designed the lessons in this course to help you create a practical content strategy quickly and easily.
So, if the purpose of having a content strategy is to help your business grow using content, then the first thing we need to do is understand who our target audience is, and set goals for what we want to achieve with our content.
Once we have set our content goals, the next step is to decide which content types and formats will work best to deliver results that will help us achieve our goals.
After we have a clear picture of the content types and formats that our business will create, the next step is to do a content audit of our business.
This will help us assess if any existing content we have fits our strategy and if not, what do we do with it?
The content audit will also help us identify if there are any missing gaps that we need to fill and any content opportunities that we can take advantage of.
Once we have the full picture of the content we will need to create and the resources we have available to work with, the next step is to create a content plan.
We’ll then break down our overall content plan into three key areas and develop a content production plan, a content promotion plan, and a content management plan.
These plans will then be used to execute our content strategy, to put systems in place to measure how our content is performing and to assess and improve the results of our content strategy to make sure that we are meeting our business goals and objectives.
Finally, we will look at troubleshooting any content-related problems to make sure that our content strategy is delivering our expected results to our business.
So that’s the logic behind this video course.
Now, let’s take a brief look at what the lessons in this video series will actually cover:
So this is Module 1, and after this overview, we’ll look at what a content strategy is, why your business needs one, and the benefits of having a clear content strategy.
In module 2, we look at what you need to know and do before you can create an effective content strategy for your business.
And we’ll look at ways and methods to identify the demographics, interests, and pain points of our target audience, create user personas for our business, and understand the buyer’s journey and what type of content will be most relevant and valuable to our audience at each different stage.
In module 4, we’ll use our target audience information to set content goals.
First, we’ll define our business goals, then we’ll align our content strategy with our business goals, and determine what we want to achieve with our content. For example, drive traffic, generate leads, build brand awareness, etc.
We’ll then set SMART goals for our content that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
In module 5, we’ll decide which content types and formats will best help us reach our goals.
We’ll choose the types of content that will be most effective for achieving our goals and resonating with our audience, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, ebooks, podcasts, etc., and consider the format and delivery of our content. For example, digital content delivered online, in-person, in print format, and so on.
This will help us to identify the types of content that our business is currently producing, assess the performance of our existing content, and identify gaps in our current content offerings.
We’ll cover topics like planning out the frequency, topics, and distribution of our content, coordinating with other teams and stakeholders to ensure a consistent and cohesive content plan, deciding which content management tools to use, establishing a content publishing schedule, and assigning tasks and deadlines to team members.
We’ll look at using a variety of sources and methods to generate content ideas such as using keyword research, customer feedback, industry events, etc., developing a workflow process, and how to follow best practices for creating high-quality and engaging content.
We’ll look at ways to identify the channels to distribute our content and create a content distribution plan. Develop a plan to promote our content using a variety of tactics to get the content in front of our target audience. For example, social media, email marketing, paid advertising, and so on, and using analytics and metrics to track the performance of our content, to measure the effectiveness of our content distribution efforts, and determine what is working and what needs improvement.
Here we tie in our goals, audience information, content types, and resources with workflow processes, tools & technologies, content performance and measurement, content documentation, security & storage.
In module 11, we look at troubleshooting and fixing issues with our content, our content strategy, and our content plan.
And in module 12 we’ll bring everything we’ve discussed in the course to a conclusion and discuss the next steps, plus we’ll look at some useful tips and resources.
So, as you can see this is a fairly comprehensive video course.
Now, here’s what I suggest you do to get the most out of this course.
First, go through the entire course and make sure to watch all of the modules and video lessons.
After watching the videos, refer to the online tutorials on ContentManagementCourse.com for more details.
I have spent over a year writing these lessons and tutorials and they are very comprehensive.
I also recommend subscribing to the free email course on the site for additional information related to this course, plus tips, links to useful resources, and updates.
So, that’s an overview of what this course is all about.
A content strategy is a plan for creating, publishing, and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to achieve specific business goals and objectives.
A content strategy helps you define who your target audience is and understand their needs and interests, create the right content to address their needs and speak to their interests, determine the most effective channels for distributing your content — so this could be your website, social media, email marketing, or even offline channels like events or print materials, and track and measure performance so you can continue to improve your results.
So, basically, a content strategy provides an organized and sustainable plan to help your business reach its goals using content.
Now, there are many benefits to having a clear content strategy.
Let’s go through some of these.
So one of the main benefits is consistency. Ensuring consistency in the quality, tone, and style of your content helps to build trust with your audience and establish your brand as a reliable source of information.
Another benefit is improved audience targeting. A content strategy helps to identify your target audience and create content that’s tailored specifically to their needs and interests.
Also, increased brand awareness: Publishing content of a consistently high quality helps to increase awareness of your brand and establish your business as a thought leader in your industry.
Another benefit is greater customer engagement. By providing valuable and relevant content, you can better engage and build relationships with your customers, which can lead to increased loyalty and greater customer retention.
Also, higher search engine rankings. Optimizing your website’s content for search engines leads to higher search rankings and increased organic traffic.
Another benefit is enhanced reputation management. By proactively managing your brand’s reputation, you ensure that all content will align with your brand values and messaging.
Also, increased sales and conversions. By providing valuable and relevant content, you can drive more traffic to your website and convert more visitors into customers.
A content strategy also helps to improve internal communication. Aligning the goals and messaging of different teams within your organization helps to improve internal communication and collaboration.
Also streamlined content creation. A content strategy helps to streamline the content creation process by defining the types of content that will be created, who will create it, and how it will be distributed.
And finally, reduced costs. A content strategy helps you avoid wasting time and resources creating ineffective or redundant content and lets you focus on creating high-quality content that resonates with your target audience.
So, those are some of the key benefits of developing an effective content strategy.
Without a content strategy, your business will just drift aimlessly like a rudderless ship in a vast ocean of digital information.
A content strategy provides the map and the compass that helps you navigate this sea of information and reach your destination.
So, my aim for this course is not just to give you a map and a compass, but a complete GPS content navigation system for your business.
In the next video training module, we’ll look at what you need to know and do before you can create an effective content strategy for your business.
So, thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.
Learn how to create an effective content strategy for your business with this free 12-part video course.
How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business – Free Video Course
Learn how to create an effective content strategy for your business with this free 12-part video course.
Welcome to our free video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
In this course, you will learn the key principles and best practices for creating a successful content strategy that drives results for your business.
Whether you are a small business owner, marketer, or content creator, this course will provide you with the tools and knowledge you need to create and execute a content strategy that is tailored to your business goals.
Content is a critical component of any successful marketing strategy, and an effective content strategy is essential for building brand awareness, engaging your audience, and driving business results.
In this course, you will learn how to develop a content strategy that aligns with your business goals, resonates with your target audience, and drives results.
From defining your target audience and identifying your business goals to creating a content calendar and measuring your success, this course will walk you through the entire process of creating an effective content strategy. You will also learn about the different types of content, how to create and promote content, and how to measure your success.
So, whether you are just starting out or looking to improve your existing content strategy, this course is for you. By the end of this course, you will have the skills and knowledge you need to create an effective content strategy that drives results for your business.
This free and comprehensive video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business consists of 12 video lessons with links to detailed step-by-step online tutorials for all topics covered in the lessons.
***
Video Course Description
Part 1 provides an overview of the course modules, what a content strategy is, why your business needs one, and the benefits of having a clear content strategy.
Part 2 covers what you need to know and do before you can create an effective content strategy for your business. Learn about the challenges of managing content effectively and what you need to put in place first.
Part 3 looks at ways and methods to identify the demographics, interests, and pain points of your target audience, create user personas for your business, and understand the buyer’s journey and what types of content will be most relevant and valuable to your audience at each different stage of their journey.
Part 4 covers how to use your target audience information to set SMART goals for your content, plus defining your business goals, aligning your content strategy with your business goals, and determining what you want to achieve with your content (e.g. drive traffic, generate leads, build brand awareness, etc.)
Part 5 covers deciding which content types and formats will best help your business reach its goals.
Part 6 discusses effective ways and tools to do a content audit to identify the types of content your business is currently producing, assess the performance of your existing content, and identify gaps and opportunities in your current content offerings.
Part 7 covers creating a content plan – what a content plan is, why your business needs one, and how to create a content plan for your business.
Part 8 covers creating a content production plan specifying the strategy and the schedule your business will use to create and publish its content.
Part 9 covers creating a content promotion plan specifying the strategy and tactics your business will use to distribute and promote its content.
Part 10 covers creating a content management plan specifying the processes your business will use to manage and maintain its content.
Part 11 covers troubleshooting and fixing issues with your content, your content strategy, and your content plan.
Part 12 provides a recap of the course, discusses the next steps for implementing a content strategy for your business, and provides useful tips and resources.
Click the links in the gallery below the video to visit lesson pages with the video and a full transcript with screenshots…
This lesson provides a recap of the course, discusses the next steps for implementing a content strategy for your business, and provides useful tips and resources.
***
Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
This is module 12 and it’s the last lesson in our video series.
In our previous lessons, we covered all the steps we need to develop a strategy that will allow us to create, promote, and manage our content effectively.
We also looked at how to troubleshoot any problems and issues that can affect our content’s performance and results.
In this final lesson, I want to recap what we have covered in this course, talk about the next steps to take after creating a content strategy and provide links to additional information and useful resources.
If your business has done everything that we’ve talked about in this course and put all of the right foundations in place, developed a content strategy, created a sound content plan, and implemented plans to create, promote, and manage your content effectively, then you can expect your content to perform well and deliver your business great results.
And here is why your business can expect this.
Your business is thinking about content strategically. Strategic thinking lets you adapt and respond quickly to changes. You don’t change your destination, you just change the methods and tactics you are using to get there.
You can also expect great results if your business has set clear goals and objectives and you understand your audience’s needs, interests, and pain points, then create the right content, delivered at the right stage of their buyer journey, in the right type and format, and distribute it using the right channels, so that your content production and promotion are fully aligned with your business goals and your audience’s needs.
And you can also expect great results if your business uses documented systems to create, promote, manage, track, measure, and improve its content, and has a methodical approach to troubleshoot and fix issues.
This is what an effective content strategy aims to do. It lets you examine every area of your business that involves using content and make sure that everyone involved is aligned with the right goals and objectives and is working toward achieving these.
Now, I admit that this is not easy to do, especially if your business is already going full steam ahead and hasn’t put in place the systems and processes that we’ve discussed in this course…
…but this is the map that will get your business there and deliver you success using content.
So, now that you know what the purpose of having a content strategy is and how to create one, where do you go from here?
Well, if you plan to start a business or a website and haven’t started yet, then the first thing you need to do is put all the right business foundations in place, develop a content strategy, and create and implement plans to produce, promote, and manage your content effectively, as shown in this course.
And if your business is already going full steam ahead and it hasn’t put in place the systems and processes that we’ve discussed in this course, then that’s what you need to do next.
However poorly you do it, any attempt to develop and implement a content strategy with plans, systems, and documented processes is better than none at all.
The worst thing that can happen if you attempt to develop a content strategy for a business that hasn’t got one is that it will show you why your business actually needs one.
So, once you have this awareness, you can begin to do something about it.
So, regardless of whether you are planning to start a business or trying to manage content for an existing business, here are the practical steps that I recommend taking next…
First, I suggest that you review all of the video course lessons and any accompanying notes that are included with this course.
Next, go through all of the detailed tutorials that expand on these lessons. They are all available for free on ContentManagementCourse.com.
If you haven’t already, I also suggest that you register for the content management course email lessons on the site. It’s also 100% free and it will take you step-by-step through everything you need to know to manage content for your business or website effectively.
I have created another comprehensive email course on how to generate new content ideas for your website, blog, or newsletter. It’s also completely free to subscribe and will help you create an endless content pipeline for your business.
If your business uses WordPress as its content management system, I have created detailed step-by-step tutorials on how to use WordPress that you can access for free at WPTrainingManual.com
And I also run a site that provides thousands of video lessons that will help you develop digital business skills and master using WordPress. This site is not free but there’s a very low subscription price, so it’s extremely affordable.
So, I hope that you have found this video course instructive, useful, and practical.
I’m Martin Aranovitch, thank you for watching, and make sure to review the accompanying notes for ways to stay connected and updated.
Also, make sure to visit ContentManagementCourse.com for additional information and comprehensive tutorials that expand on everything we’ve covered in his course.
This lesson covers troubleshooting and fixing issues with your content, your content strategy, and your content plan.
***
Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
This is module 11.
In the previous lessons, we looked at creating a content strategy and implementing plans for creating, promoting, and managing your content.
Now, what we want to do is look at what we can do if our content strategy isn’t working as expected, and how we can troubleshoot and find ways to fix any issues related to our content.
So, in this lesson, I’m going to introduce you to a systematic approach for troubleshooting content-related issues.
We’ll look at the general principles of this approach, and then look at how to troubleshoot issues with your content strategy and your content plan.
Everything covered in this lesson is documented in detail in a Content Troubleshooting Guide that you can refer to by visiting the link on your screen.
So here is the simple model we’ll use.
Basically, it’s a drill-down approach. So, when you run into a problem with your content, we start at the top to see if we can address, correct and eliminate the problem at that level, and if we can’t fix it at that level, we then drill down to the next level below it and start diagnosing the issue at that level, and so on.
Now, before we get into this, let me show you what I believe is the most important slide of this entire course.
Ok, this chart looks very simple, but if you really get it and understand what it means, you will realize that it is the key to fixing not only problems related to your content but also most of the problems in your business too!
And I’m not exaggerating here about the importance of understanding this chart. I showed this same chart to someone who was struggling to grow their business many years ago and it completely transformed their business.
Every business has three levels of decision-making and you can’t get away from this. So, even if you are just a one-person business, your business still has these three levels. You’ll just have to wear three different hats when making business decisions.
So let’s go through these.
The executive level is where strategic decisions get made, like defining your business vision and setting targets, goals and objectives.
The managerial level is where decisions get made that affect how your business will achieve the strategic goals and targets set by the executive level.
Now many people think that the managerial level is about managing people, but that’s the wrong approach.
Managerial-level decisions should be about implementing and managing the systems that the business will use to achieve its strategic goals and objectives.
So it’s about managing systems, not people.
And the tactical or technical level is where people do the actual work that will help the business realize its vision and achieve its goals and objectives.
At this level, people should be trained to follow the systems put in place by the management level, to hit the targets and goals set by the strategic level.
So, ideally, the way this works is that the executive level sets a strategic target, like for example “to increase annual sales by 20%”.
The managerial level then figures out which systems the business needs to put in place to achieve that 20% increase in sales.
The managerial level then also implements those systems and makes sure that the people hired to fill the tactical or technical roles have the skills and the training to operate those systems because when they do that, it will help to achieve the vision and goals set at the executive level.
Now, let me show you why understanding this is so important to fixing problems in your business like content-related issues.
So, let’s say that you have a small business and you want to grow your business with content marketing.
So you put together a content team with an editor, a couple of content writers, an illustrator with video-making skills, and a marketer who can do email marketing and social media marketing.
So everything is going well. Your team is publishing regular articles and blog posts, posting social media updates, uploading videos online, sending out newsletters, and so on.
A few months down the track, your manager informs you that the content is not really performing too well in terms of generating new leads, increasing engagement, and improving conversions.
And your content team also tells you that they’ve run out of content ideas and that the content pipeline has run dry.
So now we have a couple of serious problems on our hands.
We’re running out of new content ideas and our existing content isn’t delivering us the results that we need.
This is all costing us time and money so we need to find a solution.
At this point, many businesses kind of get stuck and start looking at short-term solutions.
So you can start running regular brainstorming sessions with your team each week to try and keep your content pipeline going, but if your content is not delivering the results you need, then just creating content for content’s sake isn’t going to fix anything.
It’s also kind of hard to know what to do to improve things like increase traffic from organic search or get more engagement on social media or convert traffic into sales if all you have is lots of data from analytics reports, but no systems or processes in place for turning this data into specific actions.
So what do you do to fix these problems?
Let’s go back to our chart with the three levels of decision-making and let’s map it on top of this scenario, and let’s see if it can help us troubleshoot and fix these problems.
First, if you really understand what this chart is about, you will see straight away why asking your writers to brainstorm new content ideas to create a content pipeline is not going to fix your issues and improve your results.
Why? Because you’re asking people at the tactical level to fix issues that should have been addressed at the strategic and managerial levels.
So you can come up with new content ideas all day long but if the content isn’t helping your business grow, then you’re just wasting valuable time, money, and resources.
But you can’t brainstorm new content ideas unless you first have a clear idea of what you are aiming to achieve, of who your target audience is, what kind of content you should be focusing on, and so on.
All of these questions need to be answered by the managerial level in the form of a content plan spelling out in nitty-gritty detail what kind of content needs to be written, how it should be delivered, and so on.
But the managerial level can’t create an effective content plan if the executive level hasn’t defined a content strategy with realistic and achievable goals and objectives, allocated sufficient budget for resources, tools, and training, and so on.
So the point here is, if your content pipeline runs dry, it’s not the responsibility of people at the tactical level to fix the issue. The responsibility is at the managerial level.
A business owner has the big picture of their business but everyone below that level doesn’t.
So, your editor and your content writers, they don’t have the big picture, which means that putting them in charge of your content strategy is only going to create more problems.
And if your content isn’t performing well, the problem may not even be at the managerial level. It could be at the strategic level, which is the responsibility of the business owners to fix.
This is where many businesses say “well… I’m too busy trying to run other parts of the business to fix content issues and come up with new content ideas – that’s why we hired all these content experts!”
Well, how can you blame the body for following a head that doesn’t know where it’s going?
So this is what this chart is telling you. That the executive level has to know where it’s going and the managerial level has to put the systems in place to help the business get there before your business can start putting people into tactical or technical roles and giving them responsibilities for getting the work done.
Without putting those foundations in place, your business will just keep running into problems.
This is why outsourcing areas of your business like content production, content promotion, or even content management to a digital agency or freelance writers without first putting systems in place to manage the outsourcing process can often lead to poor results.
The chart tells you that an external digital agency is not part of the executive level of the business and so they shouldn’t make executive-level decisions, and that freelance writers won’t build managerial-level systems that will help the business realize its vision, so a lot of the time, what businesses think is outsourcing is really just abdicating their responsibility for making executive and managerial-level decisions.
Once you know which level is responsible for doing what in the business, you can start troubleshooting and fixing issues with your content.
Until this happens, any short-term fixes are really just a game of “passing the buck” where nothing is really going to get fixed in the long run.
So, now that we understand this, let’s apply our content troubleshooting approach and see how we would solve the issues of getting our content pipeline running again and improve our content’s performance.
So we’ll use our simple content troubleshooting model and map our chart of decision-making levels on top of it.
As I mentioned earlier, this is a top-down approach, so we’ll start at the top by making sure that our basic business principles are in place.
This means looking at things like:
Has the business clearly defined its vision, mission, and core values?
Has the business set clear, realistic, and achievable goals and objectives?
Does it have a business plan, marketing strategy, and marketing plan that flow logically from its vision, mission, and core values?
Is there an allocated budget for resources and is it realistic?
Are the business and marketing plans aligned with the goals and objectives of the business?
And more importantly, is all of this documented and accessible to everyone in the business?
If all of the above are not in place, then the business is going to experience problems at the levels of implementation.
Let’s assume, then, that everything checks out at the foundational level, so the next level to look at is your content strategy.
As you can see from this chart, creating a content strategy is an executive-level responsibility.
The managerial and tactical levels can be involved and contribute to the content strategy, but the responsibility for setting the overall strategy for the long-term vision and direction of the content ultimately lies with the executive level.
So let’s look at some of the key areas to assess and review when troubleshooting our content strategy.
I’ve listed here a number of areas that can lead to content issues when certain things aren’t addressed at the content strategy level.
You will notice that many of these areas will also show up at the managerial level, i.e. the content plan, but for different reasons.
For example, if poor search engine optimization is identified as an issue that’s affecting your content performance, the strategic level is responsible for outlining in its content strategy that all content must follow SEO best practices.
The managerial level then has to figure out what these SEO best practices are and put together the SEO systems, guides, and guidelines that the content team should follow to make sure that SEO best practices are being implemented.
Another example is the allocation of resources.
Your content strategy might allocate a budget for content marketing based on their total budget for all business areas, but when the managerial level tries to implement their plans, they might find that their allocated budget is insufficient to cover all of the costs needed to meet the content strategy’s specifications, like hiring or training new content team members, investing in tools and technologies, and covering production costs like creating high-quality videos, and so on.
In this case, either the executive level needs to find and allocated additional funds or re-evaluate their specifications.
So as before, let’s assume that our content strategy has all of these areas covered, but that our content team still has no content pipeline and that our content isn’t performing as well as expected.
So, we have to go down one more level and see if we can try to locate the issues at the level of the content plan.
Here are some of the key areas to look at when troubleshooting your content plan.
What you will find with most of the areas listed here, is that the real time-consuming work of building systems, processes, and procedures to make the content strategy work is the managerial level’s responsibility. The executive and tactical levels can be involved in helping to document the content plan, but it’s not the responsibility of the content team to create it.
So, with areas like no content measuring or evaluating, a content strategy will tell us which metrics are important to track, but setting up the systems, processes, and tools to measure and report on those metrics is a managerial-level responsibility.
A content manager might choose to create and run those systems themselves, or assign it to someone else in the team, or even to outsource the task to experts, but it is their responsibility to create a content plan first that addresses all of these areas.
So the point here is that these are all managerial-level decisions and responsibilities. And if any of these areas is deficient, then your content team will struggle to have an ongoing pipeline and your business will struggle to improve its content performance.
Your business will keep running into problems if managers are trying to manage people instead of putting systems and processes in place for tactical and technical-level roles to follow.
So if the strategic level has clearly outlined the metrics that are important to track in its content strategy and the managerial level has implemented an effective content tracking system as per their content plan, and the same thing has been done for all of the other important areas like understanding the target market, defining content types, setting guidelines for your content, branding, SEO, etc. then you should be able to identify and pinpoint exactly what’s causing the issue with a content pipeline or with your content performance.
You would have all the systems in place for creating, promoting, and managing your content effectively and your content team would know what content topics and themes they should be focusing on.
This is where and when they can help brainstorm new content ideas to keep the content pipeline running.
If everything at the content plan level is fine and there are still issues, then the next step is to drill further down into your content plan and look at the specific components like your content production plan, your content promotion plan, and your content management plan.
Once again, creating these is the responsibility of the managerial level.
So, for example, if having no content pipeline is still an issue, you would look at your content production plan and see if there are any issues or problems like poorly-defined production workflow processes, or a lack of documented procedures, or are people just not following the documented processes and guidelines, or is there no content calendar, or are there unclear roles and responsibilities, or lack of skills or training in using the right tools, and so on.
Now, if your content performance hasn’t improved after reviewing your content plan, then you would look at your content promotion plan and see if there are any issues or problems like whether your team is following the marketing plan, if they have access to analytics data and reports and can understand the metrics, if they are using the right distribution channels and the right tools to track content performance, improve SEO, and so on.
Similarly, if after drilling all the way down there are still issues, then you would go through your content management plan and review whether any areas here are causing issues.
For example, issues at this level may be related to poor organization, poor time management, work overload, blurry roles and responsibilities, or a lack of documentation, or even issues with content tracking and content protection, poor content linking practices, failures to backup content, a lack of knowledge of using management tools, and so on.
So, in summary,
Understanding the three levels of decision-making in a business is very important, as it helps to work out who is responsible for doing what in your business.
Use a top-down approach to diagnose and troubleshoot issues with your content. This is an effective approach because as you address and eliminate issues at the higher levels, your business will experience fewer problems and get better results as time goes on.
Also, keep in mind that most content-related issues are caused by the lack of a well-defined content strategy, so the more you focus on getting your content strategy clear from the outset, the fewer problems you will experience later in other areas of your business.
And finally, keep in mind that your content strategy is really an outline of the work that needs to be done but most of the time-consuming work of implementing the strategy is done at the managerial level, such as documenting system, processes, and guidelines, making sure that the content team is trained to follow systems, guidelines, and procedures, and troubleshooting and fixing issues with your content systems.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, you can refer to the comprehensive Content Troubleshooting Guide and tutorials on ContentManagementCourse.com if you need help with any of these areas.
So, that’s all for this video.
In the next and final lesson, we’ll wrap up this course with a recap and useful tips and suggestions for taking the next steps.
Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.
This lesson covers creating a content management plan specifying the processes your business will use to manage and maintain its content.
***
Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
This is module 10.
In the previous lesson, we looked at creating a content promotion plan for your business.
In this lesson, we’ll look at creating and implementing a content management plan.
This is the part of the content plan that determines how we’ll manage and maintain all of the content that we create, publish, and promote.
In this lesson, we’ll cover what a content management plan is, why your business needs it, and how to create one for your business.
So, what is a content management plan?
A content management plan is a document that outlines the processes your business will use to manage and maintain all of its content.
It includes your content management goals and objectives, information about your target audience, the types of content and distribution channels that you will manage, and the KPIs that will be used to measure the success of your content management practices.
Now, why does your business need a content management plan?
It needs a content management plan because it helps your business to…
Manage all the content it produces, from initial idea to final publication.
Also, to make roles and responsibilities of team members and stakeholders clear.
Establish a consistent workflow to ensure content is accurate, on-brand, and on time.
It helps you track your content performance over time, ensuring that content goals are being met and that your target audience is being reached.
It also helps to ensure that your content is organized, easily searchable, and retrievable, saving your business time and resources and providing a consistent customer experience.
Also, it helps to avoid duplication of effort and ensures compliance with legal or regulatory requirements.
And it also helps your business to stay consistent and on-brand with your messaging.
So, in short, your content management plan is a strategy for organizing, storing, and maintaining your business content. It helps your business keep its content organized, ensuring that it stays up-to-date and relevant, and making it easily accessible to the people who need it.
So now that we have a basic understanding of what a content management plan is and why your business needs it, let’s look at how to create one.
I’ve outlined here the main steps and suggestions for creating a content management plan.
Like in our previous lessons, I’m only going to touch briefly on these points, because we’ve already covered many of the steps listed here in our Content Plan lesson in module 7.
If you need help with these steps, visit the link on the screen for a detailed tutorial.
So, how do we create a content management plan?
First, we need to define our content management goals. For example, it may be improving your website traffic or increasing customer engagement.
Next, we make an inventory of all of our existing content, including formats, topics, and target audience, and we covered this in Module 6.
To manage your content effectively, you’ll need to develop a content strategy and this is the central focus of our video course. Creating a content strategy includes outlining your content goals, defining your target audience, your content topics, content types and formats, and a whole lot more.
Next, establish a content workflow and document the processes your business will use to create, review, edit, and publish content.
Set up a content calendar with your content publishing schedule.
Document the roles and responsibilities involved in creating, editing, publishing, and promoting your content.
Use a content management system to organize, store, and distribute your content.
Document your SEO Guidelines. Include best SEO practices, links to SEO courses, resources, tutorials, etc.
Use analytics tools to track and analyze your content performance and gather insights for future content.
Review and update to make sure your content stays fresh and relevant.
Collaborate and communicate with your team members and stakeholders to ensure that your content stays aligned with your overall goals and objectives.
Document all of your processes to ensure that anyone can manage your content to the highest quality standards set by your business.
Make regular content backups to keep your content safe and protected and to ensure business continuity, and
Continuously monitor and improve your content management processes.
In terms of choosing a content management system for your business, I recommend that you consider using a platform like WordPress.
WordPress is the most popular content management system platform in the world,
Over one-third of all websites in fact run on WordPress.
WordPress is a free, open-source CMS, which means it’s infinitely expandable with add-ons, which WordPress calls plugins.
WordPress is also actively supported by a community of thousands of web developers, so it’s always being updated with new features and bug fixes, which means that it’s secure.
And you can build any kind of website you can imagine with WordPress. From company websites and blogs to full-featured e-commerce stores, private membership sites, business directories, and so much more!
Plus, WordPress is easy-to-use and requires no coding skills.
You can learn more about using content management systems by following the link on the screen.
More importantly, if your website runs on WordPress, I have created comprehensive and detailed step-by-step tutorials on how to use WordPress.
You can access these tutorials for free at WPTrainingManual.com. Just visit the link on the slide for more details.
x
Also, in terms of content organization, you’ll want to implement systems that will improve your efficiency and user experience, that will save you time and money, and that will help your business maximize its resources.
So, see the link on your screen for a detailed tutorial on ways to organize your content.
And regarding documenting, backing up, and protecting your content, I have also written comprehensive tutorials covering each of these areas, so if you need help with any of these areas visit the links on the screen.
So, in summary,
A content management plan specifies the processes for managing and maintaining your content.
It also includes your goals and objectives for managing your content, information about your target audience, the content types and the distribution channels that you will manage, and the KPIs you will use to measure your content.
Follow the steps discussed in this lesson to create and implement a content management plan for your business and if you need help or want to see an example of a content management plan, check out the tutorials listed on the screen.
So, that’s all for this lesson.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at how to troubleshoot and fix issues with your content strategy.
Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.
This lesson covers creating a content promotion plan specifying the strategy and tactics your business will use to distribute and promote its content.
***
Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
x
Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
This is module 9.
In the previous lesson, we looked at creating a content production plan for your business.
In this lesson, we’ll look at creating and implementing a content promotion plan.
This is the part of the content plan that determines how we’ll promote and get our content in front of our target audiences.
So in this lesson, we’ll cover what a content promotion plan is, why your business needs it, and how to create one for your business.
So, what is a content promotion plan?
A content promotion plan is a document that outlines the strategy and tactics your business will use to distribute and promote its content.
It includes your content promotion goals and objectives, information about your target audience, the types of content you will produce, the distribution channels that you will use to get your content out there, and the KPIs or key performance indicators that will be used to measure the success of your content promotion activities.
Now, why does your business need a content promotion plan?
Your business needs a content promotion plan because it helps your business to:
Reach and engage your target audience more effectively.
Helps to maximize the impact of the content you produce.
It helps to allocate resources and budgets more efficiently toward content promotion.
It helps to track your content’s performance over time.
It helps to identify & leverage the most effective distribution channels to reach your target audience.
And it helps you to stay consistent and on-brand with your messaging.
So in short, your content promotion plan tells you how to get the word out about your content, increase its visibility and drive engagement and conversions.
So now that we have a basic understanding of what a content promotion plan is and why your business needs it, let’s look at how to create one.
I’ve outlined here the main steps and suggestions for creating a content promotion plan.
Like in our previous lessons, I’m only going to touch briefly on these points, because many of these steps have already been covered in our Content Plan lesson in module 7.
If you need help with these steps, visit the link on the screen for a detailed tutorial.
So, to create a content production plan we’ll need to…
Define our goals for promoting our content, for example, increase website traffic, generate leads, etc.
Identify our target audience: Where are they are most likely to be found?
Create a plan for distributing our content through various channels, for example, social media, email, videos, paid advertising, etc.
Use a promotion calendar or scheduling tool to plan out when and how to promote each published piece of content.
Optimize content for search engines
Share the content on social media platforms and encourage followers to share it.
And you may also want to reach out to influencers in your industry and ask them to share your content with their audience.
Also, you can leverage email and video marketing, so include the content in your email newsletter and send it to your email subscribers.
And upload and share your videos on video-sharing platforms
And also you can consider using paid promotions like Google Ads or Facebook ads, to reach a larger audience.
Additionally, set metrics and use analytics tools to track and analyze your promotions and gather insights for future campaigns.
Repurpose and refresh your content with new information and insights to reach new audiences and keep your existing audiences engaged.
And continuously monitor and improve your promotion strategy based on your results and feedback.
So, in summary…
Your content promotion plan specifies the strategy and schedule for promoting and distributing your content, and it includes your goals and objectives for promoting your content, information about your target audience, the content types that you will create, your distribution channels, and the key performance indicators you will use to measure the success of your content promotion efforts.
Follow the steps presented in this lesson to create and implement a content promotion plan for your business and if you need help or want to see an example of a content promotion plan, check out the tutorials listed on the screen.
So that’s all for this lesson.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at how to create a content management plan for your business.
Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.
This lesson covers creating a content production plan specifying the strategy and the schedule your business will use to create and publish its content.
***
Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
This is module 8.
In the previous lesson, we looked at creating a content plan so we can start implementing our content strategy.
In this lesson, we’ll look at creating and implementing a content production plan.
This is the part of the content plan that determines how we’ll create and produce all the content in our business.
So in this lesson, we’ll cover what a content production plan is, why your business needs it, and how to create one for your business.
So, what is a content production plan?
A content production plan is a document that outlines the strategy and schedule your business will use to create and publish its content.
It includes your content production goals and objectives, information about your target audience, the types of content you will produce, the distribution channels that you will use, and the KPIs or key performance indicators that will be used to measure the success of your content production efforts.
Ok. Now that we know what a content production plan is, why does your business need one?
Your business needs one because it helps your business to:
Align its content efforts with its overall marketing and business goals.
It also ensures the creation of relevant, valuable, and engaging content for your target audience.
It helps you allocate resources and budget more efficiently towards content creation.
Helps you track content performance over time.
Helps you to identify and fill gaps in your content offerings.
And it helps you stay consistent and on-brand with your messaging.
So in short, a content production plan is a detailed plan that outlines the specific actions and resources that your business will use to create and publish content.
So now that we have a basic understanding of what a content production plan is and why your business needs it, let’s look at how to create one.
I’ve outlined here the main steps to creating a content production plan.
I’m only going to touch briefly on these points here, because many of these steps have already been covered in the Content Plan lesson in module 7.
If you need help, I’ve also written a detailed tutorial covering these steps, just visit the link on the screen.
So to create a content production plan, we need to…
Review our content plan and make sure that we have a clear understanding of our audience, goals, topics, and distribution channels.
We also have to assign roles and responsibilities, which means deciding who will be responsible for each aspect of the content creation process, like who will do the research, writing, editing, design, etc.
We also need a calendar or a scheduling tool to plan out when each piece of content will be created, reviewed, and published.
Another important step is to create a detailed workflow outlining the specific steps that will be taken for each piece of content. This should include research, writing, editing, design, and distribution. We’ll cover this in the next slide.
Also, outline the process for creating each type of content. Identify the tools, resources, and steps required to create different types of content, such as blog posts, videos, podcasts, infographics, etc.
And, finally, review and optimize. Review the content production plan regularly and make adjustments when needed. Use the metrics defined in your content plan to measure the success of your content and to make changes that will help to improve your results over time.
In terms of defining our workflow, we want to outline the processes for creating, reviewing, editing, and publishing content for each different type of content that we will create.
Obviously creating an article for a blog requires a different process than creating a video, so when we outline the workflow for each content type, we need to define things like:
The steps involved
Who is responsible for doing each step and what each step involves doing
How and when should a process move to the next step
What formats, guidelines, and procedures need to be followed to ensure that consistent standards are maintained
How and when to deliver each step, and so on.
For more information about outlining and documenting workflow processes visit the links on the screen.
Another thing to keep in mind when creating your content production plan is to include different methods like content repurposing.
Content repurposing is the process of taking existing content and adapting it for use on different platforms or in different formats.
This can include things like turning a blog post into a video, or republishing an article on a different website or creating an infographic from a research report, and many other forms, such as the examples listed here.
Repurposing content helps you get the most out of the content you have already created, maximizing your resources, and helping you reach new audiences.
The link on this screen has more information about repurposing content.
Coming up with ideas for your content can be a challenging part of the content creation process. But with the right sources, resources, and methods, you can generate a steady stream of ideas to keep your content fresh and engaging.
I recommend visiting ContentManagementCourse.com and signing up for my free and comprehensive email course on how to keep coming up with endless new content ideas for your website articles, blog posts, and newsletters.
So, in summary…
A content production plan specifies the strategy and schedule for creating and publishing your content, and it typically includes the goals and objectives for your content, information about your target audience, the content types that you will create, your distribution channels, and the KPIs that will be used to measure the success of your content production efforts.
Follow the steps discussed in this lesson to create and implement a content production plan for your business and if you need help or want to see an example of a content production plan, check out the tutorials listed on the screen.
Also, make sure to sign up for the free content ideas creation email course so you’ll never run out of content ideas.
So, that’s all for this lesson.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at creating a content promotion plan for your business.
Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.
This lesson covers creating a content plan – what a content plan is, why your business needs one, and how to create a content plan for your business.
***
Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
This is module 7.
In the previous lesson, we looked at doing a content audit, which is taking an inventory of all of our existing content.
In this lesson, we’ll look at how to create a content plan so we can start implementing our content strategy in our business.
So, this is where we take all of the information we’ve been compiling about our audience, setting content goals, choosing content types, and doing a content audit, and we put it all together into a cohesive and actionable plan.
In this lesson, we are going to cover what a content plan is, why your business needs one, and how to create a content plan that will deliver your business results.
So, what is a content plan?
A content plan is a document that specifies what content your business will create to target your audience at all stages of their buyer journey, and how this content will be created, distributed, and managed.
A content plan also outlines…
who is responsible for creating the content,
what the purpose of the content is, and
how the content impacts your content strategy
The difference between a content plan and a content strategy, is that a content strategy is the overarching plan for creating, publishing, and managing content that aligns with the goals and objectives of your organization.
A content strategy defines the goals for the content, the audience it will target, and the overall tone and style of the content.
A content plan, on the other hand, is the tactical plan for executing your content strategy.
A content plan outlines the specific pieces of content that will be created, the channels through which they will be distributed, and the schedule for publishing and promoting your content. It also includes tasks and responsibilities for creating, editing, and publishing your content.
So, in short, a content strategy tells us the why and what, and a content plan tells us the how and when.
Now, why does your business need a content plan?
Your business needs a content plan to ensure that the right systems and workflow processes are put in place to create the right content, for the right audience, at the right time, using the right distribution channels, to help your business achieve its strategic goals.
So essentially, the goal of the content plan is to deliver the goals of the content strategy.
Now that we have a basic understanding of what a content plan is and why our business needs one, let’s look at how to create a content plan.
Here I’ve outlined 12 steps to creating a content plan and I’m just going to touch on these briefly in this lesson because I’ve written a comprehensive tutorial that covers all of these steps in detail and you can go through each of these at your own pace by visiting the link on the screen.
So in Step 1, we ask the question “what do we want our content to achieve?” Are we looking to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive sales? We covered this step in module 4 of this course.
We also covered Step 3 which content types to focus on in module 5, so if you need help in those areas, just go back and review those modules.
So let’s take a brief look, then, at Steps 2, 4, and 5, which is setting the frequency, topics, and distribution of our content.
And these are the questions that we need to ask
How often should we be publishing new content?” This will tell us the frequency.
What content should we be writing or talking about?” This will tell us the topics to write about, and
How should we be getting our content out into the world?” This will tell us the distribution methods.
So let’s look at frequency first.
It’s important to find a sustainable balance between producing enough content to keep your audience engaged, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming or low quality.
It also depends on the type of business you’re in. For example, if you run a news website, you’ll probably need to publish multiple articles a day to keep up with the latest developments. On the other hand, if you’re running a personal blog or a small business, you might only have the capacity to publish once or twice a week or a few times a month.
So, it’s important to consider our audience, our resources, and our goals when determining the frequency of our content. In general, it’s a good idea to find a frequency that we can sustain over the long term. Consistency is key when it comes to content marketing, so it’s better to publish on a regular schedule rather than trying to push out as much content as possible and then burn out.
Next up, are the topics you should be writing or talking about. Again, this will depend on your goals and audience.
If you’re running a business, you’ll want to focus on topics that are relevant to your products or services. For example, if you sell outdoor gear, you might want to write about hiking, camping, and other outdoor activities.
It’s also a good idea to consider what your audience is interested in. You can use social media polls, surveys, and other tools to get a sense of what your followers want to see more of.
Finally, there’s distribution. There are many options to choose from when it comes to getting your content out, including social media, email newsletters, press releases, guest blogging on other websites, and so on.
So it’s important to find the right mix of distribution channels for your business or personal brand. For example, if you’re targeting a younger audience, you might want to focus on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. And if you’re targeting a more professional audience, you may want to target channels like LinkedIn.
Another important area of distribution is understanding that there are different types of distribution channels, like owned media, paid media, and earned media.
Owned media is content that you create, own, and have full and complete control over. Like blog posts and articles that you write and publish on your website.
Paid media is where you pay to promote your content. Like taking ads on Google and social media.
And then there’s earned media, which is content that someone else creates, and you don’t pay for it but it benefits your business. Like when someone posts a great review about your business.
You can read more about these distribution channels by visiting the link on the screen.
Our content plan needs to align with our content strategy, so if our content strategy includes paid media, this brings up the next step, which is how to allocate our resources.
So the two main areas we need to focus on here are financial and personnel resources.
Financial resources mostly come down to the budget allocated to create and distribute content and to invest in the right tools.
So, if our content strategy specifies using paid media to distribute our content and there’s no budget for paid media, we’re going to have a problem.
We either have to try and find the budget, or rework our content strategy and content plan to focus more on owned media like blog posts and articles.
Which brings up the issue of personnel resources.
So, what kind of content team can your business afford to put together?
Creating and promoting content involves many different skills and responsibilities.
Whatever talent you have available to create and promote content is going to have a tremendous impact on your content plan.
For example, I run a number of websites on my own and I also work with a team in my full-time job, and both of these have pros and cons.
Working with a content team, for example, requires having really effective communication.
So, to implement a content plan effectively with a team means that we need to establish a central point of contact. This can be a content manager or a designated member of the team.
We also need to set up regular meetings or check-ins with all relevant teams and stakeholders and establish clear guidelines and processes for creating and approving content.
We’ll cover some parts of this step in this lesson, like setting up a content calendar. But in the next lesson, we’ll talk about editorial guidelines and workflow processes for reviewing and approving content.
It’s also very important to choose the right tools to ensure that everyone has access to the latest version of the content plan.
So, this would be like a document management system and also setting up team communication channels so everyone can communicate effectively, especially if your team comprises of people working remotely.
This can be done using tools like Slack and email, plus tools for live meetings, conference calls, and online presentations, like Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Skype, etc.
And we also need to choose our content management tools. These include Project Management Software like for example, Monday.com, or Asana, Jira, or Trello, and a Content Management System like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla.
Once again, the tools you choose will depend on your budget, your needs, and how you’ve designed your workflow processes.
If you need more information about these tools, visit the links on the screen.
After choosing the tools your team will use to collaborate, communicate, and manage your content, the next step is to set up a content publishing schedule to organize and schedule your content creation and promotion activities.
Typically, this will be a tool that lets you set up and manage a content calendar or an editorial calendar.
Now, these terms are often used interchangeably, but an editorial calendar generally outlines each step of the process, while a content calendar usually covers one aspect, such as when posts are published or shared to social media.
If you’re just starting out, you can use a spreadsheet to track your content publishing schedule, but if keeping track of things starts to become too hard, you might want to use a calendar tool.
Some project management tools and content management systems also include scheduling features, so whichever method you choose, just make sure that everyone in your team can access the tool and that they know how to use it.
For a detailed tutorial on how to set up a content scheduling calendar, visit the link shown on the screen.
Now, we’re almost done setting up our content plan.
We just need to work out how to assign tasks and set deadlines for everyone who is involved in creating and promoting our content.
And here are some things to keep in mind.
First, we want to provide clear and detailed descriptions of the task and ensure that everyone on the team understands the expected outcomes.
So include any necessary resources or instructions.
Also, we want to take each team member’s skills and workload into consideration and make sure that we assign the task to the right person.
It’s also important to set realistic deadlines by learning to estimate accurately how long tasks will take to complete and how complex they are.
We also want to clearly communicate tasks and deadlines to assigned team members.
To do this, we can use team meetings, email, or a project management tool to follow up with team members and make sure they understand the task and have what they need to complete it.
And we also want to check in with our team members periodically to keep track of their progress, offer assistance and support, provide additional resources, and answer any questions they may have.
Finally, it’s important to create guidelines for assigning tasks to members that include all the points we’ve just discussed and add these guidelines to your workflow documentation.
The next step in creating your content plan is to include ways to measure content performance and content ROI, so you can see which parts of the plan are working and which areas will need improvement.
With content performance, we want to set up metrics to measure and analyze our content’s performance in areas like engagement, traffic, lead generation, conversions, bounce rates, and so.
We also want to set up ways to track revenue generated from our content and compare this to the costs of creating and promoting our content to work out our return on investment.
The links on the slide will take you to tutorials on how to set up content metrics, content tracking and a content measurement plan, and lists of tools you can use to measure your content performance.
Now the last step in creating our content plan is to schedule a periodic review of the plan itself to make sure that everything set out in the plan is progressing along, that all strategic goals are being met, and to figure out how to improve things if the goals are not being met.
So, in summary, a content plan tells us how and when to execute our content strategy.
Follow the steps we’ve covered in this lesson to create and implement a content plan for your business, and if you need help in any of these areas refer to the tutorials listed on the screen.
So, that’s all for this lesson.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at how to break our content plan into a content production plan, a content promotion plan, and a content management plan, so we can create, promote and manage our content more effectively.
Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.
This lesson discusses effective ways and tools to do a content audit to identify the types of content your business is currently producing, assess the performance of your existing content, and identify gaps and opportunities in your current content offerings.
***
Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
This is Module 6.
In the previous lesson, we looked at the types of content we’ll need to produce to meet our audience’s needs and the goals we have set.
In this lesson, we’ll look at doing a content audit, which is taking an inventory of our existing content to see how it’s performing and to identify any gaps or opportunities that we may be missing.
Up to this point, the focus has been to get our thinking organized so we know who we are going to be creating content for, what types of content we’ll be creating, and what we want to achieve with our content.
Now, it’s time to take stock of where we are currently at, so we can plan where to go from here.
So.. how do we go about identifying the types of content that our business is currently producing?
The best way is by doing a content audit.
So in this lesson, we are going to look at what a content audit is and why your business needs one.
And we’ll also look at how to perform a content audit and tools that will help make this easier and faster.
So, what is a content audit?
A content audit is the process of systematically analyzing and evaluating our existing content’s performance and effectiveness.
It involves identifying and cataloging all of our content, evaluating its quality and relevance, and determining which content should be kept, updated, consolidated, or removed.
The goal of a content audit is to ensure that our content is aligned with our business goals and objectives and is providing value to our target audience.
So, why does your business need to perform a content audit? What are the benefits?
Well, there are a number of reasons for performing a content audit.
The first reason is to make sure that the content is aligned with your business goals.
By evaluating the relevance and effectiveness of your existing content, we can then identify areas that need to improve to better support the goals of the business.
Another reason is to improve user experience.
A content audit can help to identify content that is confusing, outdated, or irrelevant to users, which can negatively impact their experience.
By removing or updating this content, we can improve the overall experience of our visitors.
Another benefit is that it helps to identify gaps in our content and inform our future content strategy and planning activities.
A content audit also helps to improve SEO: By identifying and removing duplicate or low-quality content, we can improve our content’s search engine rankings and visibility.
And a content audit also provides insights to help evaluate our content performance in terms of engagement and conversions, and identify which content is resonating with our audience and which content isn’t.
So those are some of the reasons for performing a content audit.
Now, how do we actually perform one?
Well, the first step is to set some goals.
So, here are some general goals we’ll want to set.
First, we’ll want to start by identifying the purpose and the main objectives of the audit.
This could be to improve the user experience, increase conversions, or to align our content with the overall goals of our business.
Once we have identified the main objectives of our content audit, the next step is to define the specific goals and steps that will help us achieve those objectives.
For example, if our goal is to improve user experience, a specific goal could be to reduce the bounce rate on our website.
We’ll also want to set measurable targets to track our progress and evaluate the success of our audit.
For example, if our goal is to reduce the bounce rate on our website, then we’ll want to set a target percentage to achieve.
It’s also important to establish a timeline and set a deadline for achieving our goals.
It’s easy to get lost in all the little details and become overwhelmed once we start, so defining a time frame will help us to stay focused and motivated throughout the audit process.
We’ll also want to review and revise our results once the content audit is completed and evaluate whether the goals were met.
If they weren’t, we’ll need to revise our goals and identify any areas that need improvement.
Once we have set goals for our content audit, the next step is to perform an inventory of our existing content.
The aim of the content inventory is to basically take stock of all of our existing content … so, that means making a list of all of our blog posts and articles, videos, podcasts, social media posts, email newsletters, infographics, and any other types of content that we are currently outputting.
There are a number of tools that can help make this process easier and faster, and I’ve listed these in the URL shown on the screen.
After gathering and making an inventory of all our content, the next step is to organize and categorize it.
You can use a spreadsheet to document everything. You can create this spreadsheet from scratch or use a template.
There are content audit templates that you can download and I’ve added links to useful content audit templates in the slide.
In our spreadsheet, we simply create a column for every new category of data that we want to analyze, add each new content item from our inventory into a new row, and then just go across and fill in the information.
The table on the slide lists some of the items that you may want to include in your spreadsheet to categorize content-related, SEO, and performance elements.
And how you choose to organize and categorize your content and how much detail you want to record about each item is completely up to you.
At a minimum, you’ll want to list your content URLs, and add various useful categories, some metadata, and important metrics to track.
It’s also a good idea to categorize the content into different types. For example, written content, video content, social media posts, etc.
Also, if you review your content calendar – which we’ll talk about in another lesson, it will help you identify the types of content that your business is currently producing and planning to create in the near future.
After categorizing our content, we can then start to analyze our data.
Analyzing our content gives us a better understanding of the types of content our business is currently producing.
So we can begin by asking questions like:
Which topics or themes are we mostly focused on writing about?
Which content types are we mostly focused on creating?
How often are we producing this type of content?
What is the purpose of the content (is it to educate, entertain, generate leads, etc.)?
Who is its intended audience?
Which stage of the buyer journey is this content aimed at?
Which types of content perform the best?
Which types of content are most popular with our audience?
Are there any obvious gaps in the content that stand out, which we should be addressing and taking advantage of?
Do this for your web content, your social media channels, your email marketing, etc.
As you analyze your content, you can also record notes about each item to help your team decide what to do with it later on.
For example, you can mark items as having
Missing content. So, are there any topics that the content hasn’t covered which would be of interest to the audience?
Underperforming content. Looking at the numbers, are there any items that aren’t performing as well as they should?
Outdated content. Can the information be refined (or updated or reworked) to remain optimized and relevant to our audience?
Hit Content. This is content that’s performing well, and its metrics and results are meeting or exceeding all targets and expectations. So it can be left alone, as it’s already doing well.
A really useful tip is to use color coding where assigning colors to different categories in your analysis, then highlight the rows with these colors as you work through the spreadsheet.
So, for example, you can highlight items with missing content in a light red color, underperforming content in yellow, or outdated content in blue, and hit content in green.
This way, anyone looking at the spreadsheet will quickly be able to tell which items need attention and filter these for actioning later.
You can also use tools like Google Analytics and social media analytics tools to gather data on how your content is performing.
After analyzing the content, the next step is to classify it.
This step is important if you plan to rank content by priorities or include a timeline for your audit.
So, the goals that we defined earlier will help to prioritize what needs to be executed first.
For example, you may want to prioritize content from 1 to 5, and then define what happens to content assigned to each of these levels.
So, we would first classify all items as 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.
Then, let’s say that all items ranked 1 are top-converting content and should be given top-priority treatment.
So, we analyze all priority treatment items, that is all items marked 1, further to find ways to do things like
Improve the content, for example, make sections clearer or more detailed, add supporting media like explainer videos, downloadable reports, etc.
Or improve search ranking through different SEO methods, for example, internal linking, more helpful content, etc.
Or improve traffic through social media, email newsletters, paid ads, content repurposing, etc.
So using this process, we can then specify that all items with a score lower than 3 should be transferred to a separate spreadsheet, analyzed in more detail, and assigned different highlight colors to determine whether the content should be updated, rewritten, or trashed.
Now. depending on how much content there is, you may also want to schedule it using a content production tool or your editorial calendar.
And the last step of the content audit process is to take action.
Here we evaluate our content and note what’s working and what isn’t.
Are you seeing desired results from your content like increased website traffic, leads, etc.? If not, what can be improved?
Look for opportunities for improvement and document your findings in your content strategy.
Ultimately, the objective of the content audit is to help you decide whether to keep, discard, refine, or develop content after analyzing each content item that you have inventoried.
So with each item of content, we would use our analysis data and notes to decide if we are going to keep or trash the item.
If we decide to trash the item, there are some things to consider, like whether the item has any kind of traffic or SEO value.
If so, we may want to redirect visitors to another content item before trashing it.
And if we decide to keep the item, does it need to be refined with a quick fix, a longer update, or even a complete rewrite?
Also, the audit may reveal missing gaps and opportunities to develop new content, repurpose existing content, like turning an article into a video or even consolidate a number of articles or blog posts on a similar topic into one authoritative long-form article or guide.
For more information on how to make the most from each of these options, please visit the tutorial listed on the screen.
Let me give you just a couple more tips before we move on…
After performing a content audit, list 5-10 immediate action steps and start getting to work on those right away.
Also, keep in mind that some actions that require little effort can deliver big results (like improving page structure or adding internal links to other content on your site), while other actions need a lot of effort but could deliver poor results (like spending weeks creating a downloadable guide or an eBook).
It’s also important to keep things manageable. As you can imagine, a content audit can turn into a huge and overwhelming task, especially if your business has already published lots of existing content already.
Ideally, performing a complete and thorough audit of your content is best. However, it’s completely up to you to decide which content you will audit, how you will do it, and what goals you are trying to achieve.
So for example if time is a limiting factor, you can break things down into smaller goals and audit only content that falls within a certain period of time (e.g. the previous 6-12 months), or content that meets only certain metrics (like your 50 most popular articles ranked by traffic or conversions), or audit only your website’s blog posts, etc.
Finally, after performing an initial content audit, you will want to schedule regular content reviews (e.g. perform an annual review), as this will continue delivering valuable insights on ways to improve not just your content strategy, but your website and your business too.
Now, let’s talk briefly about taking our content audit further.
A content audit doesn’t have to be limited only to content on your website.
You can also perform audits in areas like…
Offsite content assets. So if you’ve published content on external sites like infographics or slide decks, it’s a good idea to include as much data as you can gather on any external content pieces to help you assess how effective your content marketing efforts are.
There’s also other marketing channels you can look at. As mentioned earlier, you are not restricted only to your web content, you can also look at your social media channels, email marketing, and so on.
For example, if you run email marketing campaigns, is the content in your autoresponders up-to-date? Are there messages with higher open rates than others? Many email services provide analytics and reports that can help you improve the performance of your emails.
You can also audit your social shares. If your site displays share counters on pages, you can measure social shares by looking at the post itself, or by entering the URL of the page or post into various online services. This should provide plenty of actionable data about areas where your competition is outperforming your site.
Also, think about approaching sites that are linking to your competitors with a better piece of content or a guest post idea on the same topic and see if you can persuade them to link to your site instead.
And finally, you can also audit your competitor’s websites. You can use many of the same tools that you used to analyze your own site to perform competitive analysis on your competitors’ sites.
This can help to improve your content performance, especially in areas like SEO or driving more traffic to your site.
While you won’t be able to access certain metrics about their website (such as bounce rate, average time on page, and conversion rate), there are things you can track, like who is ranking higher for the keywords you are targeting, number of backlinks, etc.
So in summary,
If your business has existing content, performing a content audit is key to an effective content strategy.
Taking stock of what we have helps us know how we are doing and where we are going.
A content audit can benefit your business in many ways. It helps to align your content with your goals, improve user experience, identify missing gaps and new opportunities, make better data-driven decisions, and improve your content strategy’s overall performance and results.
And depending on how much content you have, a content audit can be a major task, so use tools to help you. Keep it manageable, but take action. Don’t just let the information sit in a spreadsheet.
After performing an initial content audit, schedule regular content reviews to make sure that there’s continuous improvement and better results in your business and your website.
And finally, remember that you can perform content audits in other areas of your business too, such as external content, other marketing channels, social shares, even audit your competition!
For more detailed information about what we’ve covered in this video, visit the tutorials and lessons listed on your screen.
So that’s all for this lesson.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at how to start implementing our content strategy by creating a content plan for our business.
Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.
This lesson covers deciding which content types and formats will best help your business reach its goals.
***
Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
This is module 5.
In the previous lesson, we looked at setting goals for our content.
In this lesson, we’ll look at the different types of content that we’ll include in our content strategy.
You can read about each of these content types, including the challenges of creating each of these types, recommended best practices, and links to useful tutorials, tools, and other helpful resources by visiting the URL on your screen.
I’ve listed them here, but I won’t go into each specific type in this lesson.
Content formats include not only common formats like text, images, video, and audio but also interactive formats, virtual and augmented reality, and live streaming.
What I do want to cover in this lesson are the key things to consider when making decisions about which content types you will use.
So, the first thing to consider is your target audience’s needs.
There are many different kinds of business models and what type of business you’re in will affect which types of content you should create to keep your audience engaged.
For example, if we look at these side-by-side charts of content types for B2B and B2C businesses, we can see that while both types of businesses use articles and videos, with B2B businesses, there’s more emphasis on using content types like webinars, case studies, and whitepapers, whereas B2C businesses focus more on using infographics, charts, and long articles.
So what kind of business are you in? What type of audience will you be creating content for?
The next area is knowing what types of content our audience wants to consume, do they prefer their information delivered in the form of blog posts, webinars, case studies, eBooks, etc.?
As we will see in the next lesson, knowing which types of content we will need to create for different stages of our audience’s buying journey is also important.
Resources are the other important area to consider when choosing content types.
These resources mostly have to do with our budget and what kind of team we have available to work on our content.
For example, if our content strategy requires the regular production of high-quality videos, then we obviously need to make sure that we have the budget to cover this and access to people with video production skills, plus the tools to create and edit video content, and so on.
That’s one of the challenges we talked about in module 2.
An important part of creating our content strategy, then, is working with budgets and knowing what percentage of our total marketing budget will be allocated to areas like content production and marketing activities.
So, to summarize what we have covered in this lesson…
To create an effective content strategy, we not only need to understand our target audience and set content goals, we also need to familiarize ourselves with different content types and formats,
We need to know what kind of business we are in, as different business models need different content types.
We need to understand our audience’s content preferences and which content types work best for different stages of the buyer journey,
We need to assess our resources in terms of the budget and team we have to work with, and then we have to decide which content types we’ll create to meet our audience’s needs within our available resources.
For more information about all of these areas, see the tutorials and lessons listed on the screen.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at doing a content audit, which is taking an inventory of our existing content to see how it’s performing and identify any gaps or opportunities that we may be missing out on.
Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.
This lesson covers how to use your target audience information to set SMART goals for your content, plus defining your business goals, aligning your content strategy with your business goals, and determining what you want to achieve with your content (e.g. drive traffic, generate leads, build brand awareness, etc.).
***
Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
This is module 4.
In the previous lesson, we looked at understanding our target audience.
In this lesson, we’ll look at setting content goals for our content strategy.
Setting content goals involves identifying what we want to achieve with our content, and then developing specific, measurable, and actionable targets to help us achieve these objectives.
Here are the general steps to follow when setting content goals:
First, identify our target audience. Understanding their demographics, interests, and pain points will inform the types of content that we should be creating.
Next, define our business objectives. We need to determine how our content will support our overall business objectives, such as driving website traffic, increasing conversions, building brand awareness, and so on.
Next, establish specific, measurable, and actionable goals: For each objective we set, we’ll need to create specific, measurable, and actionable goals that align with our objective. For example, “Increase website traffic by 30% within the next six months.”
Also, we need to prioritize our goals based on importance and feasibility. This will help us focus our resources on the content that creates the most impact.
We also need to regularly review and adjust our goals, because the digital landscape is always changing, and so what worked well before may not work as well now.
So, we need to make sure that our goals are current and feasible.
Another important area is to measure and analyze our content’s performance. Here, we can use analytics tools to track performance and measure the success of our content against our goals. This will then help us identify areas for improvement and allow us to make data-driven decisions instead of guessing.
By following these steps, we can set clear and measurable content goals that will align with our business objectives and that will help us achieve our desired outcomes.
So, let’s explore each of these areas now in a little more detail.
The first step is to identify our target audience.
We’ve already covered this in module 3, so if you need help identifying your target audience, just go back and review that module.
The next step is to identify our business objectives.
Before we can identify our business objectives, however, we should have a clear idea of our business vision, mission, and core values.
If you need help with any of these areas, then visit the URL on this screen for an in-depth tutorial.
The next step is to establish specific, measurable, and actionable goals. For each objective or goal that we specify, we need to create specific, measurable, and actionable goals that will align with our objectives.
For example, our goal might be to increase website traffic by 30% within the next six months.
We can use SMART goals to set specific, measurable, and actionable goals to help us achieve this objective.
At this point, we will also want to define the metrics that we will use to measure our results.
If you need help or more information on content metrics, visit the URL on the screen.
The next step is to prioritize our goals based on importance and feasibility.
This will help focus our resources on the content that will create the most impact.
When prioritizing content goals, it’s important to consider both the importance and the feasibility of each goal.
Importance refers to how closely the goal aligns with our overall objectives, while feasibility takes into account the resources, time, and any other constraints that can impact our ability to achieve the goal.
One way to prioritize content goals is to use a method like the Eisenhower Matrix, which separates goals into four categories based on their importance and feasibility:
So…
Important and feasible are goals that should be prioritized and tackled first, as they will have the greatest impact and can be completed with the resources that we have available.
For example, creating product announcement blog posts when new products are released or existing products are updated would likely fall into this category.
The next category is important but not feasible. These goals are important, but can’t be completed given current constraints, so we might need to put these on hold or reevaluate them later to determine if they can be made more feasible.
An example of a goal that might fall in this category is producing a high-budget video ad campaign when we’ve only been given a very low budget to create our content.
Not important but feasible goals are not critical to our objectives, but could still be achieved within our available resources.
These goals can be completed if time allows but should be given lower priority than more important goals.
For example, translating website pages into another language that isn’t critical for our target audience would probably fall into this category.
And the last category is not important and not feasible, If goals are neither important nor feasible, then just drop them. They are not important and they are not feasible.
When using a method like the Eisenhower Matrix, it’s important to list all of our goals, then evaluate each one, add them into one of these four categories, and make a decision based on the category we’ve selected.
The next step is to continually review and adjust our goals.
As mentioned earlier, the digital landscape is always changing, so what worked well before may not work as well now.
The last step is to track our goals and measure and analyze our content performance using analytics tools. This will help us identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions.
So, to summarize what we have covered in this lesson, setting content goals involves steps like:
Identifying our target audience
Defining our business objectives
Establishing SMART goals
Prioritizing our goals according to importance and feasibility
Regularly reviewing and adjusting our goals to make sure they remain aligned with our objectives, and
Measuring and analyzing our content performance against the goals that we have set.
For more information about each of these areas, see the tutorials and lessons that are listed on the screen.
That’s all for this lesson.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at the different types of content to include in our content strategy.
Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.
This lesson looks at ways and methods to identify the demographics, interests, and pain points of your target audience, create user personas for your business, and understand the buyer’s journey and what types of content will be most relevant and valuable to your audience at each different stage of their journey.
***
Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
Hello and welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
So far, we’ve looked at what a content strategy is, why your business needs one, and the benefits and importance of having a clear and defined content strategy in module 1.
We then looked at the main challenges of managing content effectively and what we need to put in place before we can develop an effective content strategy. That was module 2.
This is module 3, and this lesson is all about identifying and understanding our target audience.
Understanding our target audience is essential to develop an effective content strategy that will help our business succeed.
By identifying key characteristics of our target audience such as demographics, their interests, and their pain points, we can then create content that will speak directly to their needs, desires, and motivations.
So, how do we identify our target audience?
First, let’s look at what we are trying to understand about our audience.
Demographics relates to a market or a sector of the population.
Understanding our audience’s demographics lets us tailor our content strategy and content to better meet the specific needs of our customers.
Demographics relates to attributes like age, gender, income, education, occupation, geographical location, maybe even their family structure or lifestyle, if that’s important, and psychographics.
Psychographics is similar to demographics, but it deals with attributes that are harder to observe, such as mental and emotional characteristics and motives, whereas demographics are more visible and easier to determine.
So, things like your audience’s values, beliefs, and attitudes are psychographic attributes, whereas age, income, and occupation are demographics.
Now, the next set of information that we want to identify relates to our target audience’s interests and hobbies.
Understanding our target audience’s interests and hobbies can help us create messaging and advertising content that will fit their preferences and resonate with our audience, keep them engaged longer with our business or website, and create a more personalized approach that will help to increase our chances of attracting new customers and retaining existing ones.
To identify the interests and hobbies of our audience, we need to know things like:
What do they like to do in their free time?
What are they interested in learning more about?
Here are some examples of questions we can ask to uncover these answers:
“What are some of your favorite hobbies or activities outside of work?”
“What are some of the books, movies, or TV shows you enjoy?”
“What are some of the websites or blogs you like to visit?”
“What kind of music do you like to listen to?”
“What kind of events or activities do you like to attend?”
“What kind of sports or fitness activities are you interested in?”
“What kind of hobbies or activities do you enjoy with your family?”
“What are some of your favorite travel destinations or dream vacation spots?”
“What are some of the volunteer or community activities you’re involved in?”
“What are some of the causes or social issues that you care about?”
Another area we want to identify about our target audience are their pain points.
Their challenges, problems, and frustrations.
So what problems are they trying to solve?
And how can your product or service help to address these pain points?
Understanding our audience’s pain points lets us tailor our content to address their specific needs, desires, and concerns.
Now, how do we gather data about our target audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points?
If you visit the page listed on this slide, you will find more detailed information about each of these sources and links to tools and resources that you can use to gather this data.
Another way to identify your target audience is to create user personas for your business.
A user persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer.
User personas provide a detailed and specific picture of who your target audience is, what their needs and goals are, and how they think and behave.
You create a user persona from the data and research gathered about your target audience.
And these allow you to address your ideal customer when creating your content.
And there are a number of free user persona online generators that you can use to create user personas.
Visit the URL on the screen for a list of free tools.
The other important area that will help you identify your target audience and their needs, is understanding your customer’s buyer journey.
The buyer journey is the process that a potential customer goes through before making a purchase.
The stages of the buyer journey are typically divided into Awareness, Consideration, Decision, and Retention.
In the awareness stage, your potential customer becomes aware of a problem or need that they have.
In the consideration stage, our potential customer is actively searching for a solution to meet their needs and is considering their options.
In the decision stage, potential customers have made a decision to solve their problem, and they are now looking for the best solution, and they are ready to make a purchase.
In the retention stage, the customer has already purchased the product or service and is now using it.
Since they have already purchased, this stage is not typically considered to be part of the customer’s purchasing journey but your content strategy still needs to accommodate this audience group in terms of retaining them and building customer loyalty.
Visit the URL on the screen for more details on understanding your customer’s buyer journey, the types of content you can create for each different stage of their journey, and useful tools and resources that will help you save time.
So, to summarize what we have covered in this lesson, let’s look at the action steps that we need to take to identify our target audience.
One, gather data about their demographics, interests, and pain points. There are various methods you can use to do this,
Two, create user personas. There are free online user persona generator tools that you can use, and
And three, understand the customer’s buyer journey and the best content types to help them at each stage.
For detailed tutorials covering each of these areas and links to tools and resources, just visit the URLs shown on your screen.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at setting content goals to create an effective content strategy.
Thank you for watching this video and I’ll see you in the next lesson.
This lesson covers what you need to know and do before you can create an effective content strategy for your business.
You will also learn about the challenges of managing content effectively and what you need to put in place first.
***
Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
This is module 2.
In module 1, we introduced you to the course and looked at what a content strategy is, why your business needs one, and the benefits and importance of having a clear content strategy.
In this lesson, we are going to look at what you need to know and do before you can create a content strategy for your business.
Now, there are obvious and not-so-obvious challenges to managing content effectively.
So, let’s look at some of the obvious challenges first.
These include things like:
Having too much content. The more content you have, the more content you have to manage. Without good content management systems, it’s hard to keep your content organized and easy to find, and important information can end up getting lost or overlooked.
It’s also harder to coordinate your content when you have multiple people or teams contributing to it.
Also, having outdated, inaccurate, or obsolete information can be confusing for users and harm your credibility.
Another challenge is adapting to new technologies and platforms. Your business needs to keep up with new technologies, systems, and tools to stay current and manage its content effectively.
Keeping sensitive or confidential content secure and protected from unauthorized access or leaks is another challenge.
And so is tracking and measuring content performance, which is essential for making informed decisions.
Keeping content integrated and aligned with other systems and processes within your organization is also challenging, but important to optimize efficiency and avoid confusion or duplication of effort.
And budget and resources constraints is a challenge for all businesses, especially small businesses.
Now, the not-so-obvious challenges of managing your content effectively don’t become apparent until you actually start trying to manage your content effectively.
Then you discover that effective content management is a Catch-22 situation.
If you are not familiar with this expression, think about the dilemma that most people face when they first try to get a job.
You’ve probably heard people complain that no one will give you a job if you don’t have experience, but how can you get experience if no one will give you a job?
That’s an example of a Catch-22 situation.
Similarly, when it comes to managing your content effectively, you discover that “You can’t plan, produce, promote, and manage your content effectively until you have put in place the right systems and processes to plan, produce, promote, and manage your content effectively.”
But then you are faced with the challenge of do you put content management systems in place first and then start to create and promote your content, or do you start creating and promoting your content first and then worry about putting systems in place later?
As we will see, this has a significant and direct impact on our content strategy.
So, let me explain what I mean.
Your content strategy is part of your content management system, so if we start creating and promoting content before developing our content strategy and putting systems in place to manage our content effectively, then what’s the point of having a content strategy?
Let’s go back to our definition of a Content Strategy from module 1.
A content strategy is…
A plan for creating, publishing, and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to achieve specific business goals and objectives.
A content strategy also helps you:
Define who your target audience is and understand their needs and interests
Create the right content to address their needs and speak to their interests
Determine the most effective channels for distributing your content
And track and measure performance so you can continue to improve your results.
So, without a content strategy, we are just creating content blindly with no real direction or ways to measure and track our content’s performance, so it’s all going to be hit-and-miss and guesswork and assumptions.
As we will see later in this course, eventually your business will end up with a very difficult mess to deal with and many more problems to try and sort out.
So we want to put a content strategy in place before we start creating and promoting our content.
But, this has its own challenges.
The first challenge is that a content strategy involves all areas of our business because content impacts all areas of our business.
Even writing a simple article or blog post for our website has to take into account areas like marketing and research, product development, accounting, legal stuff related to what you can and can’t say in your content, and even different types of technology like servers and different applications that are used by different teams or departments to store and send information, and so on.
You can read more about this challenge by following the link on your screen.
The point is that our content strategy has to take all of this into account.
The next challenge is that creating high-quality content and managing our content effectively requires quite a sizeable team.
There are many different roles involved in the process of planning, creating, promoting, and managing content.
So, whether you’re an individual blogger or part of a larger organization, all of these roles and responsibilities have to be met, so our content strategy also needs to take all this into account.
This leads to the next challenge, which is that it takes significant resources to create high-quality content and manage this content effectively.
You need a sizeable budget and personnel with the right skills and expertise, plus spending time doing content research, content planning, and documenting systems.
All of this is time-consuming and takes resources away from other areas of our business.
Most businesses operate with very limited resources and have very little time to devote to areas like content planning and documenting systems, so that’s a big challenge when it comes to creating a content strategy.
And finally, the last of the “not-so-obvious” challenges only becomes obvious when we try to start putting our content strategy together.
And this challenge is that all of the basic business foundations need to be in place for our content strategy to be truly effective.
Let’s think about what this means.
If the aim of our content strategy is to help our business achieve specific goals and objectives, then our business first needs to define those goals and objectives before we can put a strategy together to achieve these goals and objectives.
But it’s not just setting goals and objectives.
Before we can put an effective content strategy together, we also need to have a clear marketing plan, and this comes from having a clear marketing strategy, which comes from having a clear business plan, which comes from having a clear business strategy, which comes from having clear strategic goals and objectives, which come from having a clearly-stated business vision, mission statement, and core values.
If all of these processes are not clearly defined, then our content strategy will not be as effective.
So, let’s recap what we need to know and do before developing a content strategy for our business.
First, we need to be aware of the challenges of managing content effectively and
Then, we need to make sure that all of the basic business foundations are in place.
I’ve listed a number of articles on this screen that I recommend you read, as these cover in more detail everything that we’ve talked about in this lesson.
So, make sure to visit the website and if you have subscribed to the free email course, you will get additional information on everything that we cover in this video course.
So, that’s the end of this lesson.
In the next video, we’ll cover module 3, which is all about understanding our target audience.
Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.
Learn how your customer’s buyer journey impacts your content strategy.
Content Strategy: Understanding The Customer’s Buyer Journey
Understanding your customer’s buyer journey can increase your chance of creating content that turns prospects into buyers.
The buyer journey is the process that a potential customer goes through before making a purchase.
Understanding each stage of your customer’s buyer journey will help you create an effective content strategy to deliver content that your audience will resonate and want to engage with.
Creating content that aligns with the buyer journey also requires an understanding of your target audience, their pain points, and what resonates with them.
In this section, we look at the different stages of the buyer’s journey and the challenges of mapping your content strategy to each stage.
***
Stages Of The Buyer Journey
Your content strategy is a plan for creating, publishing, and managing content that aligns with the goals of your business.
One way to implement a content strategy is by mapping it to the stages of the buyer journey.
Different stages of the buyer journey.
The buyer journey typically consists of the following stages: awareness, consideration, decision, and retention.
Let’s look at each stage in more detail:
Awareness
In the awareness stage, a potential customer becomes aware of a problem or need that they have. They may not yet be familiar with your brand or product (or even know it exists), but they are starting to do research to find a solution to their problem.
At this stage, it’s important to provide educational content that helps to inform and educate your audience about the problem they are facing and potential solutions.
Content that can be helpful in this stage includes blog posts, infographics, and social media posts that educate and inform the customer about the problem or need and why it is important.
The challenge at this stage is to capture the attention of potential customers who may not be familiar with your brand or solution. It can be difficult to create content that stands out in a crowded marketplace and educates potential customers about the problem or need in a way that is both engaging and informative.
Consideration
In the consideration stage, the potential customer is actively searching for a solution to meet their needs and is considering their options. They may be comparing different products or services, and are looking for more detailed information to help them make a decision.
At this stage, it’s important to provide more detailed information about your product or service such as content that showcases the features and benefits of your product or service and helps to differentiate you from your competitors and to show how it can help to solve their problem or meet their needs.
Case studies, product demos, webinars, and testimonials that help the customer compare solutions and understand the benefits of your product or service can all be valuable types of content at this stage.
The challenge at this stage is to provide potential customers with the information they need to make a decision, while also differentiating your solution from the competition. It can be difficult to create content that is both informative and persuasive, and that addresses potential objections to your solution.
Decision
In the decision stage, potential customers have made a decision to solve their problem, they are now looking for the best solution, and are ready to make a purchase. They have likely narrowed down their options and are now deciding between your product or service and those of your competitors.
At this stage, it’s important to provide content that highlights the unique value of your product or service, helps to build trust and confidence in your business and persuades the potential customer to choose your brand.
Content that can be helpful in this stage includes whitepapers, customer reviews, case studies, testimonials, free trials, and consultation calls that help the customer make a final decision about your product or service.
The challenge at this stage is to convert potential customers into paying customers by providing them with the information they need to make a decision. It can be difficult to create content that is both trustworthy and compelling and that overcomes any remaining objections a potential customer may have.
Retention
At this stage, the customer has purchased your product or service and is now using it.
While this stage is not typically considered a part of their purchasing journey (as they have already purchased), your content strategy still needs to accommodate customers in terms of retaining them and building customer loyalty.
Content that can be helpful in this stage includes user guides, tutorials, and customer success stories that help the customer make the most of your product or service and promote customer loyalty.
The challenge at this stage is to keep customers engaged and satisfied with your solution, so they remain loyal and continue to use your product or service. It can be difficult to create content that is relevant, useful, and engaging for an already converted customer.
Tools To Better Understand Your Customer’s Buyer Journey
It’s a good idea to test your created content with real users and iterate on the basis of the feedback received.
Here are some tools you can use to better understand your customer’s purchase journey:
Google Analytics: This free web analytics service offered by Google tracks and reports website traffic. It can help you understand how customers are interacting with your website and identify areas of improvement.
Google Search Console – GSC can also provide excellent data on what people are doing on your site, depending on how your content is performing.
Mixpanel: An analytics platform that allows you to track user engagement and behavior on your website and mobile apps. It can help you understand the customer’s journey through your digital properties.
Kissmetrics: A marketing analytics platform that helps you track and analyze customer behavior. It can help you understand how customers are interacting with your website, what actions they are taking, and where they are dropping off in the buyer journey.
Heap: An analytics platform that automatically tracks user behavior on your website and mobile apps. It can help you understand how customers are using your digital properties and identify areas for improvement.
UserTesting: A user research platform that allows businesses to conduct usability tests on your website and mobile apps. It can help you understand how customers are interacting with your digital properties and identify areas for improvement.
Qualaroo: A tool that allows you to conduct surveys on your website and mobile apps. It can help you understand customer feedback, their preferences, and their pain points.
Hotjar: A website analytics tool that provides heat maps, session recordings, feedback polls, and other data to help you understand how your customers interact with your website, which will inform the buyer journey
SurveyMonkey: A survey creation and analysis tool that you can use to conduct customer research and gather data about the buyer journey.
These are just a few examples of tools that are available to help you understand your customer’s buyer journey. The best tool will depend on your specific needs and the data that your business wants to collect.
To learn more about each of the content types you can create for each stage of the purchase journey, see this lesson: Content Types
Your Content Strategy vs Your Customer’s Buying Journey
If you have a thorough understanding of your customer’s buying journey and find that your content strategy is not working as effectively as you expect, the problem may simply be…people.
People don’t do what businesses want them to do. They do what they want to do.
And they have too many options, too many choices, and too many needs to take into consideration that are influencing their buying decisions.
“Consumers don’t follow a reliable, linear purchase process anymore. Too many research channels, feedback loops, and competing messages mean too few opportunities for your content to exert influence – if they could even find it – before they make a buying decision.”
So, while it’s important to understand how the customer sees their buying process and align your content strategy to it, to be aware of the challenges of creating content for each stage of the buyer journey, and to keep in mind that the stages of the buyer’s journey may vary depending on your industry, product, or service, and target audience, the complexity of today’s buying decisions may require using a more flexible approach.
For example, in the video below, Ali Wert, a senior director of content strategy for global software company Appfire, discusses the perils of aligning your content strategy too closely along a traditional funnel or linear buyer’s journey and ending up with “funnel vision” and “random acts of content.”
Ali suggests using different strategic frameworks for keeping your content strategy aligned with your business goals while taking the guesswork out of content planning.
According to Ali, mapping the different frameworks referenced in the video and article above against your content audit and content calendar can deliver a repeatable strategy that is consistent, scalable, and more closely connected to your business goals.
Another approach as discussed in this article is to build a process in your content strategy focused on creating valuable content that meets Google’s EAT guidelines at each stage of the buyer journey based on researching, understanding, and delivering what your audience wants, instead of what your business wants.
In other words, if you want your content strategy to perfectly align with the customer’s buyer journey, your content must be driven by your audience’s interests and needs over those of your brand’s products and services.
Customer Buyer Journey vs Marketing Funnel
Something else to keep in mind is the difference between the customer’s buyer journey and a marketing funnel.
The customer’s buyer journey refers to the process that your customer goes through as they move from being aware of a problem or need, to researching and evaluating options, to making a purchase, and finally to becoming a repeat customer.
It encompasses all of the different stages that your customer goes through as they make a purchase decision, including the emotional and psychological factors that influence their behavior.
The marketing funnel, on the other hand, is a framework that businesses use to understand and guide the customer’s buyer journey.
It is a visual representation of the different stages that customers go through as they move from awareness to purchase, and it is often used to track and measure the effectiveness of different marketing strategies.
A marketing funnel is a tool that helps businesses understand their customer’s behavior and tailor their marketing efforts accordingly.
A marketing funnel typically includes the following stages:
Awareness: The first stage of the marketing funnel, where potential customers become aware of a problem or need and start searching for solutions. Examples include social media ads, blog content, and search engine optimization.
Interest: The second stage of the marketing funnel, where potential customers express interest in a product or service and begin to gather information. Examples include email campaigns, webinars, and product demos.
Evaluation: The third stage of the marketing funnel, where potential customers compare different options and evaluate which product or service best meets their needs. Examples include customer reviews, case studies, and free trials.
Decision: The fourth stage of the marketing funnel, where potential customers decide to purchase a product or service. Examples include special offers, discounts, and personalized recommendations.
Post-purchase: The final stage of the marketing funnel, where customers have made a purchase and are encouraged to continue their engagement with the brand through loyalty programs, upselling, and customer retention strategies.
Retention: The stage of the marketing funnel where the customers are retained by providing excellent customer service, after-sales support, and providing a positive experience. Examples include surveys, follow-up emails, and rewards programs.
Advocacy: The stage of the marketing funnel where the customers become advocates for the brand and promote it to their friends, family, and acquaintances. Examples include referral programs, customer testimonials, and brand ambassadors.
In summary, the customer’s buyer journey is the actual process that a customer goes through while the marketing funnel is a tool that businesses use to understand and guide that process.
Buyer Journey – FAQs
Here are frequently asked questions about the buyer’s journey:
What is the buyer’s journey?
The buyer’s journey is the process that potential customers go through from awareness of a problem or need to the purchase of a solution. It typically consists of three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision.
What are the stages of the buyer’s journey?
The stages are:
Awareness: The buyer realizes they have a problem or need.
Consideration: The buyer defines their problem and researches options to solve it.
Decision: The buyer chooses a solution and makes a purchase.
Why is the buyer’s journey important?
Understanding the buyer’s journey helps businesses tailor their marketing and sales strategies to meet the needs of potential customers at each stage, improving conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
How can content support the buyer’s journey?
Content can educate and engage potential customers at each stage of the journey, providing valuable information that helps them make informed decisions.
What types of content work best at each stage of the buyer’s journey?
For the awareness stage, content like blog posts or educational videos can help raise awareness of a problem. In the consideration stage, ebooks or comparison guides can assist buyers in evaluating solutions. During the decision stage, product demos or case studies can help buyers finalize their choice.
Summary
Understanding the buyer journey and the types of content that will be most relevant and valuable to your audience at each stage is essential for creating an effective content strategy.
By providing the right content at the right time, you can help guide potential customers through the buyer journey and increase the chances of turning them into customers.
The complexity of today’s buying decisions may require a more flexible approach than aligning your content strategy too closely along a traditional funnel or linear buyer’s journey.
Identify your target audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points to create a more targeted content strategy.
Content Strategy: Identifying Your Target Audience
Identifying your target audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points helps to create a more targeted content strategy.
Understanding your target audience is crucial for developing a successful content strategy and creating content that speaks directly to your audience’s needs and desires.
In this section, we expand on our lesson on how to create a content strategy by providing additional information, resources, and tools to help you identify your target audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points, describe the potential downsides of using these methods, and look at ways to segment your audience to improve your results.
Researching Your Target Audience
How do you go about identifying the demographics, interests, and pain points of your target audience?
First, let’s understand what we’re looking for:
1. Target Audience Demographics
Demographics relates to a market or sector of the population.
Having access to demographic data is essential for all businesses.
By collecting and analyzing demographic data using the resources and tools listed further below, you can gain valuable insights into the characteristics and preferences of your target audience, and tailor your products, services, and content strategy to better meet the needs of your customers.
There are several key demographics that can help you identify and better understand your target audience:
Age: The age range of your target audience can affect the language, messaging, and design of your marketing materials.
Gender: Understanding the gender distribution of your audience can help inform the tone and imagery you use in your marketing.
Income: Knowing the income level of your audience can help you understand their purchasing power and tailor your marketing messages accordingly.
Education: The level of education of your target audience can affect how they process information, so it can be helpful to know their education level when crafting marketing messages.
Occupation: Knowing the occupations of your target audience can help you understand their interests and needs, as well as their work schedule and lifestyle.
Geography: The location of your target audience can affect their cultural background, climate, and other factors that can shape the product or service you offer.
Family Structure: Knowing whether your target audience is made up of singles, couples, or families with children can help you understand their needs and preferences.
Lifestyle: Understanding the lifestyle of your target audience can help you identify their interests, hobbies, and values, which can inform your marketing messages and branding.
Psychographics: Audience’s personality, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles can also play a role. They can be segmented as Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards.
You may find that some of these factors are more relevant to your business than others. The important thing is to gather as much information as you can about your target audience so that you can create effective marketing strategies.
2. Target Audience Interests
Understanding your target audience’s interests and hobbies can help you create messaging and advertising content to fit their preferences and resonate with your audience, keep them engaged longer with your business or website, and create a more personalized approach to your business or product to increase the chances of attracting new customers and retaining existing ones.
Identifying the interests and hobbies of your target audience requires knowing the answer to questions like:
What do they like to do in their free time?
What are they interested in learning more about?
Here are some examples of questions you can ask to uncover answers to the above:
“What are some of your favorite hobbies or activities outside of work?”
“What are some of the books, movies, or TV shows you enjoy?”
“What are some of the websites or blogs you like to visit?”
“What kind of music do you like to listen to?”
“What kind of events or activities do you like to attend?”
“What kind of sports or fitness activities are you interested in?”
“What kind of hobbies or activities do you enjoy with your family?”
“What are some of your favorite travel destinations or dream vacation spots?”
“What are some of the volunteer or community activities you’re involved in?”
“What are some of the causes or social issues that you care about?”
There may be some specific interests and hobbies that are more relevant to your business or industry than others, so use your own judgment when asking questions.
Also, keep in mind that maintaining a neutral and respectful tone encourages people to share information about themselves.
3. Target Audience Pain Points
In addition to understanding your audience’s demographics and interests, it’s important to understand the challenges and frustrations that your target audience is facing.
What problems do they face in their daily lives? What problems are they trying to solve? How can your product or service help to address these pain points?
By understanding your audience’s pain points, you can tailor your content strategy and your marketing and advertising messages to address their specific needs, desires, and concerns.
There are many questions you can ask potential customers to identify their pain points. Some examples include:
“Can you tell me about the challenges you’re currently facing in [specific industry or area]?”
“How does [specific problem or task] currently impact your business or daily routine?”
“What are some of the biggest obstacles you encounter when trying to achieve [specific goal]?”
“What’s the biggest frustration you have with [specific product or service currently being used]?”
“How do you currently handle [specific problem or task] and are you satisfied with the results?”
“What are the most time-consuming aspects of [specific process or job function] for you?”
“What are some of the key metrics you track to measure success in [specific area], and how do you feel they are currently performing?”
“Can you walk me through the process you currently use for [specific task or problem], and where do you feel it could be improved?”
“What are the most important aspects of a solution for [specific problem], and how does your current approach measure up in those areas?”
“How does [specific pain point] affect your customer satisfaction/retention?”
It’s important to ask these questions in a conversational and non-threatening manner and to avoid leading questions. Also, it’s a good idea to ask follow-up questions to gather more details and context and be willing to listen actively.
4. Gather Data About Your Audience
Now that you understand what you are looking for, the next step is to gather as much data as you can about your target audience.
Here is a list of tools and resources that will help you identify the demographics, interests, and pain points of your target audience:
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that can provide insights into the demographics, interests, and behavior of your website visitors.
By integrating Google Analytics into your website, you can see where your visitors are coming from, what pages they are visiting, and how long they are staying on your site. You can also see what devices they are using and what their interests are based on their search history.
This information can be extremely useful for understanding the needs and pain points of your target audience.
However, keep in mind that while Google Analytics can provide a wealth of data about your website visitors, it only tracks traffic to a specific website, and therefore only captures data from individuals who visit that website.
In other words, Google Analytics may not capture information about users who do not visit your site. It may also be limited in terms of the depth of information it provides about individual users, so the data collected by Google Analytics may not be representative of your entire target audience.
Social Media Analytics
Most social media platforms have their own analytics tools that allow you to see who is engaging with your content and what their interests are.
For example, Facebook Insights allows you to see the demographics of your page followers, as well as what types of content they are most interested in.
While social media analytics tools can provide insights into the demographics and interests of your followers and this can help you tailor your social media strategy to better meet the needs of your target audience, they may not accurately represent the broader population you are targeting.
This is because social media analytics tools only track activity and engagement on a specific social media platform, and therefore only capture data from individuals who use that platform.
Additionally, these tools may not capture the full range of conversations and interactions happening on social media, particularly if they are not directly related to your brand, or provide detailed information about the demographics of users. This makes it difficult to accurately represent the demographics of your target audience.
Surveying your customers directly can give you valuable insights into their demographics, interests, and pain points.
By asking targeted questions and gathering feedback, you can get a better understanding of what your customers need and how you can address their pain points.
There are many online survey tools available that allow you to create and distribute surveys to your customers.
Keep in mind that while customer surveys can be a useful tool for collecting and analyzing customer feedback, there are a few potential downsides to consider.
One potential downside is that customer surveys may not accurately represent the demographics, interests, and pain points of your entire target audience.
This is because surveys may be subject to biases such as self-selection (i.e., only certain types of customers may choose to participate) and social desirability (i.e., respondents may give answers they think are more acceptable rather than their true opinions), and only capture data from individuals who choose to participate.
In addition, customer surveys can be time-consuming and costly to administer, and may not yield a high response rate.
Market Research Firms
Market research firms are companies that specialize in conducting market research and can provide detailed insights into the demographics, interests, and pain points of your target audience.
These firms often have access to a wide range of data sources and can conduct in-depth surveys and focus groups to gather information.
Hiring a market research firm can be a useful option if you don’t have the time or resources to conduct research on your own.
Market research firms can provide valuable insights into the demographics, interests, and pain points of a target audience, but there are a few potential downsides to consider.
One potential downside is that the data collected by market research firms may be expensive to access, which may not be feasible for all businesses.
In addition, market research firms may not be able to provide real-time data or have access to the most up-to-date or comprehensive data, which can be a limitation for businesses looking to make timely decisions.
Online Focus Groups
Online focus groups can be a useful way to gather insights from a targeted group of people.
Participants are typically recruited based on specific demographics or interests, and they are asked to participate in discussions or complete tasks related to a particular product or service.
Online focus groups can be a useful tool for gathering feedback and valuable insights into the needs and pain points of your target audience, but there are a few potential downsides to consider.
One potential downside is that online focus groups only capture data from individuals who choose to participate, and therefore may not accurately represent the demographics, interests, and pain points of your entire target audience. In addition, online focus groups can be time-consuming and costly to administer, may not yield a high response rate, and may be subject to biases such as groupthink.
Interviews With Industry Experts
Talking to people who are knowledgeable about your industry can give you insights into the needs and pain points of your target audience.
These experts may be able to provide valuable perspectives on current trends and challenges in the industry, and they may be able to recommend solutions to common pain points.
Interviews with industry experts can provide valuable insights into the demographics, interests, and pain points of a target audience, but there are a few potential downsides to consider.
One potential downside is that interviews with industry experts only capture data from a small number of individuals, therefore, their perspectives may be limited to their own experiences and may not represent the broader market.
In addition, interviews with industry experts can be time-consuming and costly to conduct, and may not yield a high response rate.
If you find that surveys are too expensive to glean the information you need, conducting qualitative interviews with subject matter experts that have a deep understanding of your target audience can provide you with similar great insights.
Customer Feedback And Review Platforms
Customer feedback and review platforms allow you to see what customers are saying about your product or service, which can give you insights into their needs and pain points.
Review sites offer customers the opportunity to leave feedback about their experiences. Reading through these reviews and analyzing the data can give you a sense of what people like and dislike about your product or service, the types of products and services customers are looking for, as well as their preferred methods of communication and interaction with a business.
By understanding these preferences, you can gain valuable insights into your customers and tailor your marketing efforts, product development, customer experiences, and content creation efforts to better meet their needs and focus on activities that lead to increased satisfaction and loyalty.
One of the primary benefits of using customer feedback and review platforms is that they provide a wealth of information about the demographics of your target audience. This can include information about age, gender, location, and other characteristics that can be useful for targeting specific groups of customers.
In addition to demographic information, customer feedback and review platforms can also provide insights into the interests and preferences of your target audience.
For example, if a large percentage of your customers are interested in a particular type of product or service, this can be a valuable piece of information to consider when developing new products or marketing campaigns.
Conversely, customers often leave reviews and feedback to highlight issues or problems they have experienced with a business or product. By collecting and analyzing this feedback, you can identify common problems or frustrations that your customers are experiencing, and use this information to improve your products, services, and your content, leading to improved overall customer experience and increased customer satisfaction.
Here are some customer feedback and review platforms that you can use to gather insights from your customers:
Yelp: This review platform allows customers to leave feedback about their experiences with local businesses. Yelp is particularly popular for restaurants, but it also covers a wide range of businesses.
Amazon: The e-commerce giant allows customers to leave feedback about the products they have purchased on their platform. Amazon reviews are an important factor for many customers when deciding whether to make a purchase.
Google Business Profile: This platform allows businesses to manage their online presence on Google, including their Google Maps listing and Google Reviews. Google Business allows customers to leave reviews about their experiences with a business. Researching your (and your competitor’s) customer feedback can provide valuable insights about your target audience’s demographics, needs, and pain points.
TripAdvisor: This travel review platform allows customers to leave feedback about their experiences with hotels, restaurants, and other travel-related businesses. TripAdvisor is a popular resource for travelers when researching their options.
Trustpilot: This review platform allows customers to leave feedback about their experiences with a wide range of businesses. Trustpilot covers a wide range of industries and is used by businesses around the world.
G2: This review platform allows customers to leave feedback about their experiences with software and other business products. G2 is a popular resource for businesses looking to research and compare different products.
Capterra: This review platform allows customers to leave feedback about their experiences with software and other business products. Capterra covers a wide range of industries and is used by businesses around the world.
Glassdoor: This review platform allows employees to leave feedback about their experiences with their employers. Glassdoor is a popular resource for job seekers looking to research potential employers.
TrustRadius: This review platform allows customers to leave feedback about their experiences with software and other business products. TrustRadius covers a wide range of industries and is used by businesses around the world.
Customer Lobby: This review platform allows customers to leave feedback about their experiences with local businesses. Customer Lobby is particularly popular for service-based businesses, such as home service providers.
Keep in mind that while customer feedback and review platforms can be valuable sources of information for understanding your target audience, there are a few potential downsides to consider.
One potential downside is that they only capture data from individuals who choose to leave a review or feedback and therefore may not accurately represent the demographics, interests, and pain points of your entire target audience.
In addition, they may be subject to biases such as the “online disinhibition effect” (i.e., people may be more likely to leave negative reviews online than they would in person).
Industry Reports And Market Research Studies
Industry reports and market research studies can also provide valuable information about your target audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points.
Many industry associations and research firms publish reports on market trends and consumer behavior, and these reports can be a useful source of information for understanding your target audience.
Some of the potential downsides of using industry reports and market research studies to identify the demographics, interests, and pain points of your target audience include:
Cost: Some industry reports and market research studies can be quite expensive, and if you’re a small business or startup, this may not be a feasible option for you.
Time: Conducting a thorough market research study can take a significant amount of time, and if you’re on a tight deadline, you may not be able to wait for the results.
Relevance: Not all industry reports and market research studies will be relevant to your specific product or service and may not always be up-to-date or comprehensive, so you’ll need to carefully evaluate whether the information you’re getting is relevant to your target audience.
Demographic Data Sources
There are many online resources that can provide demographic data on different groups of people, including the age, gender, income, and education level of different population groups, which can be useful for targeting your marketing and content creation efforts.
Here are some sources of demographic data that you can use to gather information about different groups of people:
U.S. Census Bureau: The official source of demographic data for the United States. The Census Bureau conducts a census every 10 years and also publishes data from ongoing surveys and censuses on a range of topics, including age, gender, race, education, and income.
World Bank: This organization collects and publishes data on a wide range of topics, including demographics, for countries around the world.
United Nations: The United Nations publishes data on a wide range of topics, including demographics, for countries around the world.
Eurostat: The statistical office of the European Union, and it publishes data on a wide range of topics, including demographics, for countries in the EU.
Statistics Canada: The official source of statistical data for Canada, and it publishes data on a wide range of topics, including demographics.
Australian Bureau of Statistics: The official source of statistical data for Australia, and it publishes data on a wide range of topics, including demographics.
Office for National Statistics: The official source of statistical data for the United Kingdom, and it publishes data on a wide range of topics, including demographics.
Nielsen: This market research company collects and publishes data on a wide range of topics, including demographics, for countries around the world.
Pew Research Center: This research organization conducts polls and studies on a wide range of topics, including demographics.
Gallup: This research company conducts polls and studies on a wide range of topics, including demographics.
Demographic data sources can also be a valuable resource, but there are a few potential downsides to keep in mind:
Limited Information: Demographic data sources typically provide basic information such as age, gender, income, and location, but may not provide more detailed information about their interests, pain points, and lifestyles or be granular enough to be relevant to your specific target audience.
Data Quality: The quality of the data can vary depending on the source, so it’s important to make sure that you’re using a reputable source.
Data Privacy: Demographic data sources can raise privacy concerns as the data source may not be transparent about how the data was collected and if proper consent was obtained from the individual.
Online Forums And Communities
Participating in online forums or communities related to your industry can give you valuable insights into the needs and pain points of your target audience.
These forums and communities can be a great place to ask questions, share information, and get feedback from people who are interested in your industry
Here are some potential downsides to keep in mind when using online forums and communities to connect with your target audience and learn more about their interests and pain points:
Self-Selection Bias: People who participate in online forums and communities tend to be self-selected, meaning that they may not be representative of the larger population of your target audience and may be subject to biases such as groupthink.
Noise: Online forums and communities can be very noisy, with lots of different conversations and topics happening at the same time. It can be difficult to extract meaningful information from all of the noise.
Lack of Control: Since online forums and communities are not controlled by you, the administrator, or the company, it can be difficult to control the message and ensure that the information you’re getting is accurate.
Additional Methods
Additional tools and methods to identify key target audience information include:
Social media conversations – Knowing where your audience likes to engage (e.g. YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, etc.) will help you better understand them and their needs.
Competitor analysis – Instead of simply copying what your competitors are doing, look for any opportunities they are missing in terms of what your audience is asking for, such as content formats they are or are not using, and what areas they are not covering.
5. Segment Your Audience
Once you have a good understanding of your audience, you may find that you have multiple segments within your larger target audience.
For example, you might have one group of people who are interested in one thing, and another group that’s interested in something else.
By segmenting your audience, you can create more targeted and effective content to address people who have similar needs, values, or characteristics.
There are different kinds of market segments you can create to try and better understand your target audience. Below are the four main methods of market segmentation. You can also create more niche segments within the types below.
Typically, audiences can be segmented into four main methods of market segmentation (and you can create more niche segments within these):
Socio-demographic
This is one of the most common forms of segmentation, where you split up audiences based on observable, people-based differences like:
Sex
Age
Education
Occupation
Income
Marital status
Family size
Ethnicity/language
Religion
Demographic information is relatively easily accessible and low-cost to obtain.
Geographic
Segmenting your audience based on their location can help you better understand their needs and enable you to create content targeted to the characteristics of the area they live in, like:
Country, state, county, and zip code.
Climate
Population density
Urban, suburban or rural areas
Geographical segmentation can impact your content strategy in ways like creating content to address regional differences (e.g. language, interests, norms, and other attributes), different needs of people in different regions (e.g. people living in cold or warm climates, or people who follow different national sports, such as baseball in the US vs cricket in India), crafting location-specific ads and articles (e.g. for a small local business vs a company with a global presence), and so on.
Behavioral
Behavioral segmentation relates directly to how people interact with your brand or products.
You segment your audience based on behaviors like:
Benefits sought: What need a customer is aiming to meet or satisfy by purchasing a product?
Online shopping habits: Knowing a user’s online shopping habits on various sites can provide valuable insights into how to create content that will increase the likelihood of them shopping on your website.
Actions taken on a website: Tracking actions users take across your digital properties can help you better understand their interactions. For example, how long are they staying on your site? What types of content are they clicking on? Do they read your content (e.g. articles) through to the end?
Usage rate: Knowing whether someone is a heavy user, medium user, light user, or a non-user of your products lets you categorize and customize your content and messaging based on their usage rate.
Loyalty: You can categorize customers based on brand loyalty and tailor your content or marketing to how loyal they are to your brand.
Behavioral data is useful as it allows you to market more effectively to them and can be collected through various sources, including analytic tools, website cookies, purchase data in your customer relationship management software (CRM), third-party datasets, etc.
Psychographic
Psychographic segmentation is similar to demographic segmentation but deals with attributes that are harder to observe, such as mental and emotional characteristics and motives.
For example:
Core beliefs and values
Personality traits
Attitudes, opinions, and preferences
Interests, activities, and lifestyles
Psychographic segmentation gives you insight into why people may decide to purchase or not purchase your product, click on your ad and engage with you, or ignore your content.
For example, let’s say you sell products for the home, survey a group of people in a similar demographic, and find that some members of your audience are very enthusiastic about their pets.
You could now target your content with this information and emphasize a pet-friendly home environment.
Other audience segmentation methods include classifying customers based on their “transactional worth”, i.e. how much they’re likely to spend on products, how many purchases they make, how often they purchase, and the value of the items purchased (value segmentation), characteristics of businesses such as their industry, revenue, number of employees and location (firmographic segmentation), generational segmentation (e.g. Gen Z, Millenials, Generation X, Baby Boomers, etc), lifestage segmentation (grouping people based on which stage of their life they are at), or seasonal segmentation (users who buy different items at different times of the year, such as major holidays).
Segmenting your audience has many benefits when developing a content strategy, including improving the focus of your business resources for more targeted content creation, improving the performance of your content marketing campaigns, identifying new audience groups to target with your content, and informing decisions related to other areas, like content distribution.
6. Create User Personas
User Persona – Generated by Smaply. Source: Smaply
A user persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer based on data and research about your target audience.
User personas provide a detailed and specific picture of who your target audience is, what their needs and goals are, how they think and behave, and allow you to address your (visualized or imagined) ideal customer when creating your content.
Creating a user persona is an important step in developing your content strategy because it allows your business to focus its efforts on the people who are most likely to be interested in your products or services and create more effective content marketing campaigns, ultimately reaching and satisfying your target audience.
Basically, a user persona lets you have a picture in your mind of who you are addressing when you create your content.
You can then speak to that person’s demographics, their interests, and their pain points in a more relatable way.
Some of the key benefits of creating user personas include:
Improving the effectiveness of marketing campaigns by targeting the right audience.
Improving the design of products and services by understanding the needs of the target audience.
Reducing the cost of marketing by focusing efforts on the most promising segments of the market.
Increased understanding of the target audience by helping to predict how they will react to new products, changes to existing products, or new marketing campaigns.
Free Online User Persona Generators
There are many free online user persona generators you can use that let you create a persona by providing information about demographics, behavior, motivation, and goals. Many also allow you to upload images to personalize the persona, import and export personas in CSV format, and download the persona as a PDF.
These free online user persona generators listed below offer an easy and quick way to create user personas for your business:
Hubspot – Hubspot’s “Make My Persona” tools and persona template allow you to create unlimited detailed buyer personas by providing information about demographics, behavior patterns, pain points, and goals. You can also download the personas as a PDF.
Xtensio – A user-friendly platform that allows you to create interactive and shareable personas. You can customize the template and add information such as demographics, goals, pain points, and quotes.
UXPressia – A feature-rich online persona generator tool that lets you create multiple user personas with name and photo generator, built-in presentation mode, data integration, and live collaboration features.
Userforge – A simple platform that guides you through the process of creating a persona with a series of questions about the target audience. You can also create multiple personas and export them as PDFs.
Smaply – The Smaply persona editor lets you create and customize persona templates for different target groups.
Buyer Persona Institute – A comprehensive tool that allows you to create a buyer persona by answering a series of questions about your target audience. It also includes resources for persona research and best practices.
EvenDigit – EvenDigit is a digital marketing agency that have created its own free-to-use online persona generator tool.
PersonaGenerator – This simple free online persona generator tool was built by Mobility Labs for their clients. Once you have created your persona, you can share it using the links in the right sidebar. You don’t need to create an account as long as you save your links (you can also have your links emailed so you won’t lose them).
7. Understand Your Customer’s Buyer Journey
Understanding the process that your target audience goes through before making a purchase is also very important for creating an effective content strategy.
Define the goals and objectives of your audience research: Clearly define the goals and objectives of the audience research, such as understanding the demographics, interests, and pain points of your target audience.
Identify key audience segments: Identify key audience segments to focus the research on, such as age, gender, location, and interests.
Gather existing data: Gather existing data on your audience, such as website analytics and customer feedback.
Conduct surveys: Conduct surveys to gather more in-depth information on the demographics, interests, and pain points of your target audience.
Interview customers: Conduct interviews with customers to gain deeper insights into their needs and behaviors.
Analyze social media data: Analyze social media data to understand the demographics, interests, and pain points of your target audience.
Monitor online communities: Monitor online communities and forums related to your industry to understand the conversations and interests of your target audience.
Create personas: Create personas that represent your target audience segments, including demographic information, interests, and pain points.
Evaluate the data: Evaluate the data gathered from all the research methods, and use it to identify patterns and insights.
Use the insights: Use the insights gathered from the audience research to inform your content, product, and marketing strategies.
Continuously monitor and update: Continuously monitor and update the audience research to keep it relevant and actionable.
Identify Your Target Audience And Improve Your Content Strategy
By identifying key audience characteristics such as demographics, interests, and pain points, you can create content that speaks directly to their needs, desires, and motivations and ultimately drive more success for your business.
There are many tools and resources you can use to identify the demographics, interests, and pain points of your target audience.
These tools and resources can be valuable but, it’s important to be aware of their potential downsides and to use them in conjunction with other methods to gather information about your target audience.
It’s important to take the time to gather data, identify interests and pain points, and segment your audience in order to create a targeted and effective content strategy.
Creating user personas and your customer’s buyer journey is also an important step in your content strategy, as it provides a valuable tool to help your business better understand its target audience.
Here are frequently asked questions about understanding your target audience:
What is a target audience?
A target audience is a specific group of people identified as the intended recipient of a product, service, or marketing message. These groups are defined by shared characteristics like demographics, interests, and behaviors.
How do I identify my target audience?
Identify your target audience through market research, which includes analyzing existing customer data, conducting surveys and interviews, and using competitive analysis to understand who engages with similar products or services.
Why is it important to understand my target audience?
Understanding your target audience helps tailor your marketing efforts to those most likely to purchase your product or service, improving ROI and engagement rates by addressing specific needs and preferences.
What factors should I consider when targeting an audience?
Consider factors such as age, location, gender, income level, education, occupation, and psychographics like values, hobbies, and lifestyle. These factors help refine marketing strategies and content creation.
How can I use digital tools to learn more about my target audience?
Utilize digital analytics tools, social media insights, and SEO data to gather information on your audience’s online behavior, preferences, and engagement patterns. This data informs content creation and campaign strategies.
What type of media should I use to engage my target audience?
Choose media types based on your audience’s preferences and behaviors. This could range from traditional media like print and TV to digital formats like social media, blogs, or videos, depending on where your audience spends their time.
How frequently should I revise my understanding of the target audience?
Regularly update your understanding of the target audience as market conditions, consumer behavior, and technologies evolve. Conduct ongoing research and monitor analytics to keep your strategies relevant and effective.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
This is Part 1 of our free How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business video course.
So that’s all for this lesson.
Content formats include not only common formats like text, images, video, and audio but also interactive formats, virtual and augmented reality, and live streaming.
What I do want to cover in this lesson are the key things to consider when making decisions about which content types you will use.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at doing a 
By identifying key characteristics of our target audience such as demographics, their interests, and their pain points, we can then create content that will speak directly to their needs, desires, and motivations.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at setting content goals to create an effective content strategy.
Now, there are obvious and not-so-obvious challenges to managing content effectively.
Now, the not-so-obvious challenges of managing your content effectively don’t become apparent until you actually start trying to manage your content effectively.
Your content strategy is part of your content management system, so if we start creating and promoting content before developing our content strategy and putting systems in place to manage our content effectively, then what’s the point of having a content strategy?
Let’s go back to our definition of a Content Strategy from module 1.
So, without a content strategy, we are just creating content blindly with no real direction or ways to measure and track our content’s performance, so it’s all going to be hit-and-miss and guesswork and assumptions.
The first challenge is that a content strategy involves all areas of our business because content impacts all areas of our business.
The next challenge is that creating high-quality content and managing our content effectively requires quite a sizeable team.
This leads to the next challenge, which is that it takes significant resources to create high-quality content and manage this content effectively.
And finally, the last of the “not-so-obvious” challenges only becomes obvious when we try to start putting our content strategy together.
So, let’s recap what we need to know and do before developing a content strategy for our business.
So, that’s the end of this lesson.
The buyer journey is the process that a potential customer goes through before making a purchase.
Understanding your target audience is crucial for developing a successful 