Digital content is the new currency, and your content strategy is your currency strategy. Building a digital content strategy is no small feat.
It’s no longer enough to publish content. Be thinking about how it’s going to reach your key audiences, how it’s going to be consumed, and how it’s going to be shared. To be successful, you need a digital content strategy.
Here is a step-by-step guide to building a digital content strategy that works.
Table of Contents
What Is a Digital Content Strategy?
Create a list of topics to write about. Decide what the topics are that you have the most interest in writing about. This will help you develop your topics for the digital content.
Write blogs, especially if they are of value to your audience. What you write can help you connect with your audience. However, when you write, you can explain your point of view. This helps you to get in front of your audience and affects your audience.
Create social media pages to write and post on them. You should take advantage of different social media channels to promote your blog posts.
Twitter is an excellent platform for creating content. Facebook is another great platform that you can use. There are various Facebook pages you can use to share your blog content.
Why Is a Content Strategy Important?
According to HubSpot, a content strategy can help improve your brand, increase visibility, make you a thought leader in your industry, create valuable content, and drive traffic.
In this article, I’ve outlined three types of content, how to create each type of content, and how to distribute your content on a variety of digital channels.
11 Types of Digital Content
Digital is in everything these days, and digital content has become a big part of our lives. Content marketing is an essential tool for any business looking to grow.
There are many types of digital content out there, but not all of it creates equal.
1. Long form blogs
Businesses that can create interesting and comprehensive long form content are the ones that reap the greatest rewards.
An ideal long form blog includes multiple points of view that are most relevant to the customer and the product, like case studies or industry white papers.
2. Short form blogs
Digital content about how to do things or sell a product. Many times, it even given short form digital content away for free.
“Short form content is low-res. They consume quickly it, which means inferior quality. The content will be too short to answer most questions and can promote another blog, product, or service.”
3. Tutorials
Video Tutorials are a great way to share knowledge. Do you know the difference between steaming wine and pouring wine?
Why is a potato boiler black when you put it in the microwave? It’s all in the cooking technique.
This is a common problem people ask in tutorial videos. They’re not just focusing on making the video entertaining, but they want to share the knowledge.
4. Videos
Videos are a big part of the new digital world. They are so popular right now that they’re becoming as important to building brand and content marketing as an article.
In fact, 72% of people want more videos on the internet.
Social media is driving the demand for more videos on the web. Brands find that through high-quality video content, you can win over your audience on social media.
Your audience will associate your brand with high-quality videos.
Videos make for the perfect way to showcase your brand and convey your message, all in a short amount of time.
Videos are also a great way to promote your brand.
6. Live Demonstrations
You can create a live demonstration of your product or service, right on your website.
7. Social media content
It will create much of your social media content through blog posts and social media shares.
Create an easy-to-follow and creative social media strategy to increase your influence and drive organic traffic to your site.
8. Infographics
These come in several styles. The most common type is simply a series of images that contain data about some element of the world.
Primary goal of an infographic is to make people stop and think about something. The first goal is usually to educate the user and make them curious about the data. The secondary goal is to persuade the user to make a certain decision based on what they have learned.
Regardless of whether the secondary goal is to achieve, an infographic is essentially an info graph.
When you’re creating an infographic, your primary goals should be to make it easy to understand and to improve the decision-making process of your reader.
Consider data that has already published. People like to get things “under their belt” before they hear the “truth”.
9. E-books
E-books are digital files with audio and visual content for various subjects. It can be free or they can cost money.
They’re usually formatted as one or two pages, so it’s best to go for the free ones to get an idea of what they’re like.
10. Customer Testimonials
Customer testimonials are an absolute must for any business looking to grow. They offer a unique opportunity for you to provide unique value, often by connecting customers with other shoppers through a link in your testimonial.
Letting potential customers know what they can expect from your business is essential, so testimonials are the perfect way to advertise your expertise.
11. Social Proof
Content marketing relies heavily on credibility and a recognizable brand. Digital marketing can make things easier, especially with web and app review sites.
Review sites give unbiased reviews of products, and the conversion rate is better than traditional marketing.
How to Create a Digital Content Strategy
Creating content for your business is a lot of work. It’s important to put thought into the type of content you create and where you distribute it.
If you don’t have a strategy for your content, then your message will end up diluted. This is because there are many avenues that people can use to consume content.
To help you figure out what are the best ways of creating content, here are some steps that will help you strategize your digital content.
Establish Goals
Your first step in creating a strategy is to know your goals. How much time and resources are you willing to invest into creating content? What results do you expect? How much traffic do you want?
You need to know what you want before you create your content. There are many tools that will help you determine the outcome of your content and guide you as you create the content.
For example, through a keyword and analytics tool, you can find out which keywords are popular, what people are searching for, and what type of content is the most popular.
Once you know your goals and have identified the most effective way to reach your goals, then you will know which tools and strategies to implement.
Know Your Audience
If you want to create valuable content for your business, you need to understand your audience.
Look at their website to see if there are any common themes you can focus on. Also, consider what your visitors love or hate about your brand. Then, use that information to create content that helps them.
Read Content
To create content that readers will actually want to read, you need to know a little about your readers. Read articles, watch videos, and research topics that relate to your industry.
Doing this will allow you to plan the kinds of topics you should write about and help you create the articles that your audience will want to read.
Perform Content Audits
The first step is to make sure that you are creating content that is actually useful to your target audience. This is easier said than done, but it’s something that should put at the top of your list.
In this way, your content should be useful, relevant, timely, shareable, and valuable. This will help to build a community around your company, and this will lead to more people consuming your content.
While this will still take time to develop, your audience will grow much more quickly if you are regularly delivering valuable content.
Once you know that you have covered all the important points, you can plan a content strategy. However, make sure you schedule time to implement this strategy.
Conduct Content Research
Before you create any content, you need to conduct a few things. First, you need to get a clear idea of your audience.
Who are your consumers and what do they like? What do they need from you and your company? You should also get a clear picture of your competitors.
From there, you can create content that will meet the needs of your audience. You’ll need to place more weight on what customers want, and less on what you want.
Creating a Content Plan for Your Business
Creating a content plan for your business will help you draw up a plan for the content that you’ll create for your website. You’ll need to be clear about what you want to share on your website, and how.
Create Digital Content
Before you can write a single word about your business or make any kind of marketing, you need to create some type of digital content. This will help you connect with your audience and show them what your business is all about.
For example, if your company sells exercise equipment, you can create an online blog about how to maintain an effective workout routine. This can help get your name out there, and can also use as a kind of PPC advertisement to attract more traffic to your website.
Publish and Promote Content
There are some different reasons that you need to publish content, like for networking, gaining new leads or promoting your brand. You should create content that people need and enjoy, as this will help you build a loyal customer base.
Create a Social Media Strategy
Use social media to create and promote content for your business. It’s important that you create a strategy for creating content that will interest your target audience.
You also need to place a lot of importance on your social media strategies.
Use a Social Media Platform
There are many social media platforms where you can create and promote your content. What’s important is that you select the platform that your audience is going to visit and use it optimally.
Get Feedback to improved
Ask yourself what type of content you’d like to create. According to Forbes, you need to write a set of principles that are important for your business.
It might include topics like innovation, international expansion, or diversity. Make sure you share these with your team so they can help you write your content.
You should also look for input from your audience. Whether it’s collecting content ideas or get feedback on what you’re writing, they’re crucial.
Find a media company to collaborate
Create a collaborative relationship with a media company. This is ideal if you have a well-established brand, such as a newspaper or a digital media platform.
The media company will write content that matches with the tone of your brand.
Some Powerful Benefits of Digital Content strategy
A digital content strategy helps you identify and focus on your target audiences by considering their needs, desires, and behaviors.
This allows you to create relevant and interesting content that will help attract new customers and keep existing ones engaged.
Here are some benefits of a Digital Content Strategy:
Increase traffic
It’s always recommended ensuring that your content is SEO optimized as well as user friendly, and when this is to combine with a strategic and well-targeted digital marketing strategy, you can easily increase the number of visitors to your website.
Increase conversions
By looking at your website analytics and your online analytics, you can quickly identify potential traffic sources and what type of content to create.
Build authority, and trust
Research has shown that customers want the lowest price and don’t have time to waste. A marketing expert can help you understand the customers’ concerns to create relevant content to build your authority and trust. The audience needs to feel engaged and that your content applies to their needs.
Organize and make sense
Think about your business from a human perspective: how can you organize your documents, calendar, to-do list and social media account so that you can more easily find what you are looking for? The right content is the missing link to help you find what you are looking for.
Increase brand awareness
Creating and disseminating great content will help increase awareness for your brand. You will build stronger relationships with your customers. And the more customers you have, the more likely you are to have conversions.
Defined credibility of your brand
Online content can boost your credibility by presenting your expertise and gaining the trust of your target audience. If you are an established company, your content can provide more credibility to your brand. This builds your credibility and helps build a powerful brand.
Greater customer engagement
Digital Content Strategy offers you the opportunity to interact with your customers. Your content made interactive by offering customer testimonials, letting your customers ask questions, or submitting other comments that add value to your content. This helps build a rapport with your customers.
Increase social media engagement
Social media has become an important tool to promote a brand. Social media channels, especially Twitter, allow you to interact and engage with customers and prospects.
Consumers have a much larger voice in the social media space and can give you feedback on their opinions and experiences. It is necessary for you to pay attention to their opinions and responses. Make sure you are making use of this source to make sure your social media channels are being used effectively.
Better conversion rates
In the digital world, it is more important to get conversion right because there is a significant amount of time that your target audience is in your digital marketing funnel.
Customers expect to interact with your company quickly and it will be difficult for your company to make up for lost time if you take too long to provide them with the right answer.
Increase quality leads
Brands that produce great content can boost their sales and customers. You can do this by publishing interesting articles, giving valuable insights, and communicating with your audience. It helps you to expand your reach and bring more customers and leads.
Increase Brand Affinity
It’s always a good idea to establish an emotional connection between your brand and your target audience. Making connections that are based on strong emotional attachments is the key to making your brand stand out.
One way you can do this is by connecting your brand to people’s everyday lives. For example, you might create content related to wedding registries. This type of content can help people share your story and show how you’ll be an integral part of their day-to-day lives.
Drives more sales
It’s often said personal recommendations drive that one-third of the consumer decisions. A digital content strategy helps you leverage your existing relationships, engage customers with valuable content, and build the trust needed to make recommendations. By linking content to an overall business strategy, you can better reach and grow your business.
Helps build better relationships with your customers
It’s impossible to build true business rapport with customers if you aren’t communicating with them directly. This digital content strategy helps you share valuable information with your customers and get the dialogue going to grow your business relationship.
Decreased marketing costs
Converting leads into customers is more cost effective when you direct your marketing budget where it will best reach your customers. By offering interesting content with interesting headlines, you will attract the customer who needs your products or services. You won’t have to outbid your competitors for that customer.
New opportunities for sales
Customers seek more information when they are ready to make a purchase. If you can help them with their inquiries, they will be more likely to complete a sale and become loyal customers.
Conclusion: Digital Content Strategy
With digital marketing, you have to be bold and work hard to produce the content that your customers will want to consume. Most business owners try to publish content that is not really thought through.
This can be very disappointing for those who are looking to create quality content that will turn into a profit-generating machine for their business.
That said, if you find you don’t really have a plan, it’s time to rethink the way you do things. It’s not about having all the answers. Instead, it’s about taking calculated risks and making your customers pay for the privilege.
