Your Content Strategy takes precedence over all other strategies, including brand strategy, communications strategy, and content marketing strategy.
Although a Content Strategy will have an impact on a Content Marketing Strategy, it is important not to get these two mixed up as they serve distinct purposes.
If you engage in content marketing, it means you are producing valuable content for your audience that also promotes your business. This means that your content marketing strategy is influenced by your marketing campaigns. It is likely that you also create content for purposes other than marketing. However, all the content you create in a business setting should align with your business goals.
What is a Content Strategy?
When considering a definition, I tend to rely on Kristina Halvorson’s explanation as my starting point.
Useful, usable content is created, delivered, and governed by content strategy.
I apply Content Strategy to determine the priority of content ideas that align with my business goals and objectives, such as brand awareness, engagement, or lead generation.
When considering your Content Strategy, it is important to remember that it encompasses more than just external audiences. Your business objectives should also include employee engagement. To guarantee consistency with your brand, your Content Strategy will dictate the approach you take towards internal communications.
Here’s a brief outline of what a content strategy will include:
Brand, Brand Identity, Brand Story
What can be done to ensure brand consistency in the content you produce?
Audience research
In addition to defining your audience, you will go further by explicitly determining what your audience desires and requires from you.
Content
At this point, you determine the necessary information and the reason it is important.
Define goals and objectives
Always have a specific purpose when creating content.
When considering your approach, it is important to carefully evaluate each step to ensure that it aligns with your business objectives. Ensure that your content supports these objectives by reframing the text below without adding or removing any information. “Ensure that your content supports your business objectives by thinking step by step. Maintain the same meaning and carefully evaluate each step in your approach.”
What is the operational impact of the content strategy to your business?
Your content strategy is bound to affect various stakeholders within your business or organization.
Content Planning
You will need to form an editorial calendar and establish guidelines for the planned content creation.
Content Distribution
What is the location where you are publishing and distributing your content?
Where can your audience be found?
What is a Content Marketing Strategy?
By having a content marketing strategy, you can ensure that the content you create and promote serves a specific purpose. Unlike a content strategy, content marketing is more targeted. A content strategy takes into account all aspects of your business, while a content marketing strategy is specifically aimed at achieving a particular business objective. Therefore, it is possible to have multiple content marketing strategies, but only one content strategy.
The following will be included in your content marketing strategy.
What’s the purpose of your strategy?
- You want to clearly state your mission;
- Establish goals;
- And set KPIs;
Who are you targeting?
Identify the ideal customer or audience for your product or service.
What content will your audience demand?
- Establish the content that your audience wants.
- What problems can you solve?
- Audit your existing content and identify any gaps in your content.
Content Planning
From generating ideas to overseeing your content.
- Which content types and formats do you need?
- What’s your ideal user journey?
- Do you need to create a funnel?
Content Distribution
On which platforms are you sharing your content?
Content Calendar
What is the frequency at which you publish and share content?
What tools do you intend to use?
Where will your content be stored?
Content Marketing vs. Content Strategy
Content strategy is a comprehensive plan that aims to achieve business goals by utilizing content. It emphasizes the overall tasks that contribute to meeting customer needs and fulfilling business objectives.
Content marketing involves utilizing a series of actions or strategies to implement your content strategy. It entails producing and disseminating content that assists your audience in resolving issues and improving their overall well-being. While not every content marketing endeavor is geared towards direct selling, the valuable information you offer will eventually aid in attracting and converting your desired audience, consequently contributing to the growth of your business.
The goals, methods, and results vary for content strategy in comparison to content marketing.
Objectives
Content strategy aims to establish how content will contribute to achieving your business objectives. It provides purpose, unity, and significance to content marketing endeavors.
The focal point of content marketing is the creation of brand awareness, lead generation, and demand capture through the transformation of ideas into content assets, which are then shared.
Approaches
Content marketing involves utilizing marketing resources to develop and disseminate content assets through appropriate channels in order to establish a brand’s visibility. Additionally, it encompasses analyzing data to make adjustments to content campaigns when needed.
Content strategists are responsible for determining the content marketing tactics that will have the greatest significance for your business objectives. They oversee all aspects of content management, beginning with pre-production tasks such as research, content audit, and content guidelines, followed by production tasks like content creation, distribution processes, and utilization of various tools, and finally post-production tasks encompassing promotion, evaluation, and analysis.
Outcomes
Content marketing results in higher brand traffic, authority, trust, lead generation, conversion, and loyalty.
Content strategy is responsible for creating content marketing systems that effectively position a brand as the answer to customers’ requirements.
How Content Strategy and Content Marketing Intersect
Content strategy and content marketing go hand in hand, despite their differences. Essentially, they are two components of the same concept.
Strategy is the Foundation for Marketing Practices
Content strategy involves determining the purpose and approach behind content creation, which ultimately impacts the success of content marketing.
Content marketing involves implementing your content strategy by creating, distributing, and evaluating the success of the content in alignment with the content strategy. Therefore, the success of your content marketing depends on the utilization of your content strategy to accomplish your business objectives.
Neither Can Stand Alone
The connection between strategy and implementation is emphasized by marketing expert Amanda Milligan, who stated that attempting marketing without strategy is futile, just as strategizing without marketing is pointless. It is not worthwhile to make plans that are not executed, and without a plan, it is impossible to achieve success in marketing. To succeed, one must combine strategy and implementation.
After Strategy, Marketing Begins
If content marketing can be compared to the process of cooking a meal, then the content strategy can be likened to all the preparations made prior to the actual cooking. These preparations involve determining what dish to cook, selecting the necessary ingredients, deciding where and how the dish will be cooked, and planning its presentation.
Once you have determined the actions, timing, location, and method for content strategy, you can actualize the vision by creating content.
