A content strategy template that you can implement easily

A well-documented content strategy is much needed for getting a higher ROI on your content marketing efforts. Even if it may not be necessary, devising a content strategy plays an important role in your content marketing efforts and ultimately in driving quality traffic to your website. Having a plan that accounts for every aspect of effective content marketing, and being able to implement such measures that have a direct bearing on your visitors/audience is well appreciated. Also, an effective content strategy can help you best leverage the resources that you have in your organization.

As you prepare for another month, quarter or year of content marketing, having a robust content strategy can help you take your marketing efforts to the next level. A robust content strategy is the part of a broader plan and is more than just an editorial calendar- which denotes what content to post when and who is responsible for the same, and should be flexible enough. Your content strategy should also empower you to spend your precious time and resources in a highly targeted manner, in a way that has the maximum impact on your bottom line.

So how do you prepare your content strategy for having maximum benefit? What all should it include and exclude? A content strategy is not a monotonous or a fixed number crunching exercise, it varies highly from one business to another and should be crafted as per the needs of your business and audience. However, there are some common elements, which should be incorporated in your content strategy template regardless of what level of strategy you devise. Make sure you include the following items in your content strategy:

• Content marketing KPIs
  The first step in getting success is first to understand in what terms do you measure your success. Hence there should be some predefined goals and more importantly, they should be measurable to some extent. What is the success metrics for your content strategy? It can take many forms such as growing your website traffic may be one of the KPI. The quantum of your social media sharing may be another metric that you may want to consider. There are a host of other parameters that you may want to consider as KPIs such as lead generation, sign ups or transactions on your website. Basic idea is that you need something to measure the impact of your content strategy, identify what is working and how well it is working.
• Your target audience
  You must have till now realized that your best customers have something in common. Find out what that is make it a pivotal point in your content strategy and deliver that type of content to your customers which satisfies that need. This shared need can be identified while devising your content strategy and can be derived from a detailed study of your customer personas. You have to deeply study and understand the most likely buyer’s journey from being a prospective customer to being a loyal customer.

  Based on the most important topics on your customer personas, you need to identify the main themes and keywords and this should become the seed of the content that you create. You can always expand the range of your content, but make sure that while devising a content strategy, you keep the kind of content that your audience finds the most useful and can relate itself with.

• Available resources
  You need to honestly measure your content inventory to see what can be the scope of your content strategy. While devising a content strategy for your business, you need to identify current and potential content contributors. You should clearly assess how much time, money and effort you can commit to the content generation, and whether you can make any additional investments. While considering these points in devising your content strategy, it will help you to plan more realistically without actually building castles in thin air or under committing. It will give you a real measure with which you can work to generate content for your business.
• Execution plan
  Once you have sorted the above matters, it is the time to launch in the space of content creation and figure out when to generate content and how. Your editorial calendar needs to be crystal clear which clearly denotes a clear division of responsibilities so that everything is clear and there is no confusion regarding the content generation exercise. This is the most important part of your content strategy, i.e. execution of your plan. You need to make sure that your execution is flawless. By allowing the stakeholders just by identifying their new ideas and directions but without figuring out when all can be created and how is like courting disaster. You should be crystal clear about the roles and responsibilities and the type of content to be generated by each resource person.

It is in this very stage that this content strategy will help you to document every aspect of your content strategy planning, content strategy development, resource allocation and success measurement. Don’t be afraid of any hiccups and you will overcome them all if your content strategy is robust and comprehensive. Give your business a head start by planning for a robust and a comprehensive content strategy. This will definitely help you in the success of your business.