Having a content strategy is vital to the success of any social media strategy. Without a content strategy, it’s difficult to plan for and create great content. It is also difficult to create the right content for your audience. If you’re a B2B (business to business) company, you probably have multiple audiences (your direct customers and the end users of your product), which makes having a content strategy even more important so you’re providing value to all of your audiences.
- Define the needs & interests of all of your audiences. Content strategy is not about what you want to provide. It’s about reaching out to your audience with information and content that they value. If you are a B2B company, you may have multiple audiences, each with different needs and interests. It’s important to address the needs of each of these to make sure your content strategy is as effective as possible.
- Define information needs throughout the sales process. When someone is interested in purchasing from you, what information are they looking for? Once they’ve purchased from you, what do they need or want to know? Remember, the sales process goes all the way from before interest through customer service and when they’re no longer a customer. Information needs throughout the process are usually quite different. Identifying these differences can make the sales process much smoother (and more effective).
- Catalog what information is already available within the company. What content do you already have? Have you created training videos, product brochures, product diagrams, etc.? All of these should be considered to see if they fit the information needs of your audience. There’s no sense in re-inventing the wheel!
- Look at what information & content is available online. Find out what types of content is already available online. What seems to be popular with your audience? What are they talking about? What gets them excited and engaged?
- Check out your competitors. See if your competitors are having any luck with engaging with their audience. What types of content and topics are they producing? What’s getting the most feedback?
- Check out companies with a lot of engagement. Look outside of your industry at companies that are having success with their content. What’s working? What types of content seem to work best? (Keep in mind that what works for another industry/audience may not work for yours, but it’s a great place to get ideas).
- Think about content or topics that your audiences are passionate about. Think outside of the information related to your company, products, and industry. What is your target audience passionate about? If there’s a topic that really makes sense to use for your brand, take a look at how you can use it in your content strategy.
- Are there any personalities within your company that you can leverage? People really communicate better with people who are interesting. Do you have anyone in your company who is well-known in the industry or just has a great personality? Think about how you can leverage them for your content strategy. Maybe you can have them do a weekly video or podcast.
- What websites and social networks make the most sense for posting, sharing and curating content? This really part of your overall social media and digital strategy, but it does make sense to consider location when creating your content strategy. What makes sense on Facebook may not make sense on LinkedIn (or whatever industry-specific sites you may use). Consider what types of content work best on the places you’ll be distribute and sharing that content on. You may have to create slightly different content or repurpose content to work in different places.
- Who will be responsible for creating and curating content? Who is going to do all the content posting and creation in your company? Saying that you have a content strategy is great, but it’s not going to get anywhere unless one person is responsible for making sure it actually gets done.
- What type of editorial schedule makes sense? How often are you going to post? What topics will you cover? Who will be creating the content? It may help to create an editorial calendar, especially if you’ll have different people creating content or posting on different days.
- Are their any guest authors you can use? Is there anyone outside of your company that you can ask to guest post occasionally for you? Vice versa, are there places where you should ask to see if you can guest post? Guest posting is a great way to form relationships online and broaden your own audience.
What do you think? How do you create your content strategies?
(image by hashmil, on Flickr)