How to Create a Content Strategy: A Beginner’s Guide
Creating content can be easy. Creating the right content can be difficult.
You can write articles, make social media posts, create videos, and send out regular emails, but without an overall direction — it can be easy to create content just for content’s sake.
This is where a content strategy comes into play.
A content strategy gives you a broad, overreaching view of what you are creating, who you are creating it for, where it should be distributed, and what you hope to achieve from it. This can help a small blog, business, website, or personal brand maintain consistency and reach the right eyes.
The best part is that it is easy to create! You do not need to be an expert. By simply following some basic steps — you can get started, and you can always modify them as you learn more about your audience.
What Is a Content Strategy?
- A content strategy is a plan for creating, publishing, and managing content to meet a specific goal.
- Simply put, it answers the questions of
- what type of content you want to create,
- who you want to reach,
- what topics you want to cover,
- what platforms you want to use,
- how often you want to publish,
what you want your content to achieve.
For example, if you have a digital marketing blog, your content pillars may reflect topics such as SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, and AI tools. This means that, rather than randomly choosing articles to write — you will decide what is useful for your audience and how to tie these topics together to meet a certain end goal.
Why Is Content Strategy Important?
A content strategy can make the seemingly impossible task of content creation much easier.
Without one, it can be easy to get lost in a sea of content and not see concrete results.
A content strategy is important because it:
Gives Your Content a Direction
Having a content strategy makes finding topics a lot less difficult — since you will already have clearly defined goals and an audience in mind.
Helps You Know Your Audience
Knowing your audience is key when it comes to creating content that resonates. A well-developed content strategy will guide you through thinking about what questions and concerns your audience has, what problems they seek solutions to, and what kind of information they want to consume (short blurbs or in-depth guides). It can also consider what level of expertise your audience has and what they may search on Google.
Makes You More Consistent With Your Content Creation
Consistency is a must in content creation — and a content strategy can help you plan ahead of time rather than scrambling to create something at the last minute.
Can Support Your SEO Needs
If you want to improve your website’s SEO — a content strategy can help you decide what topics to write about and how to organize your pages and posts so that search engines can better understand what your page is about.
Helps You Measure Success
Having a strategy in place can act as a baseline for your success. You will have a better idea of what to look at when it comes to improving your SEO, driving traffic, click-through rates, conversions, and much more.
How to Create a Content Strategy Step by Step
A content strategy may seem daunting at first — but the process can be broken down into some simple steps.
1. Set Your Content Goals
Before you begin content creation — it is important to have a goal in mind.
Depending on your needs, your goal may be to drive traffic to your website, increase brand awareness, grow your website’s SEO value, build an audience, generate leads, boost sales, educate your audience, or establish authority in a certain niche.
It is best to avoid having too many nebulous goals. If you are launching a blog, for instance — you may want to set the goal of driving organic traffic to your page and providing value to your audience in the form of a useful digital marketing resource.
2. Know Your Audience
Your content strategy should revolve around your audience’s wants, needs, questions, and concerns.
To do this, think about who your ideal audience member is.
Who are they? What are they searching for? What are their questions, concerns, and pain points? What level of expertise do they have? What do they want to read or watch? What are they searching on Google? How will they find you?
For instance, a complete beginner may search “What is SEO?” — whereas someone more experienced may search “Technical SEO checklist.” Both are interested in SEO, but will need vastly different types of content.
3. Choose Your Main Content Topics
Now it is time to choose your main topic areas, otherwise known as your content pillars.
These are the topics that your website or brand will revolve around. Let’s say, for instance — that you want to create a digital marketing blog. Your content pillars may be SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, digital advertising, and AI tools.
Within these pillars, you can have subtopics. For instance, inside of SEO, you can have keyword research, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO, internal linking, SEO-friendly content, and more.
4. Do Keyword Research
Unless you want your content to be invisible to search engines — keyword research should be an integral part of your content strategy.
Keyword research will help you understand what your audience is looking for and what terms they are likely to search.
For instance, rather than simply searching a vague term such as “SEO Tips”, your audience may search:
- SEO for beginners
- How to do keyword research
- What is on-page SEO?
- How to write SEO-friendly content
- SEO content strategy
This research can give you an idea of what articles to write about.
However, you should not choose keywords at random. You should also think about search intent. In other words, what is the searcher actually looking for?
The objective of SEO is not to simply stuff a webpage full of keywords. Rather, the objective is to provide the searcher with a helpful answer depending on what they are looking for.
5. Study the Existing Content
Before you begin writing an article — be sure to do a bit of research. Search for the topic that you want to write about and read the top results in order to:
- Know what information is out there
- See what questions people are asking
- See what topics are popular
- Learn where other articles may lack information
Rather than simply copying what other articles or webpages have — focus on providing better, more detailed, and easier-to-consume information. You can also add your own ideas and examples.
6. Choose the Right Content Formats
Content need not be restricted to blog posts or articles. In fact, forcing yourself to only write articles can be restricting and uninspiring.
Depending on your needs and the needs of your audience — you can choose from a variety of formats such as:
- Blog Posts
- Tutorials
- How-to Guides
- Videos
- Infographics
- Social Posts
- Case Studies
- Checklists
- Email Newsletters
FAQs
When deciding what type of content to create — keep in mind that some topics are better suited to long-form articles while others may make for engaging social media posts. You can also use a mix of different content types to appeal to different segments of your audience.
7. Create a Content Calendar
Once you have chosen your topics — it is time to organize them in a content calendar.
These are basically schedules that tell you what you want to write about and when you want to publish.
For instance, you may have a content calendar that looks something like this:
Week 1: What is SEO? – Blog Post – SEO for beginners – Published
Week 2: Keyword research Guide – Blog Post – keyword research – Planned
Week 3: On-page SEO Basics – Blog Post – on-page SEO – Writing
Week 4: SEO Tips – Social Post – SEO tips – Planned
You can choose to make this as simple or as complicated as you would like. A spreadsheet is a great way to start. The point of a content calendar is simply to keep track of your content rather than getting sidetracked.
8. Create Useful and Original Content
Now it is time to actually create your content.
Keep in mind that useful content will always trump keyword-stuffed, run-on paragraphs simply because the reader will get value out of it.
Your content should always be:
- Helpful
- Clear
- Easy to read
- Related
- Accurate
- Original
Focused on the audience
For instance, when it comes to keyword research for beginners — you should not overload the page with keyword-rich subheadings that do not explain much of anything. Rather, you need to focus on providing value to the reader, using simple explanations so that the reader can actually grasp the concepts.
As for original content, you need not re-invent the wheel every time. In fact, you should focus on taking a common topic and making it unique by explaining it in a better, clearer, and more engaging way.
9. Optimize Your Content for SEO
- Now it is time to optimize your web page or blog post for SEO.
- Some common SEO best practices include:
- Having a catchy title
- Using your target keywords
- Having a useful meta description
- Using headers and subheaders
- Making internal links
- Using image alt text
- Keeping your URLs short and simple
- Making your content easy to read and scan
- Answering the searcher’s intent
It is important not to keyword stuff your content. SEO-friendly articles should not be full of random keywords simply to tick the boxes of search engines. Instead, focus on creating useful content that is relevant to the reader.
Search engines are clever, and they will understand that an article that is full of unimportant keywords is unlikely to be useful.
10. Promote Your Content
Now it is time to promote your content. Simply posting it online is not always enough — especially if you are a new website and your articles will not appear at the very top of Google right away.
You can promote your content on different platforms, depending on your content type.
For instance, if you have a lengthy blog post — you may want to create a social media post to promote it on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, or LinkedIn, depending on where your audience is. You can encourage people to visit the link for a more in-depth explanation.
11. Measure Your Results
A content strategy should not be set in stone, and you should review your results periodically.
You can focus on different aspects of your content marketing campaign depending on your goals. For instance, if your goal is to increase traffic — you may want to look at organic traffic, while boosting SEO may require you to look at your rankings and backlinks. You may also want to consider your click-through rates, bounce rates, engagement, email sign-ups, and much more.
For instance, if you notice that one article got significantly more traffic and engagement than the others — you may want to study it to see what made it stand out.
- Common Content Strategy Mistakes to Avoid
- The best-laid strategies can go awry if you set them up incorrectly.
- Creating Content Without a Goal
While it is a good idea to post regularly — you should always have a goal in mind for each piece of content. Having a random article about dogs on a website about marketing will not get you anywhere.
Trying to Target Everyone
If you are trying to appeal to everyone — you are actually appealing to no one. Be sure to know your audience and tailor your content to their wants, needs, questions, and concerns.
Focusing Only on Keywords
While SEO is important — it is a tool, not a goal. Focus on creating useful content rather than articles that are simply full of keywords.
Publishing Too Much at Once
If you are always trying to publish every single day — you risk burning out and creating low-quality content. A slower but steady release schedule is always a better choice.
Not Updating Old Content
Updating old content should be a part of any content strategy.
Not only can information become outdated — but older posts also have the potential to be optimized for better keywords or have improved explanations, additional examples, and much more.
How Often Should You Publish Content?
There is no hard and fast rule when it comes to how often you should post. Some websites post several times a week while others will post a few times a month.
It all depends on your schedule and how much you can consistently produce without sacrificing quality. As a beginner, you can start slow by posting a few useful articles every week or every other week. You can always increase your rate as you become more comfortable.
- Simple Content Strategy Example
- Let’s say, for instance — that you have a website about digital marketing for beginners.
- Your goal is to boost organic traffic to the website while educating your audience.
- Your content strategy may look something like the following:
- Audience: Beginners in digital marketing
- Main topics: SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing, and AI tools
- Content types: Blog posts, tutorials, checklists, and social media posts
- Frequency: Weekly or bi-weekly articles
- SEO: Keyword research, search intent, internal linking, headers and subheaders, and helpful, easy-to-read content
- Measurement: Organic traffic and engagement
- Now you have a basic idea of how to create a content strategy!
Final Thoughts
A content strategy is a simple but powerful tool that can help guide your content marketing. You do not need an involved plan to have a content strategy. First, know your audience and set your goals. Next, set your main topics, do keyword research, and plan out your content. Then, create useful, original content, promote and optimize it, and measure your results.
Remember that a content strategy should always be evolving as your audience, SEO, and website change. It is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather something that you tweak and modify as needed.
Creating content is not about chasing quantity. It is about focusing on quality by making sure that the right people get the right message at the right time.
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