Content marketing can be considered as the linchpin to any kind of demand creation. It is the perfect link between lead generation and brand awareness. If carried out properly, it would definitely help in developing the affinity, trust, and familiarity with current and prospective clients by delivering suitable information that would perfectly resonate through the correct channel in the right format and at the perfect time.

Contents are the lifeline to any website. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to develop the right strategy for content creation purpose. Contents for websites are developed to target the audience while trying to deliver a specific kind of business objective.  Henceforth, the content strategy could be defined as a strategic vision that allows digital marketers to develop goal-driven contents for an organization. A content writing company that focuses on the right strategy along with perfect implementation would definitely ensure better results for its clients. It is the vision that helps in the planning process and ultimately guides towards better and more productive results.

1: Content marketing strategy

Remember, the content marketing strategy would never create itself. It gets developed due to proper planning, focused execution, and clear intention.  Be it a comprehensive program or targeted campaign, it is necessary to ensure that the foundation for the content is strong enough to attract prospects at every single stage of the business process. It is the content that would be responsible for seeding awareness among the public while trying to nurture with the ongoing interest level.

2: Understanding the importance

Content development without the right kind of strategy would result in disparate contents with no purpose or core themes. This could be really confusing to the target audience for your site and would also cause the negative impact to your business’s credibility. Remember, if there happens to be non-presence of strategy, the site would be filled with generic content. When you are developing contents for your business site, generic contents would never cut any positive impact. There would be minimal chance of higher organic ranking. Also, these contents don’t get shared, neither do they engage people. As a result, there are low chances of delivering against wider marketing objectives. Skipping the strategy development part would result in alienating and confusing the audience. The content would definitely fail to provide any impact. It would fail to reach the targeted group.

3: How to determine the right strategy for content development?

To build the right strategy for content development, it is necessary to carry out deep researching. Strategy based content writing India focuses on three major pillars of deep researching. These are listed below:

•  company research
•  competitor research
•  customer research

4: Company Research

This is the phase where the business or brand’s value gets uncovered. This is the phase to highlight your business’s core strengths. The phase would be able to focus on certain key points like the strengths of the company, the reason behind the company’s stepping into this sector, etc. In this phase, you shall also be requiring the urgency to audit your company’s content. The primary reason: to figure out whether the contents are delivering as per the objectives and goals being placed.

5: Competitor Research

There are two distinctive categories into which competitor research can be divided. These are:

•   Commercial competitors
•   Content competitors

It is necessary to figure out the brand valuation level of your commercial competitors along with their unique selling proposition strategies as well their ways to communicate with the customers.

6: Understanding the content competitors

In order to survive the competition, you need to understand the content development strategies of your competitors. It is not only about competing with the ones in the same business; rather, it is also about competing with those who develop contents for similar sort of events and services. Henceforth, there is pressure everywhere. You need to study different content outlets like fan sites, blogs, sports news, major news, business portals, etc. It is necessary to ensure that your content stands out tall in the crowd that comprises not only the commercial competitors but also the content competitors.

7: Figuring out the right place to play

After going through the above research components, it becomes necessary for a content writing company to identify the exact gaps to position your brand. This is a crucial aspect of any content marketing strategy. Figuring out the gaps to play the dice cleverly is what makes sense.

8: The questions that need to be asked

•   What would be there in the mindset of customers? Are the contents effectively delivering and fulfilling their requirements?
•   What is the market position of the competitors? How well the commercial aspects of the content being handled?
•   Is there any scope for your business to make an impact?
•   What are my business objectives and how to take the best efforts to fulfill the same?

9: Getting support for the stakeholders

Content marketing cannot be tagged as short-term. Rather, it is a commitment for longer duration that would require continual collaboration along with the right engagement to succeed. The strategies need to be perfectly suitable. Selling the right kind of ideas to the executive team would be key to success. Yes, it is also necessary to include other department members from your organization for the strategic development of the content.

In order to source and fund the content strategy, there must be some kind of executive backing. There requires ample amount of support to make sure that the content marketing strategy works big time.  When it is about internal buy-in, talking about content marketing must not take place. This is often considered to be a highly effective strategy that works big time. During this time, your primary focus should be on the pain points and goals of the stakeholders. You can also figure out their bonus systems, the areas that might affect their own success rates. Accordingly, introduce the content marketing approach to let them enjoy better and positive results.

10: Having a clear idea about the audience you would be dealing with

Understanding the targeted audience is necessary. Ask any content writing company and it would suggest that content marketing is not involved into any form of selling. Rather, content marketing is all about entertaining, educating, and informing the readers about the brand to earn their trust and respect over the flow of time.

Remember, in order to climb the ladder of success, it is mandatory to have the clear vision about your targeted audiences. Who are your targeted audiences? It is necessary to figure out their requirements. What is it that they look at your site? You need to focus on your website’s content development strategy by gauging on the total amount of viable content present along with the amount that needs to be created. This leads to forming of two major activities that would require strong commitment as well participation from the stakeholder.

Map your developed content into the journey of the buyer. By doing so, you effectively utilize the existing content while trying to figure out gaps that would require proper fill-up.

11: The steps to include 

•   The sales cycle must be mapped to the purchasing cycle if it makes the right sense. Buying cycle would comprise of need, evaluate, purchase, learn, negotiate, advocate, and implement.
•   Next, it is about setting up the spreadsheet that would help you in visualizing and tracking the mapping process. This need not necessarily have to be complex. It could well be simple and straight forward.
•   Auditing followed by the correct evaluation of the existing content based on the entire set of persona it addresses as well the questions it answers and the buying process stages it would serve.
•   Develop the content matrix with the help of assets in the form of title and link into the appropriate location of the spreadsheet. You must focus on maintaining a sequential flow to make sure every content asset continues with the conversation through developing of the previous content.

12: Planning contents that tend to be SEO friendly

Do you want to make your business achieve success online? Make the contents SEO friendly and half the job is done. Remember, business success of SEO companies depends largely on the satisfaction level of human searchers. This is why search engines are always trying their level best to deliver best results while generating newer rules to frustrate the marketers. One of the most reputed search engine, Google, usually makes somewhere around 500-600 algorithmic changes annually. Although most of these tend to be inconsequential, some tend to impact largely on the SEO efforts.

13: Targeting a specific keyword on a page (one keyword per page)

This is an integral part of effective SEO based content development. Try to pick one keyword or phrase that would make the article easily be sorted through the search engine.  It would be quite difficult and time-consuming to optimize a page with more than a single keyword. Henceforth, it would be better to opt for something that would perfectly resonate with the audience.

14 Including the keyword within your copy (the search description part)

The keyword must be present within the copy or search description part. Visitors would be expecting to see some portion of the keywords within the copy. It is recommended to use every keyword or key phrase 3 to 4 times within the copy. However, it must be ensured that the key phrase or keyword used makes the right sense and sounds somewhat natural.

15 Using the exact terms 

Search engines could easily be able to interpret the intent of the searcher. In spite of this, they would still try to rank pages that would match the query of the searcher even though some other pages might be featuring all the right set of keywords but in some different patterns.

16 Optimization is necessary but overdoing is unnecessary 

Remember, you are developing contents exclusively for real people. You are not writing contents for the search engines. Therefore, try to sound as much authentic and natural as you can. It would not be legible if you use approaches to meet SEO goals while sacrificing the user experiences.

17 Page Length is a key concern for effective content development

It is necessary to establish the page length according to the messages being communicated and not through the arbitrary limit. If the copy is longer enough, there would be the higher chance for keyword placement that would go well with the visitors. A reputed content writing company would always try to focus on this aspect while developing contents. It would try to convey more information to the visitors. 300 word based contents are often considered to be great targets. However, do ensure the content is rich in terms of quality. It must not comprise much of filler.

Content strategy planning is a crucial aspect of any content development job. Better the strategy, higher the chances of success. It could be challenging to develop contents on a voluminous scale. However, with the right set of strategy, things might work out perfectly. The primary goal is to extend the life of the content. It must be developed in a pattern that could be used in multiple ways and in multiple formats, and could be distributed everywhere.  Always write contents in clear and simple tone. Shorter sentences and paragraphs would be effective in the process. Also, after proper visibility and marketing, get the content transformed into the video presentation and get it published on YouTube. Never forget to create Q & A sessions for the audience. Active interaction session with the readers helps in conveying a positive message.