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Creating entertaining content for social media or online magazines is one of the most effective ways to promote most businesses from a small store to a huge worldwide online casino. But first, you have to create a content strategy. Here's how you can do this.

What Is a Content Strategy and How Does It Differ From a Content Plan?

Simply put, a content strategy is a document with a step-by-step plan for dealing with content. Every day we watch videos, read articles, study instructions, listen to podcasts and more - that's content. Brands and companies need it to drive traffic to their site, increase sales and simply, tell their audience about themselves. In order for content to get results, it's not enough to just randomly post it from time to time. You need a competent content strategy. It involves many points: analyzing your target audience, setting goals, assigning tasks, redpolicy, and more.

Sometimes content strategy is confused with a content plan, but these are two different things:

• A content strategy is a big document with goals and plans for creating and distributing content on different platforms.
• A content plan is a notional publication planner. It lists topics and release dates for content.

Goals

The most important thing is to define your content goals and objectives.

Goals can be long-term and short-term. For example:

• Increasing traffic to the company's blog by search traffic from organic output and social media is a long-term goal.
• Publishing 10 articles every month is a short-term goal.

Long-term goals are quarterly, semi-annual or annual. All the tasks that will be set in the future will correspond to the main goal. That is, it is a reference point that helps you move in the right direction.

To determine the goal, you need to understand what you want and can achieve with the content:

• Increase sales.
• Become recognizable.
• Stand out among your competitors.
• Become experts in your niche.

The main part of the content strategy will be based on the goals: communication, distribution, and content formats. For example, if you want to show your expertise, then infostyle articles, training videos, and case studies will suit you. Other formats, such as entertainment publications may occasionally dilute the above, but not vice versa.

Competitor Analysis

Identify your main competitors and analyze their content marketing strategy:

• What distribution channels they use. Why they have a blog, but no social media pages.
• How they communicate with their audience: tone, content formats, communication in comments or in other ways.

Target Audience 

Everything you do should be aimed at a specific audience. If you don't define it, this is what can happen:

You write about how great kitties are, and your audience is dog people. As a result, you will lose your old customers and attract users who are not your target audience (they won't buy and won't stay long).

So it's important to research who your target audience is:

• Gender.
• Age.
• Location.
• interests.
• Pains and objections.
• Income level.
• Awareness (expert in your field or never encountered your product).

Communication

You have defined the portrait of the audience, now it's important to understand what language to speak to it. A brand communication strategy is communication with an audience that has specific goals. The most important thing in it is to define the tone of the brand's voice - this is how the brand looks (its values, its image, its intonation) in the eyes of the consumer.

SEO

To benefit from content, it must be optimized. That is, it must be written in such a way that search engine algorithms will help to show it to the right audience. To do this, you need to compile a semantic core - a set of phrases and words on which Google search robots will rank the site and show the right pages to visitors.

Content Audit

Study the content you've already published on different platforms:

• Look at the statistics - which content got the most response, which the least, and analyze the reactions.
• Check relevance - if the article is out of date, it's worth updating; you can't edit material on social networks, but you can release an updated publication.
• Reinforce what you published - for example, if you didn't have a designer before and your articles were only in text format, now you can visualize them.

Formats and Content Types

Make a note of what type and format of content you will use and in what ratio. Content is divided into types based on its purpose:

• Informational - tells you about something, teaches you.
• Entertaining - makes you laugh, distracts you, relaxes you.
• Selling - aimed at sales.
• Engaging - encourages you to leave comments, interact with the publication.
• Viral - so that subscribers want to share it and spread it themselves.

Content formats are differentiated:

• Text - articles, posts, guides, cases, interviews.
• Visual - videos, pictures, infographics, diagrams, checklists.
• Auditory - podcasts, radio, audio books.

Distribution

Determine on which platforms and what content you are going to use. You can work with your own distribution channels: The ones that you create and keep under your control: 

• Website.
• Social networks.
• Email distribution.

You decide when, how and what to post, but you only reach your subscribers and those who found you through searches. You can turn to guest channels - third-party platforms where you don't have to pay for placement. These can be: 

• Guest posting on blogs or sharing posts.
• Viral reach - when subscribers distribute successful publications themselves. 
• Forums - answer subscribers' questions or comment on discussions on your topic. Mentions - customer or colleague reviews.