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WHAT DOES BEING STRATEGIC WITH YOUR CONTENT ACTUALLY MEAN
Have you ever gone to a place you’ve never ever been to without a map, GPS, a guide or directions of some kind? Obviously not!
Your posting at random is similar to the above - you want to grow your audience and but you're not planning for it. You're turning left and right at random, hoping that will somehow get you there.
The truth is, you can't just share content without planning ahead and making sure what you are posting will work to get you to where you ultimately want to be - attracting the right people to grow your audience and building your brand online.
Posting on any social media platform without being strategic also means you can't track your progress or repeat what worked for you to duplicate those results.
Given that, it is easy to understand why having a content strategy before creating any content is a must, to ensure a clear sense of direction - for your brand or your clients.
What is a content strategy?
A content strategy is the planning, creation, distribution and management of content that is either written or in other media (images, video, etc.) related to a business’s greater goals.
Simply put, you need to take a step back and ask yourself "what kind of content should I create, and why?" You need to work out what kind of content will work to position you or your brand in the way that you want, while still being relevant to your prospective audiences' interests. Ensuring the content you create and how you share it works to help you achieve your objectives and ultimately grow your online presence.
Without a strategy and actionable steps from it, it will be difficult for you to measure whether you are on track to achieving your goals or not.
And without an effective strategy in place, there’s a good chance your content won’t be as effective as it should.
On that note, here are five reasons why being strategic with your content is critical for your growth and success on social media:
1. A Look At The Bigger Picture
A great strategy looks into achieving the long-term vision of the business. By being strategic with your content, you ensure that your content always reflects where the company is going and never derails from its purpose and what it aims to be to its readers, buyers, subscribers, supports, viewers, listeners, etc.
If you’re looking to make your mark in your industry, have customers rave about your business and spread the word about what you do and offer; then being strategic about how you build your brand is key.
2. It Gives Your Business A Competitive Advantage
A strategy makes clear where you stand in the industry you're in. By knowing where you are, you’re able to find ways to go where you want to be by making sure the content you are creating works to position you or your brand effectively. Looking forward and planning ahead can also give you an edge over your competitors because you’re able to create content that fills the gaps they may have failed to see.
3. It Helps You Collect Valuable Input
Understanding who you’re serving and what they want means that you’re able to create meaningful content that solves the problems they face and is valuable to them. Using your Instagram insights to learn more about what your audience likes or asking them questions to learn more about them and their interests could inform your strategy going forward and help you better connect with them in future.
4. It Helps Optimize Your Resources
Having a clear sense of direction means you’re bound to have fewer mistakes, and fewer errors means resources are used wisely. Imagine continuously creating content that won’t get any engagement or doesn't drive traffic to your website. With a strategy in place, you’re able to ensure that all your effort pays off, making sure you atleast gain learnings from those poor posts and improve on your efforts going forward.
5. It Ensures The Business Is Moving Forward & Growing
By having a strategy in place, you’re able to understand which performance indicators and metrics count as progress. Every effort is inspired by goals that can be measured. A content strategy gives clarity on what needs to be measured and monitored for success.
For example, with a content strategy that aims to boost engagement, you can analyze the engagement indicators to see what’s working and what isn’t.
So you need to make sure you take a step back and put the work into defining what you want to achieve and define your strategy before sharing content on any social media platform.
Here are 3 tips for being more strategic with your content:
1. Specify your goals
By setting a specific goal, you are providing yourself with a target to aim for. I'm sure you've heard the words “without a goal, you can’t score” before.
We often think having an overall vision and mission for our business is all we need, but it’s essential to simplify your vision into bite-sized goals that help you get to that big vision in time.
2. Study your audience
If you don’t know your audience, you won’t know what they want to see come down their feed, which means you won’t be able to create content they look forward to seeing. Creating content that's centered around your audience’s interests means you give them exactly what they want, and it will only be natural for them to follow your brand and, better yet, become loyal to it!
Conduct thorough market research and learn everything you can about your target audience. Leave no stone unturned.
3. Analyze your competition
Knowing your competitors or pages doing something similar to what you want to be and how they deliver content can help you improve on what they are already doing or find gaps that can make your brand stand out. Instead of blindly pumping out content, you’re able to understand where real opportunity exists and how you can leverage it to stay ahead of your competitors.
A strategy ensures that you are clear on your why. You’re able to improve your pages performance by understanding what type of content works, on which channels and how to adapt things to make sure you are on track to achieving your goals.
Creating a well thought out strategy can be a time-consuming process, especially if you’re new to this or an entrepreneur who just never has the time. Trust me when I say, making the time will be worth it! Be patient with yourself through the process and make sure you do your research - I can’t highlight this enough.
I understand how overwhelming it can get, so if you’re committed to building your online presence and need help then join our 4-part group coaching sessions, where I guide you through this process and check in with you for 4 week while taking your platforms to the next level.