Every brand striving for success in the digital landscape will benefit from devising and implementing a cohesive brand content strategy. As a powerful and multi-faceted strategy should cover multiple different types of content that will be published across multiple platforms, planning your approach can appear to be somewhat overwhelming. With some forward-thinking and creativity, however, putting together a successful strategy doesn’t need to be an impossible task.
Here are some tips to get you started.
1. Consider your Customer Journey
Before you do anything else, you need to know how, where and when you can best connect with your ideal audience. A comprehensive customer journey map will consider everything from the expectations and emotions felt at each major touchpoint, and this information will ultimately act as a guide for every channel you will choose to target and every piece of content you will publish.
Before you understand the how, where and when tough you need to also have a grasp on the who. Developing audience personas will also help you to understand how to connect with your audience in meaningful ways. After all, aiming for interest and relevance is impossible if you don’t know who you want to reach.
2. Define the Types of Content You Want to Focus On
The possibilities for digital content are seemingly endless and you will want to avoid spreading your efforts too thinly. From social media-specific content to eBooks, podcasts, white papers and more, it can be tricky to know where to focus your attention.
Blog posts are among the most popular types of content and can be used to effectively deliver valuable information to your audience. Another popular form of content, video content is extremely engaging and highly shareable across a range of social platforms.
Research indicates that video content is actively preferred by many users and is Video content is 50 times more likely to drive organic search results than plain text. Video is also far more engaging with 20% of people reading the text on a page compared to 80% who will watch a video.
3. Remember, Storytelling Doesn’t Need to be Linear
Traditional storytelling structure has a beginning, a middle and an end but focusing too rigidly on sharing brand narratives in this way means that you might ultimately fail to consider how best to communicate with your audience across different devices and platforms. Your story might end up feeling somewhat disconnected if you are sharing a gif to Twitter, a short video to Instagram and an infographic to Facebook, but provided that they communicate the same primary narrative, this approach can deliver significant results.
4. Leverage the Power of Evergreen Content
In developing your strategy, you might find that you either have too few or too many ideas. Starting by addressing frequently asked questions and considering broad themes will help you to create a powerful body of content that will deliver value to your audience, can be effectively repurposed in the future, and will act as a strong foundation upon which you can build additional layers of topical content.
5. Communicate your Core Brand Values
Your audience is going to look to your content when making key purchasing decisions, which is why you need to ensure that your brand values are accurately represented. Your brand voice should also speak directly to your ideal audience and taking the time to develop this will help you to stand out for the right reasons and avoid being perceived as a generic brand that will simply blend into countless others and be immediately forgotten.
6. Account for Data-Driven Adaptation
The best brand content strategies are fluid and leave enough space to evolve based upon collected performance data. You will naturally have some core business goals and objectives that your content strategy should help you to achieve. If you aren’t seeing the results you had hoped for, you need to be in a position to adjust your approach and focus on the aspects that are working without wasting any more time working on approaches that are not.
7. Strive to Deliver Tangible Solutions
Brand content strategy is most successful when it delivers solutions or answers to the problems or questions your target audience are experiencing. By adopting this approach, you will position yourself as an authoritative voice within your niche, which will help you to build respect and trust among your ideal audience.
8. Talk About What Isn’t Being Talked About
If you can identify a subject area relevant to your business that is being underserved, creating content that will deliver valuable information to your audience and starting a conversation can be an excellent way to stand out from your competitors and capture attention.
9. Know Where Your Content Will Be Published
There are a variety of different platforms out there and the simple fact is that not every type of content will perform well on each platform. Your content should always be expertly tailored to the publishing medium because this will make it more effective and help you to connect with the right people, in the right place, at the right time.
Article Submitted By Community Writer
