Today, content is one of the most important tools of internet marketing, with which you can achieve absolutely any goal: attracting users to the site, converting them into clients, increasing brand recognition, etc.

It's always difficult to start, and besides, the start should be as successful as possible so that your efforts are not wasted. For success to be systematic, you cannot do without a content strategy that clearly conveys what, why, and in what exact order needs to be done. Regardless of the business niche you occupy, the algorithm for creating a high-quality content strategy remains unchanged. We will share with you a checklist for creating the perfect content strategy!

Important point! Some novice marketers sometimes confuse concepts like content strategy and content plan. Let's clarify a bit:

• Content plan — is a schedule for publishing posts with pre-approved texts, images, etc. Its goal is the regular addition of content to social networks or the site.
• Content strategy — is a plan for developing your presence in the online space: on the website, in social networks, on external platforms, in news feeds, etc. The strategy should take into account:
• who your target audience is, what problems they have, and how your product can solve them;
• what topics for discussions will be interesting to your potential clients;
• how often they are ready to consume your content;
• what is unique about your brand and how you can convey it to the audience;
• what business tasks your content will solve, etc.

In general, a content strategy will help you assemble a kind of roadmap for your business online, so you definitely shouldn't neglect creating it!

Formulate and Set Goals

Before you proceed directly to creating content, you need to understand exactly why you will be doing it and what the final goal of your posting will be.

What could the goals be?

• Attracting new users to the site;
• Increasing the customer base;
• Raising brand awareness;
• Sales growth (both immediately and in the long term);
• Forming a certain company image;
• Increasing target audience loyalty, etc.

At the same time, try to make the goal as specific as possible and tied to clear indicators, numbers, and dates. For example, not just "increase site traffic," but "increase site traffic by 25% within six months."

Get to Know Those You Are Writing For

Who will you be filling your resources with content for? Who will be reading it? Who are these people? What do they care about? What are their needs, or "pains," and which of them will your product help to address? Answers to these questions will help you choose the necessary type and tone of content, which will likely achieve its goal.

What's the best way to get the necessary information? There are dozens of proven methods: create a themed questionnaire on the site, survey your sales department employees, conduct sociological research, look at WebVisor in Yandex.Metrica — choose the option that will be most convenient and representative for you.

Evaluate Available Resources

Realistically assess your capabilities and correctly select the necessary channels and resources in which you will post content, relying on the capabilities of the SMM specialist and the target audience. For example, if your product is oriented towards people aged 35+, there is no point in launching a channel to attract them on TikTok — this is a social network for a younger segment. Also, do not open a YouTube channel if you cannot regularly post videos that are truly interesting there.

Conduct an Audit of the Site and Social Networks

Before finally starting work, deal with what you already have at hand. Such preliminary analysis will allow you to save time and money. See what articles and posts you already have enough of and what topics you need to create content about. Review your blog's categorization: it is possible to have completely different articles under the same tag. Analyze which post topics are bringing you the most traffic to the site so you can work with them in the future. Consider what content you should focus more on: textual or visual.

Decide on the Types of Content to Publish

Different types of content not only attract the audience's attention but also expand it, as some users focus on reading short news and notes, while others are ready to spend their time on long video reviews and long reads.

Ideas for content should also be subjected to quality processing: consider what is already working well for you and what can be tried to attract additional traffic: instructional articles, checklists, comparisons of two or more products with each other (both within your production and the products of competitors), etc.

Create a content plan Discuss with colleagues how often content will be published on your resources, according to what schedule, who will be responsible for communication with followers, how often stories and other "one-day" materials will be posted, etc. The clearer the schedule, the easier it will be for you to track the SMM specialist's work and promptly adjust it. Initially, it will be quite enough to use a simple table in Excel/Google Docs, where you can indicate publication channels, dates, and times of their release, as well as theses of posts and articles. Focus on quality and regularity, and the growth in content's virality will not take long to appear!

What do you think should also be considered when creating a content strategy?