How to take your Squarespace website to the next level with content strategy
What exactly is a content strategy?
Content strategy is one of those buzzwords that has been floating around for a while now. In my opinion, like most buzzwords, the term can be used a bit too liberally. Sometimes you will hear people post on social media or send out a monthly newsletter and call it a content strategy. Are they wrong? Not entirely. But in my opinion, distributing content without understanding how it fits into your business goals does not a content strategy make.
So now that we know what a content strategy isn’t. What is it exactly?
A content strategy in 3 parts
1) A content strategy identifies what content is needed to meet the needs / interests of a target market
2) A content strategy considers how to distribute (marketing channels) this content
3) A content strategy offers a plan for creating, packaging and distributing the content
A content strategy is part of your larger marketing strategy.
For example, if your goal is to increase online sales by 20% in the next two quarters, you may want to grow your millennial audience to help meet this goal.
Your content strategy is crafted to help you meet your larger business goals. Accordingly, each piece of content is developed to help move you in the direction of your business goals.
Because you’ve identified that it makes sense to grow your millennial audience, the type of content and channels outlined in the content marketing strategy will reflect this decision.
The importance of tying your content strategy to your business goals
At one point, saying “it is important to have a presence" on a particular channel was a satisfactory reason to post across social media channels. The truth is, spamming a channel with weak, or thin content, whether it be Instagram, LinkedIn, or your blog, is not a good use of your time. Moreover, "having a presence" isn't an awesome goal.
Growing sales by 20%, however, is an admirable goal and creating a trusted online presence is a strategy to help get there. Before setting out to grow sales by focusing on developing an online presence you’ll want to take into account a few key questions.
Who is your audience?
What channels are they on?
What kind of content do they value?
For the sake of the questions above, let's decide our audience is business professionals working in the green energy space at a mid to senior level. What kind of content do they find valuable? Perhaps case studies or well-researched reports are the kind of content they are after.
In that case, it makes A LOT more sense to create well-researched white papers about top industry trends. What about distribution? It makes much more sense to reach this audience over LinkedIn as opposed to Instagram or Tik Tok.
Understanding where to allocate your digital marketing hours energy and resources
Small businesses and large organizations alike, often invest in content because it gets a lot of buzz. Is content marketing necessary? In my opinion, absolutely. The problem is, content strategy often isn’t executed strategically. What I have seen a great deal of is content calendars full of images and quippy copy sized, modified slightly for every social channel.
Is this wrong? NO. But I will say, I don’t think it is an amazing use of resources. Why does this happen? Often this happens at the top. A content strategy is put in place without true and tangible organizational goals in site.
When you start with organizational goals, you can create campaign goals. Campaign goals influence the purpose of each and every piece of content, channel chosen, and call to action.
We talked briefly about business goals above. Let’s take a moment to discuss campaign goals.
Marketing Campaign Goals
Often campaign goals are fuzzy, like "create brand awareness" or "make more sales". We want to get more specific. Instead, try to clarify your goals, like "50 email addresses over the next three months". You won't always reach your campaign goal but be sure to set parameters to measure your success and improve future campaigns. In order to keep you on track, use SMART goals.
Specific: What do we want to do?
Measurable: What will success look like ?
Attainable: Is this a realistic goal?
Relevant: Will this help the business?
Time-bound: What is the time frame?
Often campaign goals are fuzzy, like "create brand awareness" or "make more sales". We want to get more specific. Instead, try to clarify your goals, like "50 email addresses over the next three months". You won't always reach your campaign goal but be sure to set parameters to measure your success and improve future campaigns.
Google Ads
Reach your audience through text-based search ads and visual- based display ads, and shopping ads.
Email Marketing
Email is a powerful marketing channel for reaching your audience and building relationships with customers. Mailchimp is a very popular among small businesses developing email campaigns.
Your Website
Capture organic & paid traffic on your website and send them to specific pages to complete business goals. Popular website formats include Wordpress, Squarespace, Wix, and Webflow.
Organic & Paid Social
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Methods you can use to optimize your content and improve your position in search engines like Google. Moz provides amazing guides to help you get started with SEO.
Let’s look at a hypothetical marketing campaign
Goal:
Dennis is a Chicago based realtor who wants to gain 50 new email addresses in the next six months.
His primary audience is high-income professionals who use LinkedIn often and consume information via the news, podcasts, and studies.
Lead Generation Campaign:
Dennis thinks about the kind of content his audience would find valuable and their motivations.
He decides on a research- based white-paper that outlines the neighbourhoods projected to be an excellent investment in the coming years.
Dennis creates a landing page, a page with a very narrow focus that encourages people to complete a specific goal - in this case, acquiring emails.
Channel One - LinkedIn:
Dennis decides to drive people to the landing page with a series of posts outlining the up and coming neighbourhoods' perks.
He commits to sharing 1 - 2 posts per week.
Dennis decides LinkedIn is an appropriate choice for reaching his audience based on his persona research.
Dennis also decides to pay for promoted content on LinkedIn to reach a wider audience.
Channel Marketing Two - Google Search Campaigns:
Dennis created his website recently, and he doesn't rank well in search engines yet.
He wants to show up higher in results, so he invests in Google Ads.
He builds a search campaign and bids on words related to his business, such as "investment properties Chicago". He sends people to his landing page to have them opt into his newsletter.
Key Content Questions
Marketers create content for all sorts of reasons. Some content is developed for top-of-funnel reasons like brand recognition and increasing your reach. Other content addresses pain points and moves a potential customer or client from consideration to conversion.
When creating content, you want to consider what part of the buyers' journey your content addresses.
Often people get started creating content without first thinking about their audience or their goal. They want to get something up across social or have heard it is important to blog. Before setting out on your content creation journey, you want to ask yourself these questions.
What kind of information would my audience find valuable?
What kind of messaging resonates with them?
What motivates them?
What kind of visuals or branding might they engage with?
Within my budget, what are the best channels to reach my audience?
Creating a content plan
Creating content is a lot of work. First you need to do the more strategic work of thinking about your business goals, and how to plug in content correctly to address those goals. Next you need to take it a step farther outlining more specifically what kind of content you’ll use and the channels you’ll utilize.
All of this can feel like a lot of work and you haven’t even jumped into the content creation yet. Because content can become a bit over overwhelming and come with a number of moving parts (hiring photographers, working with copywriters, researching content, creating infographics, developing white papers and corresponding landing pages, and so on) it will save you so much stress and many tears to get this outlined in a content calendar.
Try not to get too caught up on addressing every day on your social calendar. Is national cookie day relevant to your accounting firm? Unless Oreo (or something of the sort) is your client, your can use your resources better focusing on tax season and planning content.
How detailed should my content calendar be?
In my opinion, your content calendar is to keep you on track, keep you organized, and remove friction. As such, I think you want to address product launch or event dates and outline your commitment to how often you’ll be creating content. Your content calendar will keep you accountable when you’re feeling tired or discouraged.
A content calendar should outline general themes you intend to post about, formats you’ll use, channels, and additional requirements. For example, you may not be ready to create your white paper about compounding interest just yet. Still, you should at least know you intend to write and research one, that you’ll distribute it via LinkedIn, and you intend to collect emails in exchange for this resource, so you’ll need a corresponding landing page.
When it comes to organizing your content, this workflow is really up to you. Some people opt for a spreadsheet; other people use fancier tools. I find a mix of a spreadsheet along with a tool called Trello very useful. Trello also works as a great place to dump content ideas, arranged in themes or via boards, until you have time to refine your ideas down into more tangible content pieces.
Make sure to measure your content efforts
No content plan is complete without appropriate tracking.
Measurement is a key component of digital marketing. Without it, you are spaghetti marketing - throwing something out there and seeing if it sticks. Tracking results through services like Google Analytics allows you to see what's working and what efforts may no longer be the best use of your time and resources.
Before you start any marketing efforts, always make sure you have in-app analytics or, better yet, Google Analytics on your website properties.
Google analytics provides a snippet of tracking code you add to your website. Once installed, you can learn where your search traffic is coming from, pages where engagement is strong, and pages that need a little help. You also get a sense of how people move through your website.
Several tools you may choose to use also come with built-in analytics and data. Remember you want to access and examine in-app analytics and website/landing page analytics. For example, while it's valuable to know how many people clicked on an ad, you also want access to how long they stayed on your website and how those ads contributed to your business success (such as a download, phone call, or sale).
Ready to get started with your content marketing efforts?
Now that we have covered business goals, campaign goals, and how to appropriately plan content, here is a final checklist for your content marketing efforts.
What are your content goals?
Who is your target audience (who are we trying to reach)?
What is your budget for distributing content?
What channels (Instagram, LinkedIn, Google display, email, press releases, sponsored content etc.) will you use?
What are your destination url(s) (blog posts, landing pages, services pages)?
What is your key messaging? Need help communicating your value? Visit my guide.
Have you decided on your CTA’s "calls to action" (Sign up, Subscribe, etc.)
What campaign assets are required (white-paper, free guide, etc.)
Do you have creative assets sized for different channels?
Do you have tracking and analytics in place?
Now it’s time to get started. Remember, if you’re feeling lost. Consider your overall goals. Next, think about how content can help you reach those goals. And lastly, consider the best format to create your content and the channels you should use to distribute your content and reach your audience.
Looking for more? Get started with my complete guide to growing your business online.
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