Content strategy
Implementation Guide
Simon Kingsnorth
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These materials are most effective when used in
association with the book Digital Marketing Strategy
Content strategy Implementation
Guide
This guide is designed to give you a step by step guide to
implementing your content strategy.
Other guides are available for other digital marketing channels. To best
understand how this fits into your broader strategy see the book Digital
Marketing Strategy by Simon Kingsnorth.
How it works
The guide is designed to be as easy to use as possible. Each guide is
broken down into simple, key steps to take to ensure your strategy is as
effectively and smoothly implemented as possible. So less of this chat and
let’s get to the detail.
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1 Understand the key pillars of content
Is it credible, is it shareable, is it you? If you can answer yes to these three
questions you’ve understood how to create content that resonates. Timely,
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legitimately useful (fun, interesting or informative) content that is authentic for
your brand, is infinitely more shareable than something that is of poor quality or
nakedly follows a trend.
2 Consider these content opportunities
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When it comes to content, most people think first of blogs,
guides and other text-based products, but there are plenty of
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other ways to draw your audience’s attention. Audiobooks and
podcasts are immensely popular and relatively cheap to
produce, likewise for infographics and memes. Live streaming
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can be done from anywhere there is internet. Tools like
calculators and pension planners help bring in qualified leads
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through search. Virtual and augmented reality are in their
infancy, but are full of untapped potential.
Consider your target audience and motivation
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In order to determine what medium will best relay the
message, it’s necessary to be sure about who you are
advertising to and where they are in the buying cycle.
Podcasts are great for growing a loyal following of under-40s keen to
buy services, but for Baby Boomers, white papers and testimonials
make more sense.
Organizing your people for content strategy
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Creating effective content starts in the C-suite. When the IT, PR, SEO
and marketing, branding and strategy departments work in silos, they
often end up working against each other because there is no company-
wide content plan. It’s up to the CEO to create a culture and physical
office space where departments are able to collaborate freely.
Developing content processes
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Because content is a creative process, it’s tempting just to dive right in and see
what happens. While this is fun, it’s not especially efficient or sustainable. A
better idea is to think carefully about campaign objectives and strategy, analyse
the data, sharply define your target groups and ring fence time for ideation. Only
then does the content planning and creation begin.
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Establish clear objectives
Content is meant to help achieve business objectives, not content
Section objectives. Are you looking to create awareness, change an existing
perception, increase engagement, drive sales, or improve customer
loyalty and satisfaction? Of course, these objectives don’t exist
independently to each other, but it’s worth thinking about their priority
order.
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Understand the data
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You know your target audience, but do you know what your
competitors are doing or how exactly existing content pieces are
performing? Brand guidelines tell who you think you are, but
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surveys, focus groups and interviews along with keyword
research tell you how your customers see you.
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8 Build target groups
Most marketers labour under the illusion that customers already love their brand.
The truth is, customers mostly don’t care about you. To better reach them, find out
what problem they’re having, where they like to hang out (Facebook, the pub,
Medium) and how they like to be told about your solution (ads, referrals,
information products).
9 Ideation
Anyone can contribute to content ideation and often it’s helpful to have input
from a perspective outside the project. The only requirement is that all
participants are familiar with the research. Brainstorming is a very common
ideation method, but I prefer the more structured brainwriting, which gives
108 options in less than 30 minutes.
Creation & Planning
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With all the research and thinking taken care of, now the challenge is telling the
content creators, either agency or in-house, what you need. In addition to
regularly scheduled (proactive) content, you will need to make a plan for what
to do if there is an upset in sports or politics or someone famous in your field
dies. When done properly, reactive content can result in very high levels of
engagement. Slow approval processes or patchy holiday and out-of-hours
cover could mean mishandling the moment or missing it altogether.
11 Distribution
Section Companies can choose from three distribution channels to help get their
message out. Owned channels –company website and social media profiles—
are the most reliable, because you can post information about anything near-
instantly. Earned media – journalists, podcasters, social media users– can
bring strong engagement, but is not easy to control. Paid distribution can be
Section adverts in traditional and social media, making use of content distribution
platforms or paid search advertising.
12 Measuring success
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The last step is to find out how well a piece of content really
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performed. This is done with metrics which quantify volume and
reach (social media reach and backlinks), engagement (bounce rate,
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amplification, social triggers) and acquisitions and value (conversion
percentage and cost-per-lead/sale). Measuring failure is important
as well. Not all content will perform as planned and there is much
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that can be learned from looking at where things went wrong.
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13 Consider international content
What works in your home market may not necessarily work in
another country. Though it seems near impossible to
Westerners, Yandex or Baidu are much more popular than
Google in Russia and China and the percentage of people
with smartphones varies widely even within a country.
and Black Friday sales aren’t much use in Ghana. When it
comes to the content itself, it is essential that it is created by
native speakers. There isn’t much that erodes brand
authority as quickly as a website full of unidiomatic howlers.
Jokes that work in the UK often don’t translate in the U.S and Black Friday
sales aren’t much use in Ghana. When it comes to the content itself, it is
essential that it is created by native speakers. There isn’t much that erodes
brand authority as quickly as a website full of unidiomatic howlers. Unless that’s
your thing, in which case, fire up Google Translate and get to it.
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