content strategy

In such a situation, people or beginner groups have a lot of difficulties and may even stop getting orders for content production! Do you know what causes such a problem?

Beginners start working exactly when they want to deliver the mail to the customer a few hours later; These people don’t even know what they should write for the next day or what key phrases to produce content for. This work process creates two basic problems:

1. A sharp decrease in the quality of the contents
2. Lack of thematic connection of the content with the customers’ goals

These two issues alone can destroy your internet business! The important thing you should know is that these problems are not limited to the example we mentioned and these issues can arise in any business that requires content creation.

I am sure that the following question has formed in the minds of most of you:

How can large businesses manage their content production process? What does content strategy help for different businesses?

The answer is simple; An effective factor has caused some websites to remain in the top ranks for a long time and manage countless projects. That factor is content strategy, which is given special attention in SEO training courses today.

What is content strategy?

Content strategy is a mechanism whose task is to meet the needs of your collection in the field of content distribution and production. It is true that in a collection, many people may be involved from the beginning of the content creation process to its publication; But none of them do the work of a content strategist. A content strategist determines what content should be produced and published for what purpose. You cannot plan a trip without knowing the destination. A content strategy ensures that your content marketing efforts are on track. Without a clear strategy, you may spend a lot of time writing content that neither engages your audience nor achieves your desired business results.

The difference between content strategy and content marketing

Content strategy is a business activity at a higher level than content marketing, and content is the road map that guides your content marketing. On the other hand, content marketing is the process of organizing, scheduling, creating, publishing, distributing, and promoting different parts of the content. Content marketing includes tactics that derive from content strategy. If we know how to write a content strategy, then we can find a suitable market for our content in a planned and targeted manner.

 Important questions before developing a content strategy

When you plan to create a targeted content strategy for your business, whether for your website, Instagram, or any other area, you should answer the following questions:

1- Who sees (reads) your content?

First of all, you need to know who you are creating content for, which social strata your audience is, what their behaviors are, etc. Answering these questions is the first step for us to knowing how to write a content strategy, of course, some businesses with strata There are different types of society, but not all businesses are like this.

It is interesting to know that some people, who are in a certain segment of society, only like video content. Some also love reading long texts.

 2- Which need or problem does your content solve?

This is perhaps the most important question to ask yourself. In general, most users search for a word in Google to meet their needs or find a solution to their problem.

For example, for people who work in the field of repairing home appliances, it is better to address the problems that may arise for home appliances in their content. Usually, their audience is looking for a solution to fix their refrigerator’s malfunction in Google.

 3- What makes you unique?

Paying attention to this point can help you create a strong content strategy. Because there are so many competitors now, you have to have a special distinction so that people are attracted to you, buy from you, and become your regular customers.

I have some suggestions for you:

• • Differentiate your sales process
  • Put an exclusive product for sale
  • Special discounts always make you stand out

4- What content formats should you focus on?

This issue is very important in how to write a content strategy. You need to know what kind of content your users like the most. Why do they visit your website and spend time there? In the content strategy development models, there are unique tips on how to plan for video content, which we will try to fully review for you in this content.

Of course, some content should be considered as a standard for the website. Like textual content, some content should also be included in the content creation strategy program to better attract users, such as video content.

As a result, it is better to consider two or more content application models with prioritization for your website to attract users with different tastes to your products, services, etc.

5- On which channel do you intend to publish the content?

This issue is also very important. In the content strategy that we create for our clients, we usually have a separate plan for the blog section, the same for the categories section of the site, and on the other hand, for social networks, we must have a special and different strategy compared to the site. Let’s move forward.

Try to consider a unique strategy for each content channel. But don’t forget that all these strategies should follow the same goal, for example, increasing sales of a specific product or a more general goal, such as increasing brand sales.

 6- How to manage content production and publication?

Imagine that you have considered the content strategy with different programs for different parts of your website and social networks. Now, how should we manage its production and distribution? For this, you should consider several important points:

• • Each department should have a separate person to produce its content, such as considering a dedicated force to produce website content
  • Create a content calendar so you know when and what time the content will be published
  • Find the best time to publish content on your channel (such as the best time to publish a post on Instagram )
  • Choose a suitable content management panel (Trello panel is known as a functional content management panel)

6 very important actions of a content strategist

The content strategist identifies the main goals of the business, which separates the ones that are fulfilled by content production among all the specified goals; After this stage, this person does the necessary designs and planning to explain such content. The quantity and quality of the duties of a content strategist depend on the business interests and business mechanisms in mind.

Of course, some of the activities that must be done in this field are repeated enough that we will mention them. Be careful that you may not need to use all of these items in the process of implementing a content strategy for your business.

 1- Business intelligence

Without a vision of the future of your business, you can never create a content strategy and implement it. As a result, people working in this field should be able to understand the needs of any business well after some research. These people should be able to solve business problems through content by building a communication bridge.

 2- Processing, management, and audit

You need to know if this content strategy you are using has solved a problem. If it solved a problem, was it what you planned for?

For this, you must have a team to extract statistical data related to the process of improvement and effectiveness of the contents using multiple tools and provide them to you. Be careful that this is usually done monthly; Even in some new businesses, this number may increase to 3 months.

A person who can create a variety of content production strategies processes this data and using his experience in different content management systems decides whether the content production strategy has been used or not.

 3- Research on business users

The main purpose of websites publishing content is for people to see this content. Suppose that you have published content in the field of air conditioner repair and in that text you have presented a solution that is the result of your life experience in the field of air conditioner repair. But if no one sees this content, what’s the point??? What if the people who see the content don’t care???

To prevent such incidents from happening, one of the main parts of your content strategy should be dedicated to identifying your users. You need to know who your target audience is and where these people are looking for answers to solve their problems. So research on users is very important; Especially in the field of keyword research, which is a very important part of SEO. In keyword research, you will find out what terms your users are using to search on Google. In the end, you should use these phrases to SEO your content.

 4- Strategic vision

Every strategy must have a vision; The vision can even be a sentence in which your goal of implementing and developing a content strategy is clear, and your team, by saying that sentence, will associate all the goals of content production and publishing for them.

 5- Increasing brand reputation

During the process of setting up the website content strategy, you should think about increasing the city of the desired brand. This will help you structure your activities. Undoubtedly, the main goal of doing all these activities such as SEO, content marketing, content planning, and strategy, etc. is to make the desired brand more popular and famous than before.

6- ideation

Idea generation is a process by which you can determine a solution for any problem that arises; Creative solutions. Brainstorming and design thinking are two very popular approaches in this field.

To know how to write a content strategy, we must keep these measures in mind and implement the content strategy of our projects.

Important points for formulating a content strategy

• • What you are trying to do.
  • Who is your target audience?
  • The type of content you publish.
  • How does your content support your brand?
  • How to make your content stand out.
  • How do you promote and promote your content?
  • Determine the success criteria of your content.

What are the principles of content strategy design and formulation?

You must have understood by now what content strategy is and what tasks a content strategist should perform. The next thing you should know is that the content creation strategy is different for every business; But we have tried to give you a general outline of the general process of designing a content production strategy so that by personalizing it, you can create the best possible mechanisms for your brand.

1. 1. understand your business goals; Without the clarity of the goal, it is not possible to design a strategy.
   2. understanding the audience; Try to show yourself as a person who solves all the problems of users.
   3. Defining goals and criteria; You should set a limit for yourself so that when you reach it, you will know if your performance has been successful or not.
   4. Visualization of the ideal state of your business; Try to always visualize how the content strategy can lead you to success.
   5. Provide users with a prototype of your content; These users can be members of your team. Try to accept their criticisms.
   6. repeating the previous step; Repeat the previous step with different contacts until you finally reach a consensus.
   7. publication; You should specify in the content creation strategy which content is better to be published on which date. At this stage, it is recommended to move forward at least one month.

 Tips for developing a content production strategy (based on specific topics)

To better understand what content strategy is, we would like to examine the content production strategy of various areas of internet businesses in the form of examples:

The content strategy of the plane-train-bus ticket sales site

Site audience: general public

The purpose of users to search for target keywords: 

1. 1. Find the price of plane, train, and bus tickets
   2. Buying plane, train, and bus tickets
   3. Information about flight times and train and bus departures
   4. Planning a trip in the coming days

For some reason, we cannot review the content strategy of the brand sites that we mostly cooperated with in this content. Therefore, we continue this part of the content as a topic. Ticket sites have a very specific strategy for providing content and attracting customers. Well, the most important factor in this field is the price. Most users care less about the quality of the passenger service provider and their priority is the price. As a result, they should maneuver on providing the best price as the priority.

The second factor is providing the best quality services. As a result, the way of providing services is also very important to attract users.

Now, considering these two factors, we would like to state the important points for formulating a content strategy for a plane, train, and bus ticket sales site:

1. 1. As we said before, a successful content creation strategy should be based on SEO. Otherwise, it does not bring good results. As a result, you must first find the most searched keywords in this field. For example, the search terms in this area are plane ticket price, plane ticket purchase, train ticket price, train ticket purchase, bus ticket price, and the bus ticket purchase.
   2. Don’t forget that users use long or phrase-like keywords to search. For example, for this area, it is better to work on expressions such as buying Mashhad plane tickets from Tehran or buying Tehran train tickets from Rasht and things like these.
   3. Do not forget to consider the landing pages with the keywords “air ticket purchase” or “air ticket price” in determining the important pages for formulating a content strategy for the field of ticket sales.
   4. You can consider different orientations in the topics of the ticket sales blog. The most appropriate idea is to encourage users to travel.
   5. Don’t forget that most of those who are active in this field have added tour and tourism to their work area and encourage users and customers to register for their tours.
   6. One of the most important things that can be considered as a content strategy is providing attractive offers to users. Some users have entered tourism sites but do not know exactly which tour to choose. This is where an attractive offer can be your trump card to attract customers. An attractive offer with a reasonable discount that is both effective for you and does not cost much for the user.

The content strategy of the home appliances sales site

Site audience: general public

The purpose of users to search for target keywords: 

1. 1. Buying household appliances
   2. Information about the price of household appliances
   3. Compare home appliances with each other
   4. Recognition of new products

It seems that home appliance sales sites should work more determinedly than other sites on their content and work stronger in formulating a content production strategy. Because the audience is going to spend a large amount of money to buy a device, they must have compelling reasons to buy from your store. In formulating a content strategy, you must first consider the goals of the users.

The things we wrote above are the most common reasons for users to refer to home appliance sales sites. It is better to categorize the goals first and consider a section for each one on the site:

1. 1. Those who intend to buy a product directly will face directly above the product category page in Google results.
   2. Those who want to know the price of the products should preferably face the price list (some websites have pages under the title of the price list and present users with the price list of their products, which is a very nice and practical idea.)
   3. For those who want to compare products with each other, it is better to consider a special page for them and compare products in the form of a product review page.
   4. For those who intend to learn about home appliances, it is better to come across your blog site in the Google results.

Now, according to the above categories, it is better to find the most sought-after topics for each of them to produce its content in a principled and organized way, in your content strategy.

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