We all consume tons of content on a daily basis, whether we realize it or not. Social media feeds, Instagram stories, blog posts, memes, GIFs, videos, advertisements, podcasts and more… they’re all examples of content. Content serves many purposes, such as enlightening us, answering questions, moving us or entertaining us. When used correctly, it can help you attract audiences who want to know more. They may also want to invest time, money (or both) in your business, channel and brand. Therefore, it’s important to define your content strategy and plan, so let’s get started!
What Is Content Creation?
First, let’s quickly identify what content creation is.
Content creation is:
- The process of generating ideas that appeal to your audience
- Creating content from these ideas
- Making that information accessible to your audience in one or more formats (written, visual, audio and so on)
Content Strategy & Planning: Where To Start
As with most things, planning is key. You need to have a blueprint before you start in order to plan ahead, stay on track and remember what you want to achieve. This is your content strategy/plan.
Your content strategy includes just about everything, such as:
- Brand
- Tone
- Frequency of content
- Format
- Content ideas
- Promotion plans
Let’s take a look at how to create your content strategy now!
Creating Your Content Strategy & Plan
1. Set Goals For Your Content
Your strategy should revolve around your goals. These could be around traffic to your site, blog or channel, generating leads, finding partnerships and so on. Once you have established this, your content should align to your goal in order to achieve the outcome you want.
2. Know Your Audience
You can make the greatest content in the world, but if your audience don’t like it then it most likely won’t take off. You need to know who you’re speaking to, what they like and where to find them.
Think about who is most likely to benefit from your message, visit your site, buy your products and so on. What do they like? Who else do they interact with or follow on social media? Try to narrow down as much as you can to create a fictional persona of your typical buyer, audience member or fan.
3. Check Your Previous Content
If you’ve been creating content before this point, performing an audit of your content can be a huge help. Even if you hadn’t worked from a strategy before, it doesn’t mean that your content didn’t already fit into one. Here’s how to audit efficiently:
- Create a spreadsheet for your content
- Add columns for your key metrics like page views, comments, shares, engagement and so on
- Categorize each post by those that are performing well, need improvement, or can be rewritten/merged with another post.
Repurposing content is a great tool to utilize. It means not wasting previous content that took time and effort, and simply tweaking or refreshing it. For example, if you created a helpful YouTube video, this could also work as an informational blog post. Make a list of content to recycle and improve!
4. Choose Your Format(s)
You need to choose a format for your content that is easily consumed by your audience. This could be blog posts, videos, a YouTube channel, social media pages, podcasts and so on. You don’t need to stick to one format but you should be able to create content consistently in these formats.
5. Start Thinking About Content Promotion
Promotion is a big part of creating content, as you need to make sure that people see your hard work and engage wit hit!
Your promotion plan should be guided by your brand and your audience. Where do they consume the most media? What time of day receives the most traffic? What do they want to see from you?
Social Media
Don’t forget that social media is a great platform to use for promoting your content. Be sure to mix self-promotion with helpful information and entertainment so that your audience doesn’t feel bombarded or pressured. Make sure to modify your content to fit different platforms, also!
Email Marketing
Email marketing is also a great way to reach audiences and promote content. If people are signed up to your mailing list, this means they willingly opted in and want to hear from you. You can improve your open rates by sending relevant content to segmented list, further personalizing your message.
Paid Promotion
Pay-per-click (or ‘PPC’) can help your content reach new audiences through targeted, paid advertisements. These ads can run on social media, search engines, or other websites.
Final Thoughts
We hope that you enjoyed our tips for creating a content plan and strategy for content creation! Stay tuned, as we will follow up this article with next steps once you have your strategy, ideas and plans!
How Audiosocket Can Help Your Content Strategy & Planning
This article is all about planning and thinking ahead, and that’s what you should be doing with your media. With your YouTube videos, podcasts and so on, it’s time to start planning aspects like music. That’s where we can help!
If you are looking for authentic, top-quality music for your project, why not check out Audiosocket? Your content deserves the best, so sign up today and access 85,000+ songs to bring your vision to life! You can access Audiosocket’s music catalog for just $15 a month as a Personal creator. Not only that, but this allows you to license an unlimited number of tracks at no additional cost. Talk about win-win!
Feel free to check out our article on micro licensing and how it is super helpful for content creators, also.
