Try These 5 Methods to Improve Your Content Strategy
A successful content marketing strategy isn’t built overnight. It can take a bit of work to get your strategy reliably delivering new leads and helping to convert visitors to your site, so we’ve put together some tips to help you get on your way…
Conduct keyword research
The first step to a better content marketing strategy is to understand what your target demographic are actually searching for.
You can do this by reviewing various different key statistics that help you to determine the trending keywords in your industry. Check for statistics like the average monthly search volume of a keyword, or use SEMrush to see information like the intent of the searcher. Other ways you can conduct keyword research is to look at suggested search terms at the bottom of google results to see similar searches that can give you a more complete picture of how the audience is searching. You can also use tools like Google Trends to see what search terms are gaining popularity. Keyword research not only allows you to write better SEO-friendly content, but it can guide you on which topics are best to cover in your content plan.
Plan the main points
When starting out on a piece of content, it’s a good idea to plan out the main points you want to get across before starting to write. This helps you to write more concisely and thoughtfully, whilst getting all the information in that you need to. It can be helpful to write out each title and subtitle for the content before you start to write, and then following that guide to piece together the article.
Offer the content in different formats
Not everybody consumes content in the same way, so it's important to offer your content in different formats to reach the widest number from your audience as is possible. For example, some people might prefer to learn visually by watching a video whereas others might prefer to read long-form content to digest it. As a content marketer, it's your job to appeal to your audience wherever they are consuming content and however they like to do it best. Reformatting content into different formats also means you'll have a larger quantity of content to keep your channels updated without having to come up with new ideas all the time. How can you reformat content? Well, a blog could turn into a podcast episode discussing the same ideas. It could also turn into an infographic, visualising the key data in charts and icons. A blog could be reformatted into a carousel post on social media, for those that prefer bite-sized pieces of content as they scroll. However you choose to do it, think creatively about how a piece of content could be tailored to fit the various learning styles of your audience.
Ask for feedback
Next up is listening to how your audience responds to your content. This is a crucial step to improving your content marketing strategy. Without listening to what your audience think of the content, you won't be able to continually improve it over time. So, make sure that you give plenty of opportunity for the viewer to give feedback. This could be done by inviting comments under a blog or social post, reaching out to members who have downloaded a piece of content or opening up a dedicated feedback session via your social platform stories.
Prioritise design
The design of your content is really important, in fact it's arguably as important as the content itself. The hours spent writing and researching are wasted if the content itself gets no views or clicks, and it’s there that design is so important. Whilst the value of the content itself is going to do the majority of work to move the viewer along your marketing funnel, getting them to engage with the content is the first step. You can do this with better design.
Professional graphic design helps to draw attention to your content in a very busy feed, where there are hundreds of other things vying for the attention of your audience. Your content has the best shot at success when you accompany it with relevant graphics and beautifully branded design work.
