You (Seriously) Have to Document Your Content Marketing Strategy

Content marketing strategy is king. That doesn’t sound quite right does it? Most people stop after “content” and add “is king” onto the end before calling it a day. In today’s highly saturated age of online content, it’s not good enough to settle for just content alone. You need a marketing strategy that can propel your content to the top of search engines and act as a lifeboat for your target audience drowning in a sea of worthless content.

60% of marketers say they create at least one piece of content every day. When you add to that the number of non-marketing people who create content on a daily and weekly basis, the sheer volume is mind-boggling. As time goes on it will only get more difficult to make your content stand out in the crowd.

Benefits of Documenting Your Content Marketing Strategy

Documenting a content marketing strategy puts you well ahead of the competition. A whopping 70% of marketers don’t have a consistent or integrated content strategy. That means there’s a ton of content creation happening, but very few businesses are utilizing a strategy to create opportunities. Let’s look at five ways documenting your content marketing strategy will benefit your business.

1. Establish a Brand Identity

You know who your company is. Your employees probably know who your company is, more or less, but does your target audience know who your company is? Documenting your content strategy allows your company to establish an identity with the audience. Every piece of content posted on the company website, and social media platforms, and sent via email should be a perfect representation of your business. Your target audience should be able to scan your Facebook page and have a feel for the voice, tone, and behavior of your company within the first ten seconds. Brand identity needs to be based on your organization’s core values, as well as mission and vision statements.

2. Customize Content Based on Data

A huge benefit of documenting your content marketing strategy is the ability to review performance data. Your audience may not respond well to certain words, phrases, and content types. Blog comments, social media engagement, and email open rates are just a sampling of the types of data that can be used to increase the appeal for your target audience through content customization. If you’re not analyzing your data, you’re wasting it. Take the time to test and review content performance, then use the results to focus on content that drives audience engagement and conversion.

3. Be Accountable

It’s easy to create content when you don’t have to worry about how it performs. Documenting your strategy is a great way to keep track of which types of content to focus on, and when to create, publish, and promote that content. It helps organize your entire team by segmenting responsibilities and taking the guesswork out of the equation. Accountability isn’t a way to micromanage, it’s a tool that keeps everyone focused on optimizing the right content to attain goals.

4. Increase Productivity

Strategy offers specific actions to take that will help businesses reach their goals. Documentation of that strategy allows everyone involved to be as organized as possible. Each task contains information that details who is responsible for each element, when they need to act, and what steps should be taken to reach the goal. When everyone knows what’s involved at each stage of the strategy, it allows them to prioritize their time and efficiently complete tasks.

5. Improve Training and Performance

It takes a long time to get new employees up to speed with the inner workings of your business. The time it takes for them to learn your standard operating procedures (SOPs) can stretch into months without proper documentation. Your content marketing strategy documentation acts as a SOP for newly hired employees. Everything they need to know about your content marketing strategy can be found in your documented work. In addition to teaching them best practices, documentation can also be used to help them avoid making mistakes that have already been discovered and corrected.

How to Begin Documenting Your Content Marketing Strategy

Creating your content marketing strategy documentation process requires a taking very detailed actions:

• Build comprehensive audience personas that allow you to identify your ideal customers. Discover how they communicate, what types of content they like to interact with, and how they like to engage with brands.
• Audit the content you currently create. Does it match what your persona audience wants? Based on the personas you’ve created, what changes should be made to your current content strategy?
• Brainstorm new content categories that would resonate with your audience personas. This will allow you to fill-in-the-blanks and meet the expectations of your audience.
• Establish a way to manage content creation, publishing, optimizing, and analysis. Determine which tools and people in your organization are best suited to fulfill each step of the strategy.
• Create goals that can be used to measure the success or failure of your content. Without goals, you won’t be able to use data analysis to implement effective content changes.
• Build a content schedule that details the day-to-day activities required to achieve your content marketing strategy. This is typically in the format of a weekly, monthly, or annual content calendar.

Documenting your content marketing strategy will keep your entire department on track. It’s an effective way to satisfy potential customers with a steady supply of relevant, high-quality content. Better yet, it helps the entire organization increase productivity and improves their chances of reaching goals on time.