What is Content Strategy?

Content strategy refers to the management of pretty much any tangible media that you
create and own: written, visual, downloadable — you name it. Content strategy is the piece
of your marketing plan that continuously demonstrates who you are and the expertise you
bring to your industry.

You might've heard how important content creation is to the growth of your business, but
as you'll see throughout this post, it needs to have a well-planned purpose.

When you develop a content strategy, there are a few questions to answer.

1. Who will be reading your content?

Who's the target audience for your content? For how many audiences are you creating
content? Just as your business might have more than one type of customer, your content
strategy can cater to more than one type of reader or viewer.

Using a variety of content types and channels will help you deliver different content to each
type of audience you have in mind and engage everyone your company does business with.

2. What problem will you be solving for your audience(s)?

Ideally, your product or service solves a problem you know your audience has. By the same
token, your content coaches and educates your audience through this problem as they
begin to identify and address it.

A sound content strategy supports people on both sides of your product: those who are still
figuring out what their main challenges are, and those who are already using your product
to overcome these challenges. Your content reinforces the solution(s) you're offering and
makes your customers more qualified users of your product.
3. What makes you unique?

Your competitors likely have a similar product as yours, which means your potential
customers need to know what makes yours better — or, at least, different. This is where
content comes in.

In order to prove why you're worth buying from, you need to prove why you're worth
listening to.

4. What content formats will you focus on?

What forms will your content take? Infographics? Videos? Blog posts? Having identified
the topics you want to take a position on, you'll need to determine which formats
to budget for so you can best express that position.
5. What channels will you publish on?

Just as you can create content in different formats, you'll also have different channels you
can publish to. Channels can include owned properties, such as your website and blog; and
social media properties, such as Facebook and Twitter. We'll talk more about social media
content strategy in the step-by-step guide later in this article.

6. How will you manage content creation and publication?

Figuring out how you'll create and publish all your content can be a daunting task. It's
important for a content strategy to know who's creating what, where it's being published,
and when it's going live.
Need of Strategic types of content:

Content marketing helps businesses prepare and plan for reliable and cost-effective sources
of website traffic and new leads. If you can create just one blog post that gets a steady
amount of organic traffic, an embedded link to an e-book or free tool will continue
generating leads for you as time goes on .
The reliable source of traffic and leads from your evergreen content will give you the
flexibility to experiment with other marketing tactics to generate revenue, such as
sponsored content, social media advertising, and distributed content. Plus, your content
will not only help attract leads — it will also help educate your target prospects and
generate awareness for your brand.

How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy

Now, let's dive in to learn the specifics of how to create a content marketing plan.

1. Define your goal.

What's your aim for developing a content marketing plan? Why do you want to produce
content and create a content marketing plan? Know your goals before you begin planning,
and you'll have an easier time determining what's best for your strategy.

2. Conduct persona research.

To develop a successful plan, you need to clearly define your content's target audience —
also known as your buyer persona.

This is especially important for those who are starting out or are new to marketing. By
knowing your target audience, you can produce more relevant and valuable content that
they'll want to read and convert on.

If you're an experienced marketer, your target may have changed. Do you want to target a
new group of people or expand your current target market? Do you want to keep the same
target audience? Revisiting your audience parameters by conducting market research each
year is crucial to growing your audience.
3. Run a content audit.

Most people start out with blog posts, but if you want to venture out and try producing
other content pieces, consider which ones you want to make.

For instance, if you've been doing weekly blog posts for the past year, creating an ebook
that distills all your blog posts into one ultimate guide would be one way to offer
information in a different format. We'll go over several different types of content you can
use further down on the list.

If you've been in business for a while, review your content marketing efforts and the results
from it in the last year by running a content audit. Figure out what you can do differently
in the upcoming year and set new goals to reach. Now is a great time to align your team's
goals with the rest of your organization's goals.
4. Choose a content management system.

Have a system in place where you can create, manage, and track your content, otherwise
known as a content management system (CMS). A few vital parts of content management
include content creation, content publication, and content analytics.

With HubSpot CMS, you can plan, produce, publish, and measure your results all in one
place. Another popular CMS is WordPress, to which you can add the HubSpot WordPress
plugin for free web forms, live chat, CRM access, email marketing, and analytics.
5. Brainstorm content ideas.

Now, it's time to start coming up with ideas for your next content project. Here are some
tools to get the wheels turning:

HubSpot's Website Grader

HubSpot's Website Grader is a great tool to use when you want to see where you're at with
your digital marketing. From your blogging efforts to your social media marketing,
Website Grader grades vital areas of your marketing and sends you a detailed report to
help you optimize and improve each area.

With this tool, you can figure out how to make your website more SEO-friendly and
discover new content ideas.
BlogAbout

Get your mind gears going with IMPACT's unique content idea generator, BlogAbout.
This tool works a bit like Mad Libs, but instead of joke sentences, it shows you common
headline formats with blanks where you can fill in the subject you have in mind.

This brainstorming technique helps you put general ideas in contexts that would be
appealing to your target audience. Once you have a headline you like, BlogAbout lets you
add it to your "Notebook" so you can save your best ideas.

HubSpot's Blog Ideas Generator

Get blog post ideas for an entire year with HubSpot's Blog Ideas Generator. All you need to
do is enter general topics or terms you'd like to write about, and this content idea generator
does all the work for you.

Feedly

The Feedly RSS feed is a wonderful way to keep track of trendy topics in your industry and
find content ideas at the same time.

BuzzSumo

Discover popular content and content ideas at BuzzSumo. This company offers a number
of market research tools, one of which uses social media shares to determine if a piece of
content is popular and well-liked. In turn, this information helps you see which content
ideas would do well if you were to create content about them.
Blog Post Headline Analyzer

CoSchedule's Blog Post Headline Analyzer tool analyzes headlines and titles and provides
feedback on length, word choice, grammar, and keyword search volume. If you have an
idea in mind, run a few title options through the Headline Analyzer to see how you could
make it stronger, and to move your idea further along in the brainstorming process.
 6. Determine which types of content you want to create.

There are a variety of options out there for content you can create. In the following section,
we'll discuss some of the most popular content formats marketers are creating, including
some tools and templates to get you started.

7. Publish and manage your content.

Your marketing plan should go beyond the types of content you'll create — it should also
cover you'll organize your content. With the help of an editorial calendar, you'll be on the
right track for publishing a well-balanced and diverse content library on your website.
Then, create a social media content calendar so you can promote and manage your content
on other sites.

Many of the ideas you think of will be evergreen — they're just as relevant months from
now as they are today. That being said, you shouldn't ignore timely topics either. While
they may not be the bulk of your editorial calendar, they can help you generate spikes of
traffic.

Most people count on incorporating popular holidays such as New Year's and
Thanksgiving in their marketing efforts, but you don't have to limit yourself to these
important marketing dates.

If there are niche holidays that might appeal to your audience, it could be worth publishing
content on your blog or on social media. Check out this ultimate list of social media
holidays — keep an eye on it when you're planning your calendar.

Types of Content Marketing:

1. Blog posts
2. Ebooks
3. Case studies
4. Templates
5. Infographics
6. Videos
7. Podcasts
8. Social media

These are the eight most popular types of content marketing you can create for your
readers and customers.

1. Blog Posts

If you haven't already noticed, you're currently reading a blog post. Blog posts live on a
website and should be published regularly in order to attract new visitors.

Posts should provide valuable content for your audience that makes them inclined to share
posts on social media and across other websites. We recommend that blog posts be between
1,000 and 2,000 words in length, but you should experiment to see if your audience prefers
longer or shorter reads.

Check out our free blog post templates for writing great how-to, listicle, curation,
SlideShare presentation, and newsjacking posts on your own blog.
2. Ebooks

Ebooks are lead-generation tools that potential customers can download after submitting a
lead form with their contact information. They're typically longer, more in-depth, and
published less frequently than blog posts, which are written to attract visitors to a website.

Ebooks are the next step in the inbound marketing process: After reading a blog post (such
as this one), visitors might want more information.
This is where calls-to-action (CTAs) come into play, directing people to a landing page
where they can submit their contact information and download an ebook to learn more
valuable information for their business. In turn, the business producing the ebook has a
new lead for the sales team to contact.
3. Case Studies

Case studies are your opportunity to tell the story of a customer who succeeded in solving a
problem by working with you. A case study is perhaps your most versatile type of content
marketing because it can take many different forms — some of which are on this list.
That's right, case studies can take the form of a blog post, ebook, podcast ... even an
infographic.

Your goal in a case study is to show the people who are considering your product that the
proof is in the pudding. Before choosing a customer for a case study, you should determine
which form the testimonial will take and the area of your business to which you're trying to
drive value.

4. Templates

Templates are a handy content format to try because they generate leads for you while
providing tremendous value to your audience. When you provide your audience with
template tools to save them time and help them succeed, they're more likely to keep
engaging with your content in the future.
5. Infographics

Infographics can organize and visualize data in a more compelling way than words alone.
These are great content formats to use if you're trying to share a lot of data in a way that is
clear and easy to understand.

If you're ready to get started, get our templates for creating beautiful infographics in less
than an hour.
6. Videos

Videos are a highly engaging content medium and are shareable across social media
platforms and websites alike. Videos require a bigger investment of time and resources
than written content, but as visual marketing increases in popularity — after all, it's 40X
more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content — it's a medium
worth experimenting with.
HubSpot Research recently found that video is the most preferred form of content. Video
also captures people's attention more than any other content format.
7. Podcasts

Starting a podcast will help audiences find your brand if they don't have time or interest in
reading content every day. The number of podcast listeners is growing — in 2018,
nearly one-third of the U.S. population has listened to a podcast in the last month.
 If you have interesting people to interview or conversations to host, consider podcasting as
another content format to experiment with. (Here's our comprehensive guide to starting a
podcast.)
8. Social Media

Once you've been regularly publishing content on your own site for a while, it might be
time to start thinking about distributing your content on other sites. This could mean
repurposing content into new formats and publishing them on your blog, creating original
content specifically for external sites or publishing website content on various social
networks.

Posting on social media, however, is pivotal to amplifying your brand's reach and
delivering your content to your customers where you know they spend their time. Social
networks on which businesses often post include:

 Facebook
 Instagram
 Twitter
 LinkedIn
 Pinterest
 Snapchat
 YouTube
When launching a business account on any of the social networks above, it's important to
post the type of content your followers expect to see. On Instagram, for example, users
want photos, videos, and graphics that reflect current events, show off user-generated
content, or even go behind the scenes of your organization.
On Facebook, your options for what to post open up a bit: Not only can you share your
blog posts and website content, but you can also post native Facebook videos, product
promotions, and original memes that resonate with your customers. You can also interact
with other businesses that have a similar audience as your own.

While the goal on social media sites like Instagram or Snapchat is to connect more
intimately with your audience, your goal on platforms like Facebook and Twitter is to
expand that audience, drive traffic toward your website, and start conversations in your
industry. Do some basic market research to discover which platforms your buyers are on,
and mold your content to their expectations.
When you're ready for more ideas, there are a plethora of different content types to
diversify your content marketing.

It takes time, organization, and creativity to grow a successful content marketing strategy.
From building the foundation of your content marketing plan to adding tools to better
manage your content, setting up your strategy for the new year won't be a hassle if you
follow the steps and explore the resources here.

For additional guidance, use HubSpot's Marketing Plan Generator to create a 12-month
strategy in just a few minutes.

Happy creating!