Content Strategy

In this strategy I will do the following:

1. Audit your social media and content marketing
2. Define your audience in terms of psychographics
3. Listen in to your audience
4. Talk about why and how your competitors use social media
5. Look at global best practices for your industry
6. Develop content plans and styles to deliver ongoing, consistent communication on your social media
7. Set goals and milestones for each social media platform
8. Suggest which type of content will be used on each and make tactical suggestions to increase engagement

“Content without strategy is just stuff and the world has enough stuff.”

Too many brands whether they are personal, product or business services all spend too long following the crowd just broadcasting the same tired social media content. If you try and be for ‘everyone’ your content won’t be for anyone, know your niche and know your audience and all your content lands right.

“Consumers are scrolling the length of Big Ben every day on social media. Your job is to create content that disrupts that scroll and connects. If building a disruptive, dynamic brand is not in your plan- neither is profit.”

Ability to think bigger … with a focus on the strategies and technologies that marketers use to win, serve, and retain customers.

Social Intelligence and maturity in your social media strategy matter. The ability to analyse data and uplevel your actions is fundamental to not becoming stagnant.

The data now available from social media has grown more complex, and more diverse in recent years it offers businesses and brands even greater potential to understand consumer behaviours, motivations, and attitudes. These increasingly sophisticated insights have applications that extend beyond the marketing department to almost every business function.

The potential can only be tapped with new tools and skills, and a willingness to adopt them by a wider organisation.

The sections in your strategy will be as follows :

• How to use social media, listen in, connect, broadcast, encourage participation, self promote, collect feedback
• Competitor analysis – review, best practice
• Audience Avatars and personas
• Strategy to compliment audience dynamics on each platform
• Identifying your hero/heroine platform for engagement and then sales
• Content schedule for the hero/ heroine platform
• Storybook playbook for stories and reels
• Visual strategy – social brand identity and style
• Hashtags research and instruction
• The Goals and KPIs
• Final notes

Become a great storyteller and you will instantly become a natural and magnetic content marketeer without even trying.

Brand activation in terms of creating a good brand matters strategy is key you must bring the spirit and personality of the brand to life and allow this to be consistently embodied at every consumer/fan touchpoint with the brand.

The key is creating content that is about your audience and is of interest to them.

The content they find valuable where they learn more about the things that interest them not just your brand. Content that is exciting, enlightening entertaining and engaging. You sell a lifestyle and experience a community a way of thinking and living that your target audience thinks —- this is 100% me or for me! —- We as humans are herd animals —  it is always about community and belonging!

For example, Harley Davidson worth over a billion dollars seeks to make a change. HD seeks to change a group of disrespected outsiders into respected insiders. They went to a group of people that felt they were not seen or heard or respected and they made them feel seen, heard, respected and very freaking superhero COOL!

Great content is whatever ads value to the readers’ life and makes them feel good. Great content marketing on Instagram doesn’t feel like marketing at all – this is key!

The way ‘we’ know this is by starting each conversation by listening in. You listen in to your target audience using the avatars and personas you have created to find them. Then you listen and see the content that they love and ask questions.

We have two ears for listening and one mouth for talking and every great conversation starts with listening.

It’s about finding your thirsty audience that needs what you sell more than they need the money. When you find that group that will eagerly buy, this gives you money to reinvest in your marketing efforts.

You also need to identify, connect and build relationships with your sneezers (not a COVID term) those that will shout your brand name from the rooftops and tag people in, those that can become great referral partners and affiliates.

Marketing for me is not about the demographics it’s about the psychographics. I’m always trying to work with an audience that is thirsty and wants to get enrolled in a journey to make things better and quench that thirst. A thirsty audience is one that is quick to convert, aligned in terms of fanocracy and easy to mirror and scale.

I would also dedicate time to listening to best practice brands globally from your industry. Look at what they are sharing and look at what they are not sharing and look at what you could create to go against the grain and bridge the gap. Look at what is unsaid but needed.

Standing out as a brand on social media requires two things :

• uniqueness
• and to be out-standing

When you have built this beautifully, involve your fans in your ‘marketing’ storytelling and content creating.

When we invite people into ‘our homes’ we invite them into our hearts. Even if our homes are our social streams this creates intimacy and with intimacy comes trust.
All sales in business are completed by leveraging trust to sell.

Some market information from a content marketing specialist Sian Gunney

According to Social Media Examiner, 98% of businesses use social media to attract new customers, but 85% of business owners aren’t convinced they are using it correctly or realising its true potential. Most in-house marketers feel they are shooting in the dark with content and advertising because they don’t have a clear strategy, dedicated time or the right investment for social media ads.

71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand on social media are likely to recommend it to their friends and family. 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations on social media. 500 million daily active Instagram stories are uploaded worldwide.

Your content strategy is the beating heart of all your social media efforts. A strategy defines how your business or brand will appear on the right platform to connect to its key audiences and achieve its success metrics and goals.

Lack of consistency can bring a lack of interest.

Important things to look at is previous strategies and why they have or haven’t worked.

Please share the following if you already have it.

• A full audit of your social media presence and setting benchmarks. Channels evaluation, suggestions for improvement and optimisation.
• Setting goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely, aligned with your business objectives. Identifying KPIs to measure success.
• Analysing competitors’ and best practices globally within the industry and their social media use to see what works and what does not. Also going against the grain to do something that is different and stands out.
• Determining content strategy to get the best out of the social media channels and position your brand
• Defining your audience. Knowing who your audience is key to determining which channels to use & creating content that they will like.
• Creating a content calendar for future post scheduling (1-week example)

On Instagram, for example, there are more than 8m business accounts regularly publishing. 80% of users follow a business account. 60% of users first heard about a product on Instagram. 30% of users buy something they discover through the channel.

You need to have a visually appealing feed, engaging content, the right hashtags, and professional management to stand out. Utilising all-new features, such as Reels and Guides. Keeping things quality and engaging in a timely fashion.

Timing is everything a second too early or a second too late and you can miss an opportunity. I will guide you to review your content and accounts regularly and work with the best suppliers for content management, community management, influencer-management growth hacking and social media ads and exposure so that you can’t fail to stand out, get everyone talking, convert and realise your potential.

Define, test, experiment, define, test, experiment, define, direct, excite, engage, convert (repeat)

For content to land right and stay right, it needs to be ready to adapt.

John F Kennedy once said:

“Change is the law of life and those who only look to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”

Below are some popular tactics that might appear as part of your strategy.

Popular Tactics for Your Marketing Strategies that you can buy from my strategy shop

It can be hard to know which strategies to use to achieve your marketing strategy’s goals. Here are a few common tactics that we’ve seen work well across a wide variety of industries:

Tactic: Blogging

• Increases website traffic
• Improves brand name recognition
• Supports SEO
• Increases reach through keyword-rich content
• Boosts trust
• Boosts brand awareness
• Establishes your brand authority as an expert in your field via valuable content
• Gives readers a reason to engage with you as an authority in your field
• Demonstrates to visitors why they should work with you

The big benefit to blogging for your brand or business is that it can drive interested parties to your website hitting your goal of increased targeted traffic organically visiting your site. By publishing valuable articles consistently on the same day and time each week, you show the search engines that your website is high quality and helpful, which can greatly increase your ranking in search results. Every algorithm is based on authentic, valuable content that helps people and meaningful engagement.

Tactic: Social Media Advertising

• Increases consumer engagement and comments and stories around the brand/business
• Drives targeted traffic to your website who are already feeling ‘click happy’
• Improves brand name recognition
• Boosts brand awareness
• Conveys compelling messages and stories that evoke emotions and motivate potential customers and clients to take action
• Widens reach and starts consideration – Reaches those that aren’t actively looking for your company or a business like yours but are interested

Advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter or LinkedIn can be a very affordable way to increase your reach across the platforms. As long as you use the Facebook ad targeting correctly, write compelling copy, and use stand out visual and dynamic assets you can suddenly become visible to your dream customers/ clients, who will wish they had known about you sooner. If you are stuck on social media advertising we can recommend leading courses and coaches that specialise in this.

Tactic: Organic Social Media

Social media marketing is a valuable tactic for your marketing strategy.

• Improves name recognition
• Community Builds valuable relationships could be potential customers or clients or indeed referral partners and affiliates which can often be more valuable  (Always think six degrees of separation)
• Increases consumer engagement
• Drives traffic to your website
• Boosts brand awareness
• Keeps you top of mind and reminds users why they should work with you
• Provides a convenient way for customers to communicate with your brand or business

Even if you don’t pay for social media advertising, maintaining a presence on the platforms your target consumers use can be valuable. It helps you build a supportive community and allows your posts to be shared creating an echo and increasing their reach with shares of endorsement. It’s a super opportunity to remind consumers about the services you offer, your expertise and that you care about them. This organic content can also be fantastic for increasing engaged website traffic and SEO, as well as providing excellent and attentive customer care.

Tactic: Email Marketing

• Increases website traffic
• Establishes credibility with recipients
• Improves name recognition
• Supports longer content storytelling
• Boosts brand awareness
• Increases click-through rates with options to click and buy
• Reminds contacts you already have established that they can still do business with you

To leverage the benefits of email marketing, you don’t need to pour all your resources into it. A monthly e-newsletter alongside other tactics can be a fantastic marketing strategy to increase your website traffic and credibility with your consumers, as well as name recognition and brand awareness. A brief email with valuable, timely, relevant articles, links, etc. can be another great reminder for your target clients/ customers to get in touch with you and find out more about your products and services.

Tactic: Creating & Distributing Press Releases

• Increases website traffic
• Improves name recognition
• Boosts brand awareness
• Potentially secures editorial media coverage

As long as you have something newsworthy to share, press releases can be used with great traction and results. If you seed them using online briefing and PR wire they can provide multiple backlinks back to your website. Using a professional PR database with personal nurtured connections can support higher quality, high authority editorial coverage which goes a lot further to increase and enhance your search engine optimisation and your website traffic.

Tactic: Event Creation & Promotion

• Drives consumer engagement
• Increases website traffic
• Improves name recognition
• Boosts brand awareness
• Potentially secures editorial media coverage

Despite being listed as 48 in the top 100 influencers worldwide on digital marketing and the advancements in VR and AR. Since moving back home from London I have always looked to combine Digital Marketing with Experiential Marketing for the best results possible on any campaign. This is because there is nothing more powerful than face to face contact and true connection it’s in our DNA. Despite the growth of digital media, consumers crave connection. An event can be a fantastic way to interact with your customers face-to-face and allow them to truly experience your brand.

Tactic: Editorial Media Pitching

• Brand alignment and increases brand trust
• Provides an authoritative, credible third-party testimonial investment for your business (which makes potential clients/ consumers even more likely to purchase from you and want to do business)
• Establishes you as an expert in your field
• Improves name recognition
• Boosts brand awareness
• Potentially increases website traffic

Prosumers don’t always trust advertorial seeing them as try-hard or self-promotion, however, they trust the voices of others reviewing your services or covering your brand story in the press. A TRUSTED third-party endorsement from the journalist, telling their readers, viewers and listeners why they should consider your business. With the right media partner or journalist, it can carry gravitas and make an audience buy by alignment and recommendation.

Saga magazine used to have one of the highest ROI on editorials with their audience and with regular coverage or a stand-out piece the Guardian and Telegraph have high conversions, that often outlive the initial date of the publication. In addition, if the coverage runs online, the reporter will likely include a link to your website, which can make a positive difference for SEO and your website traffic.