Creating a successful content strategy can be complicated. Let’s face it: it’s a crowded, competitive market. To stand out, you should take into consideration high-quality visuals, data-driven conversion tactics, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media support to leverage written content.
Say you’ve engaged a skilled content writer to create an inventory of original articles, newsletters, and whitepapers to kick off your content strategy. What can you do to make it a success? Here are three things to take your content to the next level.
1. Create a foolproof marketing strategy for the months to come.
They say it takes about 60 days for content to take off—but once your content gets traction, how do you keep that momentum? A content strategy with staying power hinges on a few things. One is a steady flow of new content. Keeping an editorial calendar packed with fresh, relevant articles can be a challenge, but a solid content strategy can lead the way and guide ideation and brainstorming.
A good content strategy should be informed by research, keywords, search volume, and your audience. A marketing strategist can look at these factors and help determine the categories and topics that will resonate with your audience.
With those categories in mind, create a structure for your content. What types of articles should populate each category? How many articles of each type should you aim to publish a month? Which channels will you push out your content to? Answering these questions will ensure your content is balanced and help guide your calendar as your strategy grows and evolves.
Tip: A good strategy should yield a general estimate of your content volume (e.g., 25 articles per month, two videos per month, and one infographic per month), which should also help you determine your talent requirements and budget, too (e.g. 6–7 articles per writer, per month).
2. Polish content with a round of editing
Nothing detracts from the credibility and quality of great content faster than typos, broken links, poor formatting, and factual errors. Mistakes happen, but you can decrease the likelihood that they will with a second set of eyes to review the content.
At the very minimum, engage a copyeditor to proof your content for readability, grammar, and typos. An editor experienced in your subject matter can be a highly collaborative team member who takes your content from good to great. They can help not only with syntax and structure but can also offer valuable perspectives and creative guidance on key points you’re missing.
Tip: Is your content more on the technical side? Whether you’re writing about science, web development, finances, or healthcare, engage a skilled technical writer to proof your content for errors. No one wants to publish their content only to have a subject matter expert tear apart its credibility in the comment section. Sending that content to a technical writer or editor can help ensure it’s accurate and air-tight.
3. Support written content with eye-catching graphics and video
There are plenty of ways you can make content more engaging with visuals—from infographics and original illustrations to stock photography and animated videos. So, how do you decide which visuals are the right choice to supplement your content?
A good place to start is by assigning featured images to your written content, which will accompany it in nearly every channel it’s published. These give readers a snapshot of what your content is about and help it stand out on the page. You might opt for stock photography with a unique overlay color in your brand’s color palette, or engage a graphic designer or illustrator to create custom images for each article.
Once you’ve nailed featured images, consider how other visuals can support and break up your content. Do you have a longer article that would do well as an infographic? Or, would your content benefit from highlighting a quote and turning it into a visual to pull key points for readers who are skimming? Have you included calls to action in your content?
A next-level visual tactic to ramp up conversions is to engage a UX designer to help you leverage dynamic content like optimized calls-to-action and personalization through data and audience segmentation. Video content can help boost sales at all points along the content funnel, too, whether it’s in the form of testimonials, tutorials, FAQ videos, or explainer videos.
Tip: Keeping editorial calendars packed with fresh content can be tough when there’s already a lot on everyone’s plates. A smart way to keep content flowing is to repurpose existing content. Engage a motion graphics designer to breathe new life into a high-performing article by translating it into a short motion graphics video.
