If you want to succeed in the online world and content writing, you must have a solid content strategy. It is a road map for you that leads you to your goal, and without it you will be lost and lost. How do you develop a successful content strategy then? In today's article, we will learn about the steps to develop a content strategy and ensure that it is built in a strong manner that achieves your site the visits and views you aspire to. To ensure a full understanding of how to develop a content strategy.
First Step: Set your goal
Of course, you can't put yourself on a map if you don't know where you're going. That's why each part of the content strategy should have a specific goal. For example: gain backlinks from other websites or social media accounts, to get more traffic. Achieving high ranks in search results on search engines such as Google or YouTube. Educate and enrich the experience of your customers and audience through your content. Take browsers or content readers to the next stage in the selling process and get them to take action (sign up for your mailing list, or buy your products). Transfer the interaction on social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram...etc) to your website. So, before you start developing a content strategy, you should set a set of clear goals that you seek to achieve, and they must be SMART goals. That is, to be: specific. Measurable. Realistic Attainable. Relevant to what you ultimately want to achieve. Time-bound. Here's an example of a SMART goal for a content strategy.
In order to set SMART goals as described above, ask yourself the following questions: How will this goal contribute to achieving your overall marketing goals? Is this goal the best way to get the desired result I want? Do I have the necessary resources (financing and competencies) to achieve this goal? Once you've answered these questions and set your goal, it's time to move on to the next step!
Step 2: Define your target audience
What exactly does "target audience" mean? In short, a target audience is a group of people who are likely to interact positively with your content. That's why it's important for every content you produce to have a specific audience that you're targeting. Entrepreneur Peter Drucker says, “The goal of marketing is to understand the customer so well that the product or service you are offering fits them perfectly and sells themselves!” What is the importance of defining the target audience? When you define your audience, it becomes easier for you to produce content that captures their interest, and matches their needs and feelings. This, in turn, leads to the promotion of your brand, and the increase in the referral rate for the purchase of your product or service. How do I define the target audience? The first step to identifying your target audience is to build a buyer persona, which includes all the demographic and psychological information related to the potential customer, such as his interests, objections, his way of making decisions and the aspects he considers valuable in the products. Here, you may ask yourself:
How can I get such information? It is neither difficult nor impossible, if you already have a fan base, you can simply analyze and study it to extract this information. If not, start by analyzing the customer base of your closest competitor in the market. Ask questions about them such as: Where do they live? What are their ages? Are they male or female? What are their interests? What do they follow on the Internet? What is their educational level? What is the nature of the jobs they occupy? What is their income level? What motivates them to buy a particular product? What are they particularly concerned about when purchasing a particular product or service? Once you have identified your audience, you can move on to the next step.
Step Three: Develop Effective Content Topics
Your audience should determine the nature of the content you produce. In simpler words, if you want to get more web traffic from search engines, or increase interaction on your social media pages, you need to provide content that your audience likes. How do you do that?! Well, all you have to do is figure out what kind of content your audience is currently searching for and engaging with. You can do this through the use of various content management and SEO tools, such as: Google Keyword Planner Ahrefs SEMRush, in addition to many extensions that you can add to your Internet browser such as Keywords Everywhere. How do I use this information in determining content topics? Let's learn through the following steps how to search for keywords and use them in determining content topics.
1- Use the right keyword analysis tools
Choose the right tool you want to analyze and find keywords such as: SEMRush or Google Keyword Planner, which will show you information about any keyword you use when searching on the Internet. The most important of this information is the Keyword Volume, or “search word volume” in Arabic, which expresses the number of times a particular word is used in Internet searches during one month. At first, choose words that have a search volume of thousands or tens of thousands. This number is convenient because it is large enough to bring enough traffic to your website, but not so large that your content will get lost among other content on the Internet.
2- Turn Keywords into Content Topics
After you've found the right set of keywords your target audience is searching for, it's time to turn them into topics! For example, let's say that one of the keywords you've found that relates to your industry is 'travel abroad'. You can do some brainstorming with your co-workers, and come up with ideas to produce content such as: Best Overseas Travel Destinations in 2020. How do you choose your destination for overseas travel? 7 reasons why you should consider traveling abroad to study? Always remember the golden rule in this regard: content should target and attract your audience, think about your customers before you think about yourself and your sales!
Fourth Step: Choose the appropriate content format.
Today, there are several forms of content that you can choose from, such as: blogs. Email messages. video clips. Pictures. Designs and infographics. Online seminars. Posts on social media. audio recordings. Each of these shapes has many options as well. Take, for example, videos. You can produce videos like: Vlogs. Reviews. Tips & How-tos behind the Scenes. Q&As. Not only that, you also have to determine the length of the content and choose the appropriate platform through which you will publish it in line with your goals of attracting the audience.
In conclusion, update your content strategy frequently, add more content that is doing well, and reduce or eliminate content that isn't doing well.
Through these steps, you will be able to build a strong and effective content strategy that achieves the goals of your website and ensures that you continue to evolve and improve. Always remember, the right content strategy is the roadmap to safety and preventing your content from getting lost in the vast web. To learn more about the content writing process and SEO.
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