You’ve been coming up with ideas for your social media channels and feel overwhelmed about where to get started. Sometimes the number of ideas you have can cripple your progress. It can even make you feel helpless. I know how it feels because I have been in the same situation. I tried o decide how to tackle my online efforts, and felt helpless trying to decide which direction to go. Luckily I found a solution that actually works, and that is creating a content strategy.
Why create a content strategy?
In the words of Sergio Zymann in his book “The End of Marketing As We Know It” says a marketing strategy is a road map. It’s how you plan to execute whatever you want to accomplish. He also said the tactics you use are the vehicles once you develop a strategy.
So from that definition, you can see that your online efforts have to be strategic in order for you to see success and results. It also helps you make better decisions. So let’s explore some reasons.
It helps you narrow your focus
A content strategy helps you to focus on where you’re going. You won’t be easily distracted by trends or what others are doing. This is because you are posting with a purpose. And that purpose is trackable and helping you achieve your business objectives.
In the book, I mentioned earlier Zymann talks about how coca-cola grew its business by changing their strategy. What they did was to target the entire soda segment as opposed to trying to be just a regular soda company. That affected how they marketed the brand and the types of advertising they created.
The narrow focus also helps to simplify what you choose to do and which medium you market on. Protects you from platform hoping and lets you work with your core strength. If its written word, audio or video.
It clarifies the results you are looking for
A strategy clarifies the right results you are looking for. Claude Hopkins in his book “Scientific Advertising” defines advertising as salesmanship in print. Dan Kennedy also advocates that your marketing should produce results. It’s part of his rules of direct marketing.
Being clear on the results frees you up to get creative and try stuff out. If it doesn’t work then move on to something else. If it does you can amplify it and add others to the mix. You can begin to see how your ideas fit into the mix and what outcome you’re looking for every step of the way.
Ir Helps you make better decisions.
As you are armed with your roadmap, and you know what success looks like, all you have to do now is decide which road to travel to get there. This is where you make a decision as to which medium or platform to build or reach your customers. It makes it easier to decide which to add, as you build out the system that will help you get results. What the competition is doing won’t affect you because you know where you are going, and you will have data to prove it.
So there are 3 reasons why you need a content strategy to help you navigate your online marketing.