Considerations for Building a Content Strategy

Having a well-planned yet flexible content strategy is critical for the success of any digital marketing strategy. Think of the digital strategy as the house, the media channels as the furniture, and the content strategy as the decor, trinkets, and overall feel.

But why should it be flexible? Simply because savvy marketers (when appropriate and relevant) hop on trends, current happenings, and other unplanned events. You need to have a degree of flexibility to include them within your larger strategy. Let’s consider what considerations are necessary for building a content strategy.

Setting the Stage for a Content Strategy

Who are you talking to? Who is your audience? In my case, working social media for Florida International University (FIU), we have multiple audiences. Our positioning as one of the Top 5 largest public universities by enrollment means we speak to alums, current students, prospective students, faculty, staff, researchers, elected officials (public university), and parents. This is very overwhelming! My past agency experience working for Dr Pepper had an audience of English-speaking soda drinkers, Peppers (fans), and Spanish-dominant Hispanics. Each audience is different enough to require content adaptations and unique content pieces. You must identify their unique needs, motivations, and pain points. For example, the messaging Hispanics born outside the United States believe Dr Pepper tastes like medicine despite never having tried it, just because of the Doctor connection. That pain point defines part of that strategy’s goal to encourage product trial.

You must have a clear goal(s) defined when discussing goals. One common mistake I’ve seen countless times is that brands, companies, and even organizations jump into social media to check a box and do it because everybody else is and then end up shooting blanks because they don’t have a proper content strategy. At FIU, we have distinct goals for each audience and some overlapping ones. For example, one of our goals for alums and parents is to make them aware that FIU has grown and evolved since they attended. Therefore, we create content pieces to promote pride in where they graduated or are sending their offspring to. Content reflecting our research prowess, student success, and rankings growth are common themes we employ when talking to alums and parents.

The third element of your strategy is your brand voice. What tone are you speaking in? Is the same tone used for every audience? Is your voice flexible enough to engage users in other languages? Please visit my guide on defining a brand personality and voice to learn more.

Engaging your Audience with a Content Strategy

Next up on your considerations for a content strategy is which channels you will use. There is a myriad of options. You can define your channels in the following groups:

Owned Channels: Website, Email List, Podcasts, Social Media, Blogs, Mobile applications
Earned Media: Influencers, Reviews, User-Generated Content, Social Media Comments, and Shares
Paid Media: Search Ads, Display Ads, Streaming Ads, Social Ads, Outdoor, and more.

I often like exploring emerging and niche channels. Consider these to reach smaller yet more relevant audiences. Don’t always connect large numbers of audience, impressions, and reach to success. Being relevant and hitting the right people at the right time often delivers better results than just blanketing large audiences. One example is now FIU is using Reddit to share research articles with specific audiences. On Reddit, we don’t shy away from delivering in-depth information because we know those subreddits have a lot of smart people who go beyond the typical 2-second attention span of Instagram.

Now that you know what you’re talking about, to whom, and where, you need to define what are going to be content types you will deliver to your audience. For simplicity’s sake, let’s group content types:

Long Form Content: Webinars, Blog Posts (like this one!), Explainer/Tutorial Videos, Podcasts, Newsletters, White Papers, and E-Books.
Short-Form: Short vertical videos (Reels, TikToks), GIF Animations, Images, Short Text Posts, Infographics, Microblogs, Memes, Listicles, and Emails, to name a few.

Don’t shy away from long-form content; experiment with these types of content if your message can go into depth. Mix and match and find your audience’s best response by keeping track of the analytics.

Measuring and Optimizing a Content Strategy

Congratulations! You’ve made it through setting up your content strategy. Now that you know what it takes, you need to continue improving and tweaking your content strategy.

Your audience’s preferences will evolve as different content types and consumption patterns emerge. To be on top of this, you must have an effective content analytics and measurement strategy. Digital content often offers more analytics than we need, and it is common to feel overwhelmed with so much data. The best way to tackle this is to use the analytics that best reflects where you are in the marketing funnel. For example, if you want to raise awareness, you want to watch for impressions and reach. To measure consideration, you want to look closely at how often people engage and for how long. Think about the time spent on the website, pages consumed, social media engagements, and more. When sharing your analytics findings with leadership, keep it simple, closely tied to the goals, and avoid overwhelming.

Last but not least, consider legal and compliance considerations. This is the “party pooper” part of content strategy, especially in highly regulated industries like finance, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals. Consider where you are sourcing your images, videos, audio, quotes, and all the elements used to build your content. You need to know where these are coming from and ensure you have both usage and distribution rights. Usage rights will often be purchased for a website, not social media.

This may all seem very overwhelming initially, but it is the tip of the iceberg that all content professionals face daily. As I often share with colleagues outside marketing and communication, you only know the user experience. It takes a village to get everything onto your screen! I hope this article sets you on your way to creating a solid content strategy for your brand.