Startup

What Your Startup Needs For The Best Online Content Strategy

Online content refers to the words, images and videos that you create and share on the internet, mostly for marketing.

Since 90% of marketing efforts have now gone digital, online content is the one element that educates, promotes and sells your product or service. As a Startup, a well-defined digital marketing plan based on a sound content strategy can establish your brand, create awareness about your products, give you leads and result in conversion, effectively and within limited budgets.

You may have tons of content that you wish to share via your website, social media, emails, or mobile applications. But are you making the mistake of churning out and posting content that isn’t working? You will know the answer to this, only if you first create an online content strategy that directs and manages your online content.

An excellent online content strategy minimizes waste and gets results by offering structure and focus to your marketing efforts.

So, here are 3 necessary steps that you need to take before you begin creating any online content.

1. Understand Your Target Audience

Though this starting point sounds obvious, many companies fail in their marketing, due to content that does not cater directly to the prospective buyer.

Target audiences are commonly defined according to:

Demographic Information: This refers to the location, age bracket, socioeconomic status, gender, and main job categories.
Psychographic Profile: What do your audiences like, believe in, do as a hobby etc.
Online Search Habits: Which websites or social media platforms does your target audience frequent to answer their questions and cater to their needs? Do they access them through their mobile phones or laptops?
Issues and Pain Points: What type of questions or concerns can you address through your content?
Content Preferences: Do they like to read blogs and articles? Are they responsive to social media ads? Do they prefer watching informative videos?

All these aspects will help form content that caters to your audiences. One of the best ways to obtain this information is via audience surveys. Draft the survey with close-end questions or multiple choice ones but don’t forget to include some open-ended questions that allow the respondent to express himself/herself.

2. Analyze Your Competitors

If you’re entering a market, that already has established players, pay attention to their online content. Study the keywords they use, the tone and delivery of each piece of content and the format, i.e., blogs, posts, infographics, ads, or emails?

Suppose a brand is working, it’s highly because of it’s well-researched content strategy. It’s good to take inspiration but don’t copy literally. Plagiarism does not rank well online.

Make a competitive audit that tracks high ranking keywords and top traffic areas such as specific websites or social media platforms. Find out the number of social media shares your competitors get for every blog. Know what people are saying about your keywords or product areas in Quora. A competitive audit will help you to a great extent.

3. Employ Resources to Implement Your Content Strategy

The best content strategies fail without a good team of writers and marketers.

To begin with, you will need Content Writers and Editors, Marketing Strategy Professionals, Designers and Videographers. You can build the team with Content Promoters, Social Media experts and Content Analysts. The above professionals will make a full proof team that will ensure your content strategy is well implemented and tracked for improvements.

Lastly, create a content marketing plan with a content schedule i.e.: four blogs, six posts or two ads a week. With focus keywords, quality content and the right platforms, you will soon see positive results.