Content creation is one of the most challenging yet important aspects of online marketing. The content you produce acts as your brand’s voice, and it determines the messages and values your brand communicates to people and affects how it is perceived by your audience. Poorly written and unprofessional content automatically signals an incompetent brand, and such content ruins the brand image.

On the other hand, great content will reflect a positive brand image. A good content creation strategy is a surefire way to boost organic traffic and enhance your marketing efforts. Content marketing is costly, and if not done carefully and strategically, it can go wrong very easily. Here are 6 easy-to-follow steps to help you create a winning content strategy.

1. Identify Your Target Audience

The first step toward creating a winning content strategy is identifying your target audience. Before you create content, you must first understand who you’re creating it for, what their problems are, where they are searching for solutions, and what type of content they’d like to see. Understanding your audience will help you understand which voice you should adopt to appeal to your audience. For instance, the problems that millennials face differ greatly from those that 40-60-year-olds have. Millennials will also typically search for solutions on Instagram, as opposed to Gen Xs who will head over to Facebook, for example. Different age groups also respond to different things. For example, older people may respond better to videos than they would to hard-to-read text. Younger generations may be more interested in interactive content. However, it all still comes down to what you are advertising and what your audience is interested in. Combining different factors and taking them into account will help you create effective content.

2. Set Marketing Goals

During the time when you’re deciding what to include in your content, you should also consider your marketing goals. While all the factors related to your customers are very important to keep in mind, your content should also be relevant to your business, your products or services, and your marketing goals. The professionals behind bundledigital.co.uk explain that you should determine what you want to get out of the content that you will be creating before publishing it. Do you want to grow your social media presence or boost brand awareness? You should also set a reasonable deadline when setting your marketing goals.

3. Choose the Types of Content you Want to Offer

The three stages of sales funnels are awareness, consideration, and purchase. Different content must be produced for each of these stages to get the best outcome. In awareness, being the first stage, you should direct your focus mainly toward getting more high-authority links and fewer spammy links, and on getting more traffic-driving links as well by including informational content and infographics. The consideration stage is one where customers are considering different options. During this stage, you should use case studies to prove your product/service’s reliability and webinars to explain to customers what they can get out of your brand. The last step is the purchase, which is when your customer may need one last push. In this stage, make sure to show competitive comparisons and detailed specifications.

4. Plan the Process

Planning the content creation process is a crucial step in creating content. First off, you should decide the type of content that will be produced. It can be a blog, video, gallery, infographic, or anything else, as long as it suits your audience and marketing goals. You should then choose a topic and understand how much of it you will be covering. You should also determine the length of your content. Research relative keywords and create a detailed outline and have it approved. Afterward, start preparing the content. If you have an editor that you are working with, make sure to forward it to them and edit it accordingly. The final product is what should be marketed. Remember, consistency is key, so, make sure to create a calendar comprising the type of content you will create and when it should be produced.

5. Select Appropriate Channels

Creating exceptional content is not enough; effective promotion is a must to ensure your content will actually reach your target audience. According to your target market analysis, you should be aware of the platform on which your audience spends most of their time. Based on your findings, make sure to combine your content with other effective marketing tools on the most suitable platforms.

6. Measure and Optimize

To make sure that your content is winning, you must measure the results of your strategy. Find out if you have achieved your marketing goals to determine if you have accomplished them. If not, you should revisit your strategy and identify weak points. This doesn’t mean that you have to change the strategy, it just means that minor alternations must take place to achieve better results.

Building an effective content creation strategy is quite a challenge. When it comes to creating unique content, you must create something that accurately represents your brand and speaks to your audience so you can achieve your marketing goals. Since there are so many things to keep in mind, checking off all the boxes may seem impossible. However, following these 6 steps will help you create winning content, so make sure you refer back to this guide to make the process easier.