Topics - How to write a content strategy

A successful content strategy will help you meet user needs, attract a new audience, keep that audience engaged, and grow that engagement in the long-term. A successful content strategy explains the form of content you'll publish, the ideas behind that content, and how often you'll publish each type of content. A content strategy, in short, helps you to define, grow, and perfect your content.  

A content strategy is essential for all organisations, regardless of shape or size. Indeed, as the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) shows, 40% of marketers have a content strategy and 64% of the most successful marketers have a content strategy. A content strategy is key to success, allowing you to learn from the past, succeed in the present, and prepare for the future.  

This article will give you a step-by-step guide to creating a brilliant content strategy. We will explore, among other things, how to meet user needs, how to keep up with content trends, how to set goals, the actions that can meet those goals, the essentials of marketing and distribution, and much more.  

But let's start with a brief exploration of the main benefits of an effective content strategy.  

Skip to: Understand benefits of an effective content strategy

Skip to: Start your content strategy with an audit

Skip to: Learn the latest content stats, trends, and theories

Skip to: Define and refine your content strategy goals

Skip to: Set out actions to help you achieve content strategy goals

Skip to: Demonstrate the best place to find great content ideas

Skip to: Actually write your content strategy

Skip to: Review, revise, and re-write your content strategy

Understand the benefits of an effective content strategy 

The content strategy is a centralised place to define the driving forces behind your content, explore how the content meets the needs of users, and plan for the future. It allows you to stay ahead of the curve, to remain consistent, and to elevate transparency. But that's just the start. There are tons of concrete benefits to creating a content strategy, the most important of which we explore below.  

Promotes consistency across your content 

Let's start with consistency. Consistency is vital. Inconsistent content disrupts readers, discourages return users, and undermines trust. Ensuring content is consistent depends on two elements: quality and quantity. Quality depends on the establishment of content foundations, which should include: 

These basic features allow all your content to look and feel friendly and consistent. They improve diversity, allow you to reach more people with your content, and build a sense of reliability and trust for return readers. And, importantly, nailing the fundamentals promotes familiarity with readers. 

You will also need consistency around quantity. It's no use publishing one video on a Monday, another 43 days later, and another the next day. The problem is that return users will not know when to expect new content – and eventually they'll stop returning.  

That does not mean you need to publish daily. It just means that, whatever is possible in terms of content capacity, you should publish consistently, even if that means one blog per month.  

A successful content strategy will define your publishing schedule, allowing you to practice consistent publishing. It will also highlight the fundamentals of your content, ensuring you remain consistent in the quality of your content. In essence, you'll be able to publish great quality content all the time.  

Reduces costs and promotes financial sustainability 

Strategies are essentially long-term plans, allowing you to prepare for the future. That's particularly important when it comes to cost, as creating great content can often prove expensive. The content strategy allows you to make realistic choices, remain in budget, and practice financial sustainability. 

Content strategies should define how much can be spent on each piece of content. You will note the number of articles you wish to produce, for example, along with the word count and the monetary cost, aligning your expenditure with your budget. The content strategy not only allows you to prioritise quality content but matches that content with your organisation's present resources.  

Ensures ownership and team buy-in 

A content strategy assigns roles and responsibilities, showing the roles assigned to different members of the team. Employees should inform the strategy, add to it, and suggest changes when necessary.

That means that employees should know what's expected of them, and by when, which provides a much greater sense of accountability. That in turn improves team buy-in, leading to a greater sense of ownership, better staff retention, and ultimately increased productivity.

Increases overall transparency

Every member of your team should have access to the content strategy. Everyone should know what's expected. It should be shared across your organisation. That will increase transparency, which is a huge benefit, preventing any shock to stakeholders and ensuring teams are always on board.

According to multiple studies, for example, employees indicated that organisational transparency is the number one factor in determining workplace happiness. Transparency also improves creativity and productivity, as people can get involved and provide support and knowledge at the right time.

Transparency also undermines traditional – and often stifling – notions of organisational hierarchy, which can lead to bottlenecking and inflexibility. People can crack on with their roles without constantly asking for permission, which broadly improves the operations across the organisation. 

Improves engagement with your audience 

Engagement should be an essential objective for any content-driven organisation, regardless of size or structure, regardless of reach or status. You need to engage with your audience, meet their core needs and desires, and ensure that the content you produce addresses some of their problems.

The content strategy provides all of the above – and so much more. It will help you to establish audience needs by conducting user research, help you to plan the best way to meet those needs, and keep your mission front and centre, allowing you to address that core problem.  

All of that, along with greater consistency in both quality and quantity, will massively boost brand awareness, strengthen connection, establish trust and credibility, and ultimately boost your stats.  

The above are just five key benefits. There are many more. But let's move onto the first steps of your content strategy, which relies on taking stock of your current position. That means it's time to audit.

Start your content strategy with an audit

An audit allows you to work out your current content position, allowing you to evaluate your successes and failures. It also helps you to define your current expenditure, the amount you're publishing, the successes and failures, you team's overall capacity, and various other essential pieces of information. It is an essential building block, a pivotal part of the process.

Below we take a look at some ways that you can get to know your current positions.

Begin with easy and simple data analytics 

Google Analytics (GA) is perhaps the most popular tool for content analytics. GA offers simple functionality at little or no cost and it's relatively intuitive. There are several other web tools that track analytics, such as Adobe Analytics and Open Web Analytics, many of which are simple to navigate and completely free, and all of which will give you a good overview of your website content.

On top of these, you'll need places to track your podcast, webinar, and video analytics. That will simply depend on the platforms on which you publish. If you're currently using a platform that does not offer analytics, consider switching. YouTube and Audioboom are popular options.

You may also want to consider how your content performs in terms of distribution. Email platforms, such as MailChimp, DotDigital, and GetResponse, all have various analytics options. Similarly, most social media platforms offer analytics tools, including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  

You can also check out data from past events, membership data, and so on. It's important to always ensure that you have legal consent to use the data and that you are always using the data ethically. Then, you can use each piece of small information to gain a wider picture of your current content performance, giving you a better understanding of what your audience prefers  

Perhaps the data shows you that longer articles or blogs perform better. Perhaps shorter videos are more successful, or a particular topic of webinar has regularly gained a wider audience. You'll want to compile the top-level data – page views, bounce rate, users, and so on – and combine that with more precise data that relates specifically to your organisation, or your industry. Once you've completed the initial quantitative data analytics, you'll want to go into more detail using qualitative research. 

Support data analytics with qualitative research

Qualitative data can help you fill gaps in quantitative data. So, for example, you could survey your users – through email, socials, or even face-to-face – and ask them basic questions about your present content offering. Where is there room for improvement in your content? What do they think of your images? Is the content relevant? What would they like to see? How do they like to consume content?

The key to qualitative research is to think carefully about the information you need. Do not simply ask the expected questions – ask the questions that will best inform your content strategy, the questions that will lead to effective improvements in the content you produce, the questions that will matter.  

Consider building user personas for your content

A final option is to produce user personas that offer a fictional representation of your audience. User personas are created through research, preferably a mix of quantitative data and qualitative research.

Building user personas is not essential. But it may prove helpful. You can choose nicknames to represent your fictional personas. It is best to avoid real names – people might get a little annoyed.

One fictional user persona could be twenty-nine-year-old Jamie, from Cumbria, who is active on social media and likes to consume long-form content. Jamie broadly represents the needs, desires, and attributes of a segment of your users. So, when you make decisions in your content, you can think about Jamie (and other personas), rather than vaguely making assumptions about your users.

Do not create too many personas and ensure they represent your users. Personas are only effective if accurate and precise – any deviation from that means you're doing extra work for no reward. You can take a shortcut and use persona templates online, such as the options from Miro and Hootsuite.

Learn the latest content stats, trends, and theories

So you have judged the current success of your content. And you've done some user research to judge the expectations and desires of your users. Now you need to do some broad research about content trends, just to keep up with the latest developments. The best place to start is with stats.

Check out the latest stats on content

You need to regularly check out the latest stats about content. These will paint a broad picture of the current market, along with a broad sense of audience desires, both of which should inform your strategy. Consider the following statistics and facts, for example: 

32% of respondents to a DemandGen survey are overwhelmed by the amount of content available but 44% say they will still consume three to five pieces of content before engaging  
73% of marketers employ keyword research when creating content, according to the CMI 
68% of online experiences start with a search engine, according to research from Brightedge 
Less than 6% of pages will rank in the top ten search results within a year of publication, according to search engine optimisation (SEO) specialists Ahrefs
People rarely actively read online. They're more likely to scan, picking out the essential information that is most pertinent to their content needs, according to Nielsen
73% of people admit to skimming blog posts while 27% consume them thoroughly, according to research from Hubspot
Video was the primary form of content created in 2022, followed by blogs, according to research from HubSpot
More than 50% of the organisations that invest in content marketing publish content every day, according to research produced by The Manifest
Only one-third of bloggers regularly check their blogs traffic analytics, according to Statista
And the same research from Statista found that how-to articles were the most popular content formats (77%), followed by news and trends (49%), and guides and e-books (47%)

The above gives you an idea of the way people produce, consume, and think about content. And each and every stat can inform your decision-making process. From the above, for example, you might decide to write more skimmable content pieces, to double-down on SEO, and to produce more video.  

But these stats only paint the present picture – and a selective one at that. They are also very top-heavy, offering little insight into why audiences are consuming in particular ways. To look forward and to get a paint a more comprehensive picture, you will need to keep abreast with the latest opinion and theories around content and content strategy. You can start by simply browsing the net.

Find the latest content ideas

Stats will help you understand the close and distant past. They give a very wide snapshot, but effective content should be forward-thinking, always looking to the future. You should aim to lead. And leaders are always well-informed about trends, able to buck those trends, and able to push on.

Do you know your social proof from your content scarcity? How about the frequency illusion, or the paradox of choice? Do you know the difference between hub-hygiene-hero and pow-push-pull? 

Successful content depends on knowledge. You should have a complete understanding of your subject matter – that's essential for quality content – but you'll also want to grow your knowledge of content more generally. 

Read the latest theories, discussions about the latest trends, and keep up to date with the latest developments. To do that, you can create RSS feeds relating to content, or simply return to some of the best websites producing content. Understanding thoughts and theories will allow you to lead the way, rather than following the crowd, so it's an essential part of a forward-thinking strategy. 

Read the best books on content strategy

The best strategies will depend on a greater knowledge and a deeper understanding. Knowing the stats and trends, along with understanding the latest theories from blogs and websites, will take you far, but to truly move ahead of the crowd you should consider deep learning.

The easiest place to start is with that oft-forgotten about resource: books. So consider a trip to the library, or a local bookshop, and picking up some of the latest (and best) books on content and content marketing. Here is a short list to get you started: 

The above are just suggestions. There are plenty of books that cover content and content strategy, many of which have been published in the past year. Do your research and find the book that best relates to your needs. Our only advice is to ensure the book has been published recently, as content trends shift quickly, so information can fast become outdated.

Attend webinars, events, and other learning opportunities 

Our final bit of advice is to get involved. Go to Conferences that explore the latest trends in content marketing and marketing generally, find virtual events that hold sessions on content, attend webinars on particular content subjects and listen to podcasts, watch videos online, and just get involved. 

Keeping up to date and amassing knowledge can only improve your content strategy. And remember that strategies are always ever evolving, so you'll need to regularly update based on new information.

Define and refine your content strategy goals 

You've tracked your current position with an audit, learnt the latest content stats and trends and knowledge, and you've thought about user wants and desires. Now you need to take that information and establish some objectives. The below steps will help you fine-tune your content strategy goals.

Define your content goals in broad terms

Goals can start broad, but you need to narrow them down. You can use the below goal-setting techniques and the five Ws to finesse and fine-tune your goals. But it might be helpful to first look at how your goals should look. Here are some examples of broad goals, followed by narrowed down and specific goals – the sort you want. 

Examples of broad goals that you want to include in your content strategy.   

Improving search engine optimisation
Increasing the number of listeners on our podcasts
Lowering the bounce rate on our website
Increasing the amount of articles we commission
Attracting more people to your website

Examples of narrow goals that you should include in your content strategy.   

Increase SEO acquisition in 2023 by 42% to 60% as judged by Google Analytics
Aim to increase average podcast listens throughout the year reach to 300 
Decrease bounce rate from 65% to below 60% by April 2024
Commission two articles per working day throughout the financial year 
Increase site traffic by 10% in the financial year, with year-on-year comparison

The broad goals give no direction and not much in terms of specificity. They are open to interpretation, which allows people to judge their own homework, escape accountability, and limit success.  

The narrow goals are quantifiable, which you can use data to measure. All of them seem realistic (at least presuming you have capacity) and all of them are timed.

To achieve similar results to the above, transforming your vague broad goals to quantifiable and realistic narrow goals, you can use the two tried-and-tested tactics specified below.

Use the acronym systems: SMART, FAST, CLEAR, HARD, WISE

We often suggest using the SMART criteria, ensuring all your strategy goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timed. That's a popular and reliable goal-setting technique, but it is just one option among many.

You could also consider, for example, FAST goals. FAST goals aim to accelerate your team's performance by applying the following principles: 

Frequently discussed: Goals should encourage ongoing discussions and goals should be made into an integral part of both team meetings, 1:1 meetings, and OKRs 
Ambitious: Goals should stretch the team – challenging but not impossible 
Specific: As with the S in SMART, goals should be specific, and everyone should be clear about what is required to achieve the goal 
Transparent: Goals should be completely visible and should allow for complete accountability across the organisation

The are other alternatives goal-setting strategies to SMART and FAST – such as CLEAR, HARD, WISE, and many other acronym-based examples. As ever, pick the goal-setting technique that best aligns with your content strategy and your organisation. Use the technique to add clarity to your goals.  

Fine-tune content with the five Ws  

The five Ws are often associated with journalism. The purpose of the five Ws is to paint the clearest possible picture, including all the essential information, which can prove helpful when charities are defining and refining their goals.

You can use the five Ws to test out your goals, helping you to notice any blind spots, assign responsibilities, think about timing, and much more. So ask yourself: 

Who will be involved at each stage – designate roles for team members, leaders, etc 
What you need to complete at each stage – examine resources, projected resources, etc 
Where each stage will be complete – on which platforms, channels, socials, etc 
When each stage will be completed by – set timings, flexibility, etc 
Why you've set the above – determining factors, economic environment, etc

Use the above to add further clarity to your content strategy goals. And remember that it's better to fine-tune at this stage than push forward despite absence of clarity. The tighter and more comprehensive your content strategy goals, the more likely you are to achieve future success.

Set out actions to help you achieve content strategy goals

Once you have your goals, you need to consider the actions and methods that will help you meet those goals. This is perhaps the important part of the strategy: what are you actually going to do? The answer will depend on your organisation, your size, your capabilities, your capacity, your industry, your user needs, your current situation, your goals, and so much more.

We cannot give you specifics, but below are some quick tips and tricks that may inform your decision-making process. Remember that too many organisations get carried away by what they want to produce, rather than what they should produce. And you should produce the content that is most useful to your users and the content that will help you meet your strategic goals.

Determine the content forms you want to produce 

There are so many options for producing content. The first thing you'll want to establish is the forms of content you wish to produce. Below is a list of some of the most popular forms: 

Remember that you do not want to produce all of the above forms. Trying to produce all forms of content often leads to a mediocre (or worse) performance across the board. It's better to select a few forms– or, for small organisations, just one – and master them.

And remember to always think about your user needs and overall strategic goals choosing the form of content.  

Consider how often you'll publish each form of content 

The next step is simple. You've decided on the content forms you're going to focus on, you've aligned them with your user needs and goals, now you need to think about how often you publish. That means thinking about capacity, judging how long each form will take to produce, then writing down a realistic schedule that you can achieve over the course of the strategy.

The cadence of publishing will depend on each organisation. Some will commit to a couple of articles each week. Others might manage two articles per working day, two podcasts a month, two webinars a month, and video content each quarter. Huge content organisations might publish hundreds of articles every week, along with interviews, research, case studies, white papers, and so on.

There is no right or wrong approach: the key is staying realistic, keeping users in mind, ensuring the scheduling will help you meet your goals, and then simply writing it into your strategy.

It also helps to create a content calendar, which you can link to in the content strategy. That will hold you to account, ensuring your content matches the amount you specified in your strategy. It also helps with planning content, keeping it on schedule, and so much more.

The content calendar should also include reference to the budget, so that you can track how much you're spending on freelancers, the creation of video content, any tech that's required, and so on.

For more on content calendars, check out: How to create a content calendar 

Think about the distribution and marketing of content 

It's useful to note how you'll distribute and market the content you produce. The content strategy only applies to content, so distribution and marketing would likely fit in a wider marketing strategy or a digital strategy. But a short explanation can prove helpful, perhaps linking out to other strategies.

You might want to say, for example, that each piece of content will be shared twice on your preferred social media platforms. Perhaps you'll mention that each piece of content will be included in at least one email. Perhaps you want to be more specific, showing how podcasts will feature on LinkedIn, webinars on Facebook, long-form articles in newsletters, and so on.

These are decisions that depend on your marketing capacity.

Show the best place to find great content ideas

You do not need to write down every single content idea in your content strategy. But it helps to show the different ways THAT you can find content ideas, the places where you find inspiration, the series of articles you might want to produce, any big ticket items or content campaigns, and so on.  

Below are a few places you can look for inspiration, which you may wish to include in your strategy. It is not essential, but it may prove useful to people in your organisation who are unsure how you find your content ideas. Remember that transparency is essential for a successful content strategy.  

Take advantage of RSS feeds 

You can use RSS feeds to track trendy topics in your industry, which will give you content ideas in a curated list, compiled from news sites, newsletters, socials, and so on. 

Use apps for inspiration 

BuzzSumo is one example of an app that helps you discover popular content and content ideas that directly relate to your industry, showing why the content does well. There are plenty of similar apps that can give you inspiration, so the best idea is to go out and research the best for your industry.  

Make the most of the favourite bar

Make use of your browser and add favourite websites into a folder at the top, which you can visit when you're coming up with content ideas for your organisation. The tactic is particularly helpful when drumming up huge amounts of content: scrolling through the sites can provide loads of brilliant ideas. 

Use the Reddit keyword research tool 

The tool shows you the hot topics currently discussed on Reddit, which means that you can pop in a subreddit and it will spit out ideas directly related to your industry. You can get creative, typing in any subreddit that might provide great content ideas for your organisation.  

Look through social media

It's an obvious one, but just scrolling can prove a really useful way for content ideas, looking at what people are talking about, perhaps exploring trends. Another option is to create lists on platforms such as Twitter. These lists can include leaders in your field and help you find out exactly what they're talking about.

Or just check out related videos section on YouTube, which has loads of good ideas. 

Reach out to your community

Probably for larger organisations, but you can reach out to your communities and simply ask what they'd like to see. That is the most direct form of providing content that meets user needs. You can also host surveys, interviews, invite consultations, create committees, and so much more.  

Check out other routes to inspiration 

There are plenty of other places to gain great content ideas. Check out the following articles, which show you hundreds of detailed (and often unexpected) routes to finding content inspiration: 

And remember that inspiration can exist in the everyday. Content ideas may appear when watching TV, chatting with friends, reading a book, and even just walking around the park. So keep an open mind and learn to recognise the content when it arrives.

Actually write your content strategy 

You now have all the information you need. You have defined user needs, established and fine-tuned your goals, explored the best content forms, and explored how many of those forms you wish to produce. That's all you need. Now you just need to put it into a document. You need to actually write.

A content strategy will look different depending on the size of organisation. For small organisations, the goal(s) and actions might be minimal, such as publishing one piece of content per week. You should not, in that instance, produce a massive content strategy. A single page should do the trick.

For bigger organisations, the content strategy might spread over five or ten pages. The key is to never spend longer than necessary on your strategy: superfluous information undermines valuable information. There is also the risk of over-strategising, spending all your time on theories and not putting things into practice. So, in short, just start writing and don't write for too long.

Below are some tips for actually writing your strat...