We’ll give you an industry-inside tip: every social media manager worth their salt has a content strategy. Even if it’s a tiny, bare-bones plan of what they want to post and why, the professionals spend a fair bit of time developing the perfect strategy. Because the pros do it, creating a content strategy seems daunting and a bit unnecessary. But if you want to grow your following, a content strategy is a game-changer!
In today’s article, we’ll be walking you through the process of creating a content strategy. Pull up your profiles and grab a notebook! Feel free to work along or bookmark it and come back.
What is a Content Strategy? 🤔
Simply put, a content strategy is a plan for how you’ll create, post, and potentially monetize your content. It revolves around your goals (what you want your content to accomplish) and assures consistency, effectiveness, and ease of creation.
This is essential for businesses, where you have to maintain a brand style and voice. For content creators, this can really elevate your content. It gives your content a clear direction and ensures everything you post has a point. This also means that you aren’t chasing trends or trying to come up with content on the spot. Engagement and consistent community interaction are more important for long-term success, and that goes hand-in-hand with content strategy.
Why? Because you’re setting clear, measurable goals for your content. It’s strategy, so you have to be specific and targeted.
Your Goals 🚀
We’ve talked before about setting goals as a content creator! Essentially, you’re asking yourself:
- What do I want from social media?
- What do you want your content to do?
- Who is my audience? What do they enjoy?
- Which metrics am I tracking?
- How will I know when I succeed?
If you have answers to these questions, you’re halfway home! To develop a successful content strategy, you’ll need to have clear goals. These will guide the rest of your strategy and make coming up with your content ideas easier.
As a note, you don’t have to focus on all five of these goals. A lot of content strategy is built around the first or second goal: what do you want your social media to do? What do you want to accomplish? That might be selling products, connecting with other creators, or educating your viewers. The main thing is clearly stating what you want your social media to do.
Content Audit 🤓
Once you have your refined goals, it’s time to review your content to see how it stacks up! Now that you have your goals in mind, it will be a lot easier to tell what is and isn’t working. Are you already creating content that’s helping meet your goals? What content is performing well? Which posts get the most engagement? Are there any patterns in performance?
Also, ask yourself what isn’t working or what you want to do differently. While looking at the positives can yield great results, the only way to truly grow is by acknowledging the not-so-good part of your social media game. It also gives you a much clearer idea of what content to steer away from.
Make notes as you go, but don’t stress too much on this portion. You can come back and evaluate your process again later – in fact, we’ll ask you to do another social media audit later! So if you don’t come up with much right away, don’t worry about it.
Research 🔍
We’re all about working smarter, not harder, and so is any other strategist. And the best way to work smarter is by looking at the competition. Spend some time looking at creators in your niche – either ones you follow or new creators. What are they doing? What’s successful? What do you like?
Also, spend some time looking outside of your niche. Are there trends or content styles from other communities that would help you with your social media goals? Is there anything big right now that you’d like to jump on? We absolutely do not recommend copying or ripping off another creator’s content. But it can be used as a great jumping-off point!
Understand Your Audience 🤝
For those of you with an audience already, try asking them what content they want to see from you! They’re literally your target audience, so they’ll give you some fantastic insight.
If you don’t have an audience already, think about your target or ideal audience. What do they want from your content? What will catch their attention? What other content are they interested in? Knowing what they like will help you tailor your content to both your current audience and new viewers. No matter your social media goals, this is an essential step.
Content Plan 🗺️
Once you’ve audited your content and researched other creators, you can start sketching out a content plan. This can be as detailed or basic as you want, but the goal is to have a solid idea of what you’ll be posting.
The main thing is to consider how these videos will contribute to your goals. Don’t just think of videos that might be fun: what kind of content will get you to your goal? We recommend coming up with three to five content pillars based on your niche and goals. As an example, a fitness creator might have content pillars like workouts, motivation, meal prep, and gym tips.
Once you have your pillars, jot down a few ideas for each one. This can be detailed or super general. Our fitness creator might jot down “eat with me on my cheat day” in one column, then “motivating audio with b-roll” in another. So long as you know what you mean (and can build off of it) you’re good to go.
Analysis 📊
Got your plan? Know what you want to post? Then dive in! Start posting your new content and stick to it for a while. You have to give your new strategy time to perform before you can decide if it works or not. A month or two, maybe even three is plenty!
Once you’ve let your strategy perform, sit down to review how it actually did. Bring your goals back out and scroll through your posts. Did you meet your goals? Or at least make progress toward them? Which videos performed the best, and which didn’t perform at all? It’s also worth noting if the videos you loved did well or not!
Now, you adjust. Keep content buckets that performed well and get rid of ones that didn’t – or find a way to reinvent them.
…Wait a Minute 🤯
That sounds familiar, right? That’s because content strategy is a constant cycle. You don’t develop one strategy once and then use it forever. You’ll develop a variety of strategies over time, including reviving old ones that might not have worked at first. So don’t stress if this first strategy isn’t perfect; keep trying and you’ll find that magic formula.
Further Reading 🧠
A lot of content strategy articles are directed at businesses, either for their social media or their website. Don’t let that deter you! We loved this step-by-step guide from Coursera and this deep dive from MarketMuse. This longer write-up from SEMRush is perfect for those of you interested in SEO and keyword integration, too.