7 Steps to a Strong Content Strategy for Small Businesses

A strong content strategy helps small businesses rank high in search results to reach their target market. Why content strategy? It is mostly because it does not require much time, resources, or complexity to execute.

Here are steps that a Chicago content strategy consultant highly recommends:

1. Identify your core target market.
2. Select rational marketing goals.
3. Conduct a full website content audit.
4. Follow with competitive analysis.
5. Pick content and channel types.
6. Develop a strong brand identity.
7. Frequently update your strategy.

There is a lot to discuss, so get ready to take notes.

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1. Identify Your Core Target Market

Every business has a core audience — the market segment to whom its products and services are most valuable. The problem, however, is when you do not know your target market’s unique needs, interests, or issues. In short, a good content strategy starts with research.

Use tactics such as social listening to learn more about what matters most to your target market. This works by looking at social media posts and comments to find out what people think or feel about your brand. You also apply it to competitors to discover gaps in their strategies that can be exploited.

2. Select Rational Marketing Goals

Once you know exactly who you are making content for, the next step is to establish your goals for your marketing strategy. For example, as a small business, you might want to simply improve brand awareness. Lead generation and raising conversion rates are other common marketing goals.

Make sure to tie your goals to realistic, actionable, and measurable steps, such as using tools to find comparative SEO keywords that you can use to close in on larger competitors. In addition, remember that key performance indicators (KPIs) are not just good to have but are a must-have.

3. Conduct a Full Website Content Audit

You might already have a decent amount of content posted on your website, social media platforms, email newsletters, and other digital channels. Whether it can benefit your business is another question that you can answer by conducting a content audit. This includes auditing your target keywords as well.

Audits can be frustratingly hard work, but a Chicago content strategy consultant can assist with them thanks to the consultant’s knowledge of effective content strategies and search engine optimization (SEO). Free tools such as Google Search Console also serve as another way to accomplish this.

4. Follow With Competitive Analysis

Your competitors are more than just powerful motivators for making your marketing content better. They are also a treasure trove of inspiration for your content strategy. For instance, their articles that outperform yours can indicate what they are doing right in terms of content and where you need to improve.

You need competitive analysis in your digital marketing strategy because, without it, you are essentially creating content blindly and weakening your ability to meet your audience’s needs. Watch what your competitors are doing, and then adapt and improve yours to overcome theirs.

5. Pick Content and Channel Types

Originality is an important value that should be present throughout your content strategy. Although it may seem impossible to achieve, it is possible because you have plenty of choices for combining content types and digital channels to carry out your strategies.

For instance, interactive content such as quizzes is a great magnet for engagement because they provide value in various forms and are shareable. Free online personality tests and similar types of content, for example, are effective yet simple questionnaires.

Other types of content that you can use to draw attention to your brand are infographics and videos that can be posted on social media and delivered through email. If you are unsure of what to do, consult a Chicago content strategy consultant to assess your business and give suggestions.

6. Develop a Strong Brand Identity

Spending time developing a distinct persona for your brand is quite beneficial. Celebrities and influencers are living proof that people deeply care about the quality of the content that they follow and consume. They also care very much about knowing the person or people behind it.

A good way to start developing your brand is to keep your content style consistent across all platforms of digital marketing. This is one way that your brand’s personality can shine. Additionally, creating a style guide helps establish what you want as your business brand's identity. It helps when you tie in your business’s core values as well.

Finally, make the content about your brand interesting and engaging for the audience. Tell your brand’s story through the content that you produce and publish on your digital channels. Even better, consider what a Chicago content strategy consultant would do and partner with an influencer to reach people.

7. Frequently Update Your Strategy

The last step in building a strong content strategy is to leave room for improvement, in the sense that your strategy is never truly complete. What works for you now might not work the next year or the year after that, because your target could grow and change. As such, you have to prepare to adapt to these changes.

Avoid developing a pattern of complacency or stubbornness, as changing your strategy as needed is imperative to staying competitive. Start with small steps, such as updating old content with fresh information to make it more relevant. Doing this lets you present the revamped content in front of existing customers and potential ones.

Summing Up

A content strategy helps you create content with the purpose of improving your message and engaging your target audience in the process. The value of a strategy is that it pushes you to make your brand important and noteworthy. Ultimately, giving you a better chance of attracting high-quality leads that can be turned into customers.

Need help creating a strong content strategy for your small business? Contact Digital Authority Partners (DAP) to learn how we can help.