Most business leaders have figured out by now how important a content strategy is to their company’s success. It can be a game changer for improving SEO performance, increasing industry authority, establishing relationships with prospects and keeping customers coming back for more. That’s why businesses invest significant resources into developing content and putting it out into the world.
But content strategies aren’t automatically successful. Just because you’re publishing content you think will resonate with your target audience doesn’t mean that it does. Your audience members may not be able to find it. Even if they can, your content may not connect with those targets on a personal level. And in an increasingly sophisticated digital marketplace, your audience will demand it does.
If your content strategy seems to be stalling, it’s time to check under the hood and figure out what’s malfunctioning. Here are three ways to fix a content strategy so it keeps your business moving in the right direction.
1. Complete Your Ecosystem
Content assets do not stand alone. To truly demonstrate your company’s expertise, they should be pulled together into a network of assets connected by relationships to other content. This network should reflect the goals of your company and take into account the ways content is created and distributed. Your content should be an ecosystem comprising the right topics, organized in a conscious fashion.
The best way to complete your content ecosystem is to build authority for your website’s pillar pages using topic clusters. For instance, say you’re an outdoor retailer. Your pillar page on camping equipment should be surrounded by a cluster of content assets that take a deeper dive into more specific, related topics. You might have a topic cluster on tents and another on camp stoves, say, with blog posts that answer more detailed questions. These clusters both provide relevant information to customers at various points in the sales funnel and point search engines back to your pillar page as a source of authority.
If you think creating these clusters sounds like a complex and time-consuming undertaking, you’re correct—unless you take advantage of artificial intelligence. AI-powered content platforms like MarketMuse can not only organize your current assets into clusters, but also point out what topics you’re missing. Once you shape up your ecosystem, search engines will give it a lift.
2. Assess Your Content Curation Approach
Your content strategy will underperform if your content isn’t used by everyone who should use it. I liken this content curation approach to building a library. People should know where to find what they’re looking for and then be able to easily share that information with others who want to learn about it. Ask yourself: Do all your employees know how to access and leverage your content assets? If the answer is “no,” start there.
Social media is one of the best places where your stakeholders—not just your marketing department—can share content. Think about the reactions and comments your employees might generate by reposting an official brand post on their own channels. You can use those responses to inform your content strategy going forward.
Social media is also a great way to share valuable third-party content. As social media tool Hootsuite recommends, be sure to give credit where credit is due. But put your brand’s twist on this content by posting your own comments and relating the content to your brand when you share it. High-value third-party content is almost always a winner with your target audience. Plus, it’s a great tactic for linking back to your own content without investing in the cost to create a valuable asset.
3. Actually Use Your Analytics
A content strategy is only as good as its performance. And the only way you can determine how yours is performing is by setting goals, gathering data and analyzing results. In other words, you can’t just throw your content out there and hope something sticks. Find out what’s working, what’s not and, most importantly, why.
There can be a disconnect between those producing your content and those analyzing performance, but both strengths are integral to making your content strategy work. Say a blog post enjoys high time on page, but its conversion rate is low. Marketing may need to take another look at the call to action and craft a more compelling one. It’s OK if your creatives don’t want to deal with the analytics, but they need to listen to what the numbers folk are telling them.
Even if the free version of Google Analytics is the only tool you use, its metrics provide valuable insight. But if you really want your content to hum, employ some other tools. There are dozens of platforms that can help you gather important metrics, from bounce and click-through rates and organic traffic sources. More to the point, they can tell you what these measures mean. Fueled by that info, all the relevant parties—creatives and analytics mavens alike—can work together to make your strategy perform better.
There are a lot of moving parts in your content strategy, and it takes only one to malfunction to leave your content idling. Get it back on track by completing your ecosystem, optimizing your content curation and using analytics to measure performance. Adjust your strategy accordingly, and you’ll be off to the races.
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January 14, 2024 at 08:00PM
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3 Ways To Fix A Content Strategy That's Not Gaining Traction - Forbes
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