368: Creating a Content Marketing Strategy, Part 1

Content Marketing Strategy Creation: Critical Questions to Ask Yourself

Creating valuable content is more important than ever and the Social Media Marketing Happy Hour girls are bringing you the goods on creating that strategy. If you've been struggling with content creation because you're not sure what content to create, or if you don't know how to get more eyeballs on your content, you might want to listen closely to today's show. This episode is part one of a two part series on content strategy. In part one, Dawn & Traci walk you through some critical questions to ask yourself when coming up with a content marketing strategy.

Content is becoming more and more the focal point of digital marketing. Gone are the days when you just run ads to an offer. This method doesn't work anymore. It's all about providing value and education, and gaining people's trust. The best way to do this of course, is through content. You need to step up your game in building a solid and very effective content strategy so that you won't get left behind.

All of this may seem overwhelming, especially when you've never done it before or when you have a hundred excuses not to do it. To make it easier for you to start, let's look into the four guiding questions we'd like you to ask yourself.

 

  1. What is the objective of the content you are creating?

You have to know what your objective is before you even begin to create content. Are you making content to educate, inspire, or entertain? Because you can go out and create tons of blog posts, podcasts, images, videos, and other content, but if you fail to see what your endgame is, then you're missing the point. Your content should allow you to take your relationship with your audience a step further. The result of consuming your content should offer them some kind of transformation that will make them want more from you and eventually allow you to ask for the sale.

 

  1. How does this fit into my overall marketing strategy?

It doesn't matter what your industry is, content is good to have. What's important is knowing what your overall business strategy is and where your content fits in in all of this. You might think that in your kind of business, the information is static, so there's no point in producing lots of content. But there's a ton of ways you can utilize content to benefit your business, you just have to dig deeper and know what those are. Some have content that work best on Facebook, while those having more visual content are better on Instagram. It's a matter of finding the right fit.

 

  1. What resources do you have?

We want to be a good source of information, but we can't be everything to everyone. This is why we get into content creation vs. content curation. These are two different things. Content CREATION refers to assets (your own content) that your business creates. Whereas content CURATION is finding relevant information (other people's stuff) in your industry and putting it together for your followers. You don't have to be constantly creating your own original content, you can also pull in other people's content. What's important here is to have a healthy mix of the two. You don't have to go 100% one way and 100% the other way. If you look at what we did with Happy Hour, you'll see there's a good mix of our original content together with curated content.

 

  1. Who is your content for?

Knowing who your content is for will help you identify and understand the kind of information they'll want and need from you. If you're not sure of your target audience, you're most likely going to have to guess what they want too. Playing a guessing game isn't going to help you hit the mark all the time. Knowing who you are making or curating content for will definitely make it easier.

All of these things relate to each other. A good content strategy is possible if you know: what the objective is, how it fits in the overall strategy, what type of content (created or curated) to use, and who your content is for.

 

What was that noise?

If you're wondering what that loud background noise on Traci's end towards the end of the show, it's actually just hail! They do get massive rainstorms over at Colorado. Dawn initially thought it was Traci's husband, Rick, doing the laundry (hahaha… hilarious)! Below are the pictures to prove it! Luckily it started right when the show was about end.

Hail at Traci's

 

By the way, Happy Hour Marketing needs your help! If you like our show, can we ask for 3 minutes of your time and fill out our survey? We're doing this to help make sure the type of content we create for you going forward will help you get crazy awesome results in your business!  https://happyhourhangouts.com/survey516. Thanks a bunch!

Don't forget to catch part two of this series next week!

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top