{"id":49832,"date":"2022-01-03T07:00:05","date_gmt":"2022-01-03T15:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eigene-homepage-erstellen.net\/?p=49832"},"modified":"2022-01-31T15:51:54","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T23:51:54","slug":"the-ultimate-step-by-step-guide-to-content-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eigene-homepage-erstellen.net\/blog\/content\/the-ultimate-step-by-step-guide-to-content-strategy.htm","title":{"rendered":"How to Develop the Best Content Marketing Strategy in 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This post was originally written by Ian Lurie in 2016. It was recently edited by Portent content strategist Travis McKnight<\/a>, to include new information and more current data.<\/em><\/p>\n

If you’re a writer and know your way around a computer or a marketing geek who knows how to write, after reading the guide, you should be well-prepared to build a top-notch content marketing strategy from scratch.<\/span><\/p>\n

A forewarning: This content strategy guide is enormous. There is no TL;DR version because content strategy planning has a lot of steps. And they’re all necessary.<\/span><\/p>\n

This guide focuses on the “getting started” steps, best practices, and a few of our favorite content strategy tools. If you’re only looking for content strategy best practices, we recommend <\/span>you read our blog<\/span><\/a>. But if you want to learn the whole process, you’re in the right place.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kicking off any content marketing or content planning starts with the strategy. Afterward, some basic process planning happens. This is how we do it at Portent:<\/span><\/p>\n

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  1. Existing content inventory<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Competitive analysis<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Drawing conclusions<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Building the “machine” around best practices, tools, and people<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In the first step, you grab a lot of data and mush it all together; this is the most mechanically involved task we’ll get into. Fortunately, the second step is fast and easy. The third and fourth steps are the most challenging and demanding. Both tasks require critical thinking skills, intuition, and industry knowledge that are impossible-to-automate.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Before You Start<\/h2>\n

    Let’s establish common definitions and outline a few assumptions.<\/p>\n

    What You’re Doing<\/h3>\n

    My definition of “content” is broad. Content is about a lot more than piles of blog posts<\/a>. Content is everything <\/em>you say, in any<\/em> format.<\/p>\n

    Conversations are comprised of content. Content is how we converse.<\/p>\n

    Content drives every exchange you have with a potential customer. Product descriptions are content. So are photos, blog posts, podcasts, your company’s “About Us” page, those 40 ridiculous links you stuff at the bottom of your home page, and every other scrap of information you put—anywhere.<\/p>\n

    The Goal of Content Marketing<\/h3>\n

    A content strategy has three objectives:<\/p>\n

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    1. Call out goals, how you’ll accomplish them, and what KPIs you’ll use to measure the accomplishments.<\/li>\n
    2. Create a “profile” of particularly successful content types that others can apply for the foreseeable future.<\/li>\n
    3. Persuade the reader—your client\/boss—that they should believe you, stop barfing keyword essays out on their site, and become a true resource for potential customers.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Content marketing is how you deliver on those goals.<\/p>\n

      Trust me, none of these are easy. To get started, you must break the connection in your brain between SEO and content.<\/p>\n

      Forget About Rankings<\/h3>\n

      Wait, what did you say?<\/em><\/p>\n

      I said: Forget about SEO and rankings. This is about content, which affects every inch of your marketing strategy. Content influences everything <\/em>in marketing.<\/p>\n

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      1. Content = communications. It helps with inbound and outbound sales, as well as PR, by reinforcing messages and showing you can deliver on promises and create a connection with your customer.<\/li>\n
      2. Content impacts how people perceive your brand, too. What you say, and how you say it, establishes this message.<\/li>\n
      3. Content is a huge factor in customer retention. It provides information and knowledge that attaches value to you and your brand.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        SEO is one reason to do a fantastic job on content. It’s certainly not the only one. I see SEO as 20 percent of the reason to create great content.<\/p>\n

        This whole step-by-step content strategy guide is meant to support all of your organization’s communications efforts. But it’ll only support those efforts if you use the data you collect to define “good” content for your site. That will only happen if you look at content as a marketing strategist, rather than an SEO.<\/p>\n

        Before You Do Anything, Create Personas<\/h2>\n

        There are entire books about persona creation. I’m not going to write about the process here. What I recommend, though, is that each persona include:<\/p>\n

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        1. Search behavior, because no, you can’t escape search engines.<\/li>\n
        2. Devices most often used, which drives content creation and technology.<\/li>\n
        3. Fears, frustrations, and aspirations.<\/li>\n
        4. Demographic targeting data you can get from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google. This piece is old but still a great overview<\/a>.<\/li>\n
        5. Content that “maps” from “I don’t care” to “I need this!!!” and then back around again.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          If you can assemble this kind of information, you’ve got the basics. It doesn’t have to be fancy.<\/p>\n

          Step 1: Collect Your Content Inventory<\/h2>\n

          You could go through your entire web site, by hand, and find every last piece of content. You could.<\/p>\n

          Or, you can automate the inventory. Which is what I strongly suggest. Here’s what I do, and how I do it:<\/p>\n

          The Site Crawl: Break It Up, Before You Go-go<\/h3>\n

          Yikes. Awful. I know, but that’s the music I grew up with.<\/p>\n

          The first step in any inventory is getting a list of your stuff. Here, the first step is getting a list of site pages. All you need is a list of page URLs. If you have a large site (say, more than 1,000 pages), you should group those URLs by category.<\/p>\n

          Wait, what? Grouped by category? Ian, WTF?!!! I’ll have to do that by hand!!!<\/p>\n

          Nope. Assuming your site has any semblance of structure, you’ll have categories, and those categories will have a hub page, like this:<\/p>\n

          On this site, you’d probably create an “Outerwear” URL group that included everything in the Outerwear\/ folder, including the outerwear page itself. Then you’d create another one for underwear, and so on. If there’s a blog, you break that up by category, too.<\/p>\n

          It doesn’t matter if you’re an e-commerce site, by the way. Most sites have category structures. If you don’t, look really carefully—you may have found the first step in your content strategy.<\/p>\n

          Here’s an easy way to see if you’ve got the right URL groups. Each URL group should:<\/p>\n

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          1. Share a common desired visitor emotional response, such as “I love this. I want it.” or “This guy totally answered my question. He rocks.” or even “Good god, what the hell were they thinking?!”<\/li>\n
          2. Make sense. Are you pairing services information with today’s funny cartoon? Better be a good reason.<\/li>\n
          3. Be manageable. The URL group has to be small enough that you can do reasonable measurement, and large enough to give you a decent sampling. There’s no hard-and-fast rule for this, I’m afraid. Usually, it’s obvious: On a 10,000-page site, for example, a 10-page URL group will have little value, but a 5,000-page group may be impossible to work with.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

            You can get these URL groups fairly easily using a standard site crawler. Keep reading, and I’ll show you how.<\/p>\n

            Running the Site Crawl<\/h3>\n

            Crawl each category list of links separately. My favorite desktop tool for this is Screaming Frog<\/a>. Go get it. I’ll wait.<\/p>\n

            Screaming Frog is so full of awesome; it’d take another 10,000 words to describe it. If you want to learn more about using it, check out SEER’s incredibly complete guide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

            First.<\/strong> Before you do anything else, click Configuration > Spider and uncheck every box. That will set the spider to skip external addresses, JavaScript and css links and images. We don’t need those for a basic audit.<\/p>\n

            Second.<\/strong> If you’re lucky, and each URL group matches a folder on your site, you can enter your web address plus the folder, like this:<\/p>\n

            …and Screaming Frog will only crawl links within that folder. Easy-peasy.<\/p>\n

            If your site doesn’t use folders, try using the Include filter, instead:<\/p>\n

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            1. Click “Configuration > Include”