5 KPIs for A Successful Content Strategy

Content Strategy

Content strategy is incredibly important in today's digital marketing world. According to Smartinsights.com, the average length of time it takes for a blog to be created has increased to 3.95 hours in 2019 compared to 2.4 hours in 2014.

This increase in time is a reflection of how much more focus is placed on quality content rather than quantity of content. To achieve higher quality content, an effective content strategy must be used.

What is a Content Strategy?

Content strategy is the planning, development, and management of a company's content and marketing efforts. Content includes digital images and video, social media posts, written pieces, commercials, and text ads. By having a predetermined strategy, a company can ensure that all promotional materials are relevant to the company's values and make sense in relation to its goals. 

Does a Business Need a Content Strategy?

Absolutely! Any company of any size should have a content strategy. It allows the company, products, services, and promotional material to all remain unified and present the same brand image. Each company has its own way of unifying itself. Below are a few great examples:

Why Is This Important?

A content strategy allows for a marketing team to collaborate effectively and track short-term and long-term progress. By keeping a team on the same path, redundancies and non-relevant work gets eliminated and helps save on costs.

A content strategy also helps optimize the workflow of producing content. When clear goals are given months in advance, both marketing teams and business owners know how much content will be created, in what time frame it will be produced, what days it will be published, and what type of content is being disseminated to reach their desired audience. 

Goals provide a milestone marker so the marketing team and company owner can be in sync with the project. Keeping both a business owner and a marketing team on the same page is key to promotional success.

How to Determine a Great Strategy From a Bad One

A great strategy will be accessible, inclusive, measurable, clearly define workflow, and future-proof. Let’s break these topics down into more detail.

• It is Accessible

The strategy must be easy to understand by everyone involved in the process. The best practice is to explain all expectations from each team and have this information shared using Google docs or other document-sharing services. This allows everyone to be organized and be working off of the same information.

• It is Inclusive

The strategy should be reasonable to complete with the company’s given resources. Ensure that staff is trained appropriately for the tasks they are given and that their task is within reason. 

• It has clearly defined workflows

The content strategy should include target keywords, topics, and audiences. With these items, a timeline should be established on what needs to be done and when. The best practices will also include how it needs to be done.

• It is Measurable

Each strategy should be set up in a way to achieve reasonable goals in set time frames. For longer-running content strategies, multiple milestones should be set to keep everyone on task.

• It is Future-Proof

All content strategies should use a Content Management System (CMS) to keep content and tasks centralized. The best practice is to use a headless CMS system. It is not as frightening as it sounds. 

A headless CMS system allows a creative team to make content for any platform they wish to publish to. Traditional CMS does not allow for this because each site has its own set of restrictions to post to it. All content strategies should use a headless CMS system.

A well-put-together content strategy will help marketing teams and business owners stay on the same page through the content creation process. A good strategy will also ensure that a company’s values are tied into all marketing material and products or services to create a unified image. Doing all of this helps save time and money by eliminating redundancies and irrelevant work.

Could you benefit from a content strategy to help gain leads and increase your website traffic? Contact us today to see how we can help.