Crucial Factors That Define an Effective Content Strategy
Content creation is a crazy trek that takes a lot of boldness, patience, and confidence. That’s why I think there’s nothing worse than taking the leap to start putting out content only to be disappointed with the results. I created content for my last startup out of desperation (that will have to be another blog post) and thankfully I had great success at increasing the number of leads. But, I would NEVER copy and paste that strategy for someone else. Why? Because each business has to consider a handful of factors that can make or break the success of their content strategy.
If you’re a founder or business owner who is considering adding content to help market your business, consider these factors while tailoring your strategy to increase the effectiveness.
Goals
Companies considering content need to determine what they are hoping to get out of it. Is it increased leads? Increased sales? Brand awareness? Are your competitors crushing it with content and you feel the need to have a presence too? Whatever it is, this will act as your top filter for your strategy. If you’re aiming at brand awareness, you may choose a platform that has greater chances at increased exposure. If you are wanting to increase sales, you will need to be more selective about the platform you choose to distribute your content through since your customer may be more open to purchasing on one than the other.
Target Audience
Energy has to be directed in the right direction with content which is why it is so important to choose your distribution platform wisely. Ultimately, we want our content to hit the target audience on the platform where our goal has the highest probability of being achieved. While it will be tempting to select a few platforms “just to make sure” they see it, this can be the downfall of your strategy. In the early days, it’s better to stay focused on ONE platform to ensure you hit a stride and gain traction towards your goal. You can always add more later. Remember: The right content on the wrong platform won’t yield results!
Capacity
Burnout is REAL in content creation! I’ve been there and done that. I can promise you if you’re coming in hot and trying to be Gary Vee, who is known to put out 100+ pieces of content per day across numerous platforms, you’ll give up pretty fast. That would be like if you took up running and tried to beat Usain Bolt (just made myself laugh with that image hahaha).
ANYWAYS, I’m here to tell you it’s a good call to be honest with your capacity and craft your content strategy around that. Resist the temptation to compare your capacity with others’ posting schedules, especially if you are a founder who’s already wearing 49.5 hats.
Ownership
Content doesn’t just happen… it takes effort! That’s good news for you, because that’s probably why your competitors aren’t taking it seriously. As with any large effort, someone has to own it. For small startups and businesses, the best results come when the founder/owner owns it. This is because it’s meaningful to your customers to see you as a competent and approachable person. This builds brand rapport and makes it easier for your potential customers to trust you since they have already gotten value from you through content.
Where the founder/owner doesn’t have capacity to own content efforts, a key employee who you can keep around for a long time is a great second choice. You just need to understand that there is a good chance they become the face of your company. Do what you need to do to keep them around so that your brand doesn’t take a hit if they leave. Even if you use a key employee, the founder/owner still needs to be involved!
Quality
Did you know that 95 MILLION photos and videos are shared on Instagram each day? Whether Instagram is the platform you’re choosing for your business or not, the point is that there is A LOT of content being put out each day. It’s for this reason that low-quality content is performing worse than ever. To stand out, you’ll have to put a bit of energy into making sure your content portrays quality. Thankfully, you can buy quality nowadays for pretty cheap. I mean, the cameras on our phones are *almost all you need. Add a tripod, minimal lighting, and a decent mic and you’re already better than most! You can also level up your content using the plethora of AI tools like ones that add captions and even take long-form content and chop it to short-form content for you.
Lastly, consider your industry. If it isn’t saturated with company-generated content yet, then you might not have to put as big of an emphasis on quality (though I’ll always lean towards erring on the side of higher quality). However, if your industry already has well known content creators, you may have to start at a higher quality level. My last startup had to do this when we launched our YouTube channel. There were a ton of creators and we had to stand out. We used high quality cameras, high quality mics, solid lighting, and spent extra time editing transitions and adding background music. The result was extremely well performing videos (our third video was 30+ minutes and has 125k+ views!) that were well worth the extra effort.
Conclusion
I guarantee that if you evaluate each of these crucial factors and tailor them to your business and industry then your content strategy will be significantly stronger!
If you need help building out your content strategy, or want to talk about how to make it better, don’t hesitate to reach out. I know how intimidating it can feel to try to do this alone (hint… you don’t need to!).
