Content Strategy Guide: A Step-by-Step Plan to Grow Your Traffic and Influence

One of the biggest challenges with content marketing is creating content that stands out. Not only do people have to create standout content, but they have to do it repeatedly if they want to grow their influence.

I’ve had a few conversations with potential clients and it turns out that many of them are unsure about how to get results with blogging. Through the years, I’ve also stumbled across many blogs. A few of them were very successful with their content marketing, but other blogs struggled to gain an audience and some even gave up on content marketing altogether.

So why do some businesses succeed with blogging while other businesses struggle with it? In this guide, I’ll take a closer look at what successful content marketers and businesses do, explain why you need a content strategy and also point out a few common mistakes I see people making when doing content marketing.

Why You Need a Content Strategy

A lot of people start blogging by just writing about whatever they feel like. If you’ve ever tried the “publish and pray” approach, then you probably experienced the frustration first hand when you published an article and nothing much happened after that.

Businesses need a clear strategy and a step-by-step plan to get results from blogging.  They need to figure out exactly what types of articles to write that will drive traffic to their site, how to come up with effective content ideas on an ongoing basis and how to drive consistent traffic to their content.

A content strategy will allow companies to come up with a clear plan to reach their objectives. Most content strategies will have at least two core components – a content creation strategy and a promotion (or traffic generation) strategy. Failure in either one of these areas will lead to sub-optimal results.

Your content strategy doesn’t have to be perfect when you start out. Having a clear step-by-step plan and clear measurable goals will increase your confidence and allow you to make adjustments and improve as you go along.

Components of an Effective Content Strategy

So what do we need to do to create our own content strategy? Here are a few essential components of an effective content strategy.

Objectives and Metrics – We need to set goals and define metrics to track our success so that we can measure our content marketing effectiveness.

Content Creation Strategies – Creating content on an ongoing basis is one of the biggest content marketing challenges. In this chapter, we’ll discuss ways we can create content that stands out and drives traffic.

Content Promotion Strategies – We need to promote our blogs to gain visibility and grow our following. This section discusses some popular promotion strategies and when to use them.

Types of Content that Create Engagement and Build Influence – Certain types of content are effective in creating engagement and building influence. This section will examine the types of content that other influencers have used to outperform other content marketers.