Digital Content Strategy: 6 Steps to Creating a Winning Strategy

Any online business needs digital content to be relevant to show they’re knowledgeable about their industry or niche. However, it can be tough to launch a website, run an online business, and ensure that you post the right digital content to convert your target consumers and improve brand awareness.Most successful businesses have digital content strategies: Frameworks they can use to plan out the content they will create in the future and maintain current content already live on their websites. What if you don’t know how to create a winning digital content strategy?Read on, and we’ll break down exactly how you can create a digital content strategy that converts in no time.

Step 1: Determine Your Content Goals and Topic Areas

The first step toward creating a content strategy that works and converts is: Start at the top. You should figure out your content goals and key topic areas before doing anything else.The best marketing campaigns in the best digital marketing strategies are focused rather than generalized. Just like you want to target a specific subset of people as your core audience, your content goals should also be focused on converting a key segment of the population rather than everyone who surfs the web.To do this, break down three things:

• Your content goals. What kind of content do you want to create, how often do you want to push out content, and what is the purpose of the content?
• Content differentiation factor. This is the thing that makes your content unique from the content of competitors in your industry, sort of like a unique selling proposition for your content.
• Your topic areas or areas of expertise. It’s never a good idea to create content about things you don’t understand or directly deal with

Once you have identified all these major aspects, you can move on to the next step.

Step 2: Understand Your Target Audience

Next, you’ll need to do some research to understand your target audience if you haven’t done so already. Audience research involves figuring out:

• Who is most likely to benefit from your product or service
• Who is most likely to connect to your brand
• Who your advertising needs to focus on

All of these questions will lead you to break down your potential target audience into their major demographic attributes, such as their age, sex, location, and recreational interests. Once you’ve figured out your target audience, you’ll be able to better craft video advertisements, banner ads, and other marketing materials to draw them in and convert them into paying customers.One good tip is to create so-called “audience personas.” Audience personas are like avatar consumers that stand in as generalizations or archetypes for your project consumers. Then, when you make a video ad, you can ask yourself whether your audience's personal character would connect with the ad and take steps to improve your content if necessary.

Step 3: Research for SEO

Next, do lots of keyword research for search engine optimization. This mostly involves researching certain targeted keywords that your core audience is already searching for.Suppose that you sell affordable sneakers for exercise enthusiasts. In that case, you'll need to research the targeted keywords that gym-goers and bodybuilders are already looking for so you can tailor your written content, your page titles and even your video ad content to their needs.In doing this, your content will rise more quickly on Google’s search rankings, elevating your brand out of obscurity and making your content punch well above its weight. Doing plenty of SEO keyword research before launching your content development process will go a long way toward maximizing the marketing budget you have.

Step 4: Develop Content for Your Website

Once all your research is out of the way and you have developed audience personas for your target consumers, you can finally start developing content for your website.The best thing to do is start building content that lives on your website first and foremost, including blog posts, informational videos, and more. Why? In short, it builds authority in your target area or niche.Let’s stick with the example of a company that makes shoes for exercisers. In this case, a good content strategy might include:

• Making blog posts explaining the details of their shoes and related topics, such as the best ways to keep your workout shoes clean
• Making informational videos that demonstrate the value of your workout shoes to an engaged audience

By posting content on your website before moving on to ads, you’ll seem like an informed and knowledgeable source for workout shoes to anyone who stops by your site.If you skip this step, and someone does happen upon your website, they might not trust your brand enough to make a purchase.

Step 5: Create Ads

Naturally, you will have to create ads. We recommend doing this after making content that lives on your host website.As you build ads, be sure to create your content in the right way. Follow these key steps to ensure your content workflow is manageable and consistent:

• Always optimize your ads, blog posts, and video content with keywords, especially their titles. The right keywords can elevate your ads or their content in Google’s algorithmic eyes
• Map your audience persona to the content you create to make sure you are always speaking to your target audience
• Always map your content/ad topics to your content goals. Doing this will ensure you only produce content that’s relevant to your long-term plans and strategies

Step 6: Develop Processes to Maintain and Improve Content Workflows

A key part of successful digital content creation in this day and age is consistency. In fact, if your online brand doesn’t constantly produce new digital content, it could be left behind by Google in favor of websites or brands that update their content more frequently.With that in mind, you need to post new content at least once per week if you want to stay relevant and draw new consumers to your website.To maintain such a rigorous schedule, be sure to develop workflow processes that can help you maintain content creation and improve existing content. Have a steady stream of content writers, editors, video creators, website managers, and more to ensure your online brand and its content is shipshape at all times.Naturally, you can contact experienced visual media marketers, expert content writers, and other professionals in different industries to do this work. This is usually a great idea, as it’s difficult to juggle all these moving pieces yourself or with a small team.

Summary

Ultimately, having a digital content strategy is a great idea, and it’s one of the best ways to start building your online brand toward a successful and long-term presence. Once your digital content machine is moving, you’ll have to stick with it for as long as you want to remain in business.Fortunately, you don’t have to do this alone. VisCap Media is here to assist you with your content creation journey. Not only can we help you create engaging visual media for your website, but we can also help you make video ads that convert your target consumers and customers. Contact us today for more information! Sources3 Ways to Make Your Content Stand Out | Search Engine JournalWhat Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization? | Search Engine LandHow Often Do You Need To Create Content For Maximum Return? | Forbes