The 7-step guide to creating effective digital content strategies
Storyblok is the first headless CMS that works for developers & marketers alike.
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As businesses transition to the online-first era, they must digitize all their business processes, including their content strategy. Let's see why it is essential and how to streamline this process.
What are the digital content strategies, and how do they differ from the familiar content strategy?
The difference is very simple. Digital content strategies include a plan that outlines how a company creates, manages, and distributes digital content and the list of specific actions to achieve specific business goals. Even if the digital strategy does not prioritize print and other physical content, marketers must keep it in mind to ensure overall brand consistency.
Effective digital content strategy involves:
- Identifying the target audience, their preferences, and the types of content that resonate with them
- Planning and producing high-quality content
- Defining the content workflows and operations
- Determining the right platforms and channels to distribute the content
- Optimizing it for search engines and social media
- Measuring its effectiveness
A well-executed digital content strategy is crucial for companies in today's digital age as it helps them establish a strong online presence and connect with their audience. With more people spending time online, it has become essential for companies to create valuable, engaging, and relevant content that can capture their attention and drive traffic to their websites. A thoughtful digital content strategy can also help companies improve their search engine rankings, increasing their visibility and attracting more potential customers.
Moreover, a digital content strategy enables companies to build trust and credibility with their audience. By consistently delivering high-quality content that addresses their audience's needs and pain points, companies can establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry and differentiate themselves from their competitors. This, in turn, can help build brand loyalty and increase customer retention, leading to long-term business growth and success.
Benefits of having a dedicated digital content strategy
Having a solid digital content strategy can offer several benefits for businesses looking to establish a strong online presence. Here are the main reasons to create a special strategy that will focus on digital channels:
Increased engagement with the target audience
By creating valuable and relevant content, companies can capture their audience's attention and build a loyal following. This engagement can also lead to increased sharing of content, which can broaden a business's reach and attract new customers.
Improved brand awareness and credibility
Consistently delivering high-quality content can position a company as a thought leader in their industry and differentiate them from competitors. This can help build trust with potential customers and increase brand recognition.
Enhance conversion rates
By creating content that addresses their target audience's needs and pain points, companies can attract potential customers and encourage them to take action. Relevant content helps to increase the user experience and, as a result, sells more, increasing revenue for the business.
Organized collaboration within the company
Having a strategy that outlines how the content-related work is done also improves collaboration among team members and stakeholders, leading to better communication and more efficient content production.
7 steps to create a digital content strategy
Having a tailored digital content strategy is important because it allows you to create content that is specifically optimized for the digital channels and platforms being used, which can result in better engagement, reach, and conversion rates. A tailored strategy also takes into account the unique characteristics and preferences of your target audience on each digital platform, which can help you deliver more relevant and valuable content.
Here are the main steps:
1. Defining target audience and buyer personas
Identify the characteristics, needs, and preferences of your audience and create buyer personas that represent your ideal customers. By understanding your audience, you can tailor your content to their interests and needs, making it more engaging and relevant.
2. Establishing content goals and objectives
Define what you want to achieve with your content, such as increasing brand awareness, generating leads, or driving conversions. By setting clear goals and objectives, you can create a roadmap for your content marketing program and measure its effectiveness over time.
3. Conducting a content audit and analysis
Review your existing content to identify what's working and what's not, as well as gaps in your content that need to be filled. By conducting a content audit, you can ensure that your content aligns with your goals and objectives and find areas for improvement.
4. Identifying content types and formats
Determine the types of content that will resonate with your audience and the formats that will best convey your messages, such as images, blog posts, videos, infographics, or social media posts.
5. Developing a content calendar and distribution plan
Creating a schedule for publishing and promoting your content across various channels and platforms, such as your website, social media, email marketing, or paid advertising. This also includes localization if you work for multiple markets.
6. Establishing metrics and KPIs for measuring success
Identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will track the success of your content marketing program, such as website traffic, engagement rates, lead generation, or revenue. By measuring your KPIs regularly, you can assess the effectiveness of your digital content strategy and make adjustments as needed to achieve your goals and objectives.
7. Finding the right digital tools to implement the strategy
When the plan is ready, it’s crucial to find the most effective and future-proof tools and technologies that you will actually use daily to make the magic happen. The content management system is one of them.
The role of content management systems in digital content strategies
As you've got all the strategies and content frameworks planned and structured on paper, a content management system is a key tool in putting them all into action. Now, let's get more specific about which features to look for in a CMS to ensure that it can meet all of your content requirements.
Reusable content elements
Consistency is crucial for any brand as it shapes the customer's perception and recognition. However, following the brand guidelines and constantly approving each piece of content might be challenging, especially within big teams.
Storyblok solves this problem with a system of nestable components, as we call it. Once you've created content elements such as header, form, text, or any other block, it can be reused multiple times. That allows to shorten time-to-market and reduces repetitive tasks.
Content workflows
Organizing the content processes and operations should be one of the first steps in implementing a strategy. Luckily, you can create custom workflows directly in the CMS. They can include various stages such as ready-to-publish, approval, visual editing, and so on. You can also assign different levels of access and permissions so that only authorized stakeholders can perform this or that action.
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Moreover, users can collaborate within the CMS without sending multiple messages on Slack or emails. The changes can be done in real-time, meaning several people can simultaneously work on the same page.
Omnichannel publishing
Omnichannel has been a buzzword for a while, but still, many companies struggle with it. Headless CMS such as Storyblok, on the other hand, allows creating of one content piece (asset) and delivering it to multiple channels simultaneously. For example, that can be a website, mobile app, kiosk, AR, VR, etc.
It not only saves time, but it also helps to maintain consistency. You don't need to recreate the asset whenever you want to publish it elsewhere; instead, you can reuse the same item and ensure it looks appropriate on each channel.
The first thing that caught our attention was Storyblok’s localization setup. It is so easy to connect, set up and utilize the locales we needed for new languages and markets.
Modifying existing content is simple, thanks to localization integrations and reusable components. For example, you can use the same image block but change the photo to be more appropriate for local consumers. In some cases, however, you should reorder the layout because words are longer, have a different alphabet, and sometimes even have opposite directions in some languages. Anyway, you can use the same content blocks, but adjust their size and position on the page.
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All necessary pages can be easily optimized directly in the Visual Editor by adding alt texts, meta titles, and descriptions to images, videos, and other blocks. Aside from that, you can sync any third-party optimization or analytics tools via API to track all data needed.
Storyblok – reliable CMS for implementing digital content strategies
A tailored digital content strategy helps businesses to engage their target audience, increase brand awareness and credibility, and enhance conversion rates. At the same time, a content management system such as Storyblok offers a headless architecture, allowing for flexibility and customization in delivering content to multiple channels.
Do you want to know how to streamline your digital content? Try Storyblok for free, or contact our team to check how headless CMS can improve your digital presence.
