8 SIMPLE STEPS TO CRUSHING YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY

Are you struggling with social media content creation?

Are you posting and engaging but get crickets for comments?

Here's a simple strategy for creating content that'll help you reach marketing goals:

1. Establish your marketing goals

2. Decide on your objectives

3. Define a content purpose for each goal

4. Define your content pillars

5. Define the content clusters

6. Define some topics

7. Decide on which formats to use

8. Create a content plan

Establish Your Marketing Goals

What do you want to accomplish with your social media content? Some common goals are:

• Brand Awareness

• Brand Authority

• Build Trust

• More Engagement

• Drive Traffic Elsewhere

• Nurture Customers

My advice is to choose one goal at a time. It's easier to measure what's working and what's not.

Decide on Your Objectives

Your objectives are the ways to measure how well you're reaching your goals on the platform:

• Profile Visit (awareness)

• Follower Conversion (trust, authority)

• Save (authority, trust)

• Share (awareness, engagement)

• DM (leads, awareness, authority, trust, engagement)

• Comment (engagement, awareness, authority)

• Like (awareness, engagement)

• Website taps (drive traffic, authority)

Define a Content Purpose

You'll need a content purpose for each of your goals: another reason to choose only one goal at a time. The purpose of content is to define the kind of information you want to provide. Some examples are:

• Educate (authority, trust)

• Inform (authority, trust)

• Entertain (awareness, engagement)

• Motivate (trust, engagement)

• Inspire (trust, engagement)

• Promote (awareness, drive traffic)

Define Your Content Pillars

Content pillars are the overarching subjects you'll be talking about in your content and they usually align with the problems you solve, questions you answer, or the symptoms your service or product can relieve.

Here's an example for a marketing coach:

• Advertising

• Email Marketing

• Social Media Marketing

• Marketing Strategies

Define the Content Clusters

Content clusters are sub topics if you will, under the content pillars. Using the email marketing pillar from above, here are some content cluster examples:

• Email Marketing

  • Email Marketing Sequences

  • Email Marketing Strategies

  • Email Marketing Trends

  • Email Marketing Mistakes

Define Some Topics

Topics are the actual posts that you'll make. Here's some examples using the Email Marketing Sequence content cluster:

• Email Marketing Sequences

  • Welcome Sequence: What is a Welcome Sequence?

  • Welcome Sequence: How to Create a Welcome Sequence

  • Welcome Sequence: 5 Reasons Why You Need an Automated Welcome Sequence

Decide on Formats

There are several content formats you can use:

• Infographics

• Carousels

• Images

• Reels

• Stories

You'll need to decide which ones to start with and how you'll repurpose your topic with each format in your content plan below.

Create a Content Plan

The biggest part is the content plan, I'm not gonna lie. There are endless ways to plan content but here's a simple template you can use if you're just getting started:

1. Decide how many days per week that you can post consistently and engage. What time of day can you post consistently?

2. Determine your content mix: what will be the percentage of educational, entertaining, and inspiring posts?

3. Determine your content pillar plan. A simple way to plan your content is to choose either of the following:

   1. one pillar per day of the week-each day a new content pillar topic

   2. one pillar for the entire week-spend the entire week deep-diving into a pillar cluster or topic (you can break down a blog into posts or break down a topic into "what, who, why, how, where, and/or when")

4. How will you repurpose your content? I like to start with infographics, then repurpose as a carousel, then a reel. If you repurpose it'll strengthen your message and save time on content creation.

Conclusion: Be Intentional

There are several ways to build a content strategy but the most important thing you can remember when doing it is to be intentional. Posting random content about lots of different topics will do nothing to build brand awareness and brand authority - the two most important things you need to sell online.

Toni is an Instagram marketing strategist and data nerd who helps service-based businesses go from having a "presence" on social media to DOMINATING their niche.

There's a myth that Instagram offers no monetary benefits to professional service-based businesses and is a necessary evil.

Struggling with building online credibility? Steal her Crush Your Instagram Profile Guide here and get seen today: check out her free tips on Instagram: www.instagram.com/crush_your_engagement, or visit the website: www.crushyourengagement.com.