I’m a big believer in building a strong content strategy before diving into execution.

Having seen time, money and other resources wasted again and again because of lack of focus, I feel it’s my responsibility to help change that.

Here are 8 things a strategy helps you achieve:

1. Building accountability with clear goals and metrics

Examples of goals for your #contentmarketing strategy:
> Save costs by decreasing your Customer Acquisition Cost
> Build a base of subscribers sales can engage
> Create opportunities for partnerships through great content.

2. Reaching the people who need what you make

Who is it for?

To answer this question I use these tools: the customer persona and the customer journey map.

Understanding your customer’s context is essential to delivering content that serves their needs.

3. Focusing on what makes the biggest impact

Articles, podcasts, case studies, videos, courses – you most likely don’t have the resources to do all of them and, even if you have, it doesn’t mean you should.

Experiment to find out what works and double down on that.

4. Balancing creation, promotion & optimization

A common pitfall in content marketing: spending too much time on creation and not nearly enough on promotion.

Here’s what you’re missing: content promo helps you get more traffic while writing less. So does content repurposing.

5. Reaping short-term results while building long-term ones

One of the best things about #contentmarketing is the compound effect it has.

Results pile up over time as you get better at polishing your strategy, creating a virtuous cycle.

6. Aligning your team and improving productivity

A strategy helps clarify expectations and offers a guiding structure for your in-house team or other collaborators.

It also works as a motivator for content creators, showing where #contentmarketing fits in the company.

7. Making better use of your limited resources

If you know what your #contentmarketing efforts are focused on, you’ll be better equipped to choose the right people, tools, and partners for the task at hand.

8. Scaling your content marketing on solid foundations

A content marketing strategy enables you to scale your efforts, track them over time, and improve and tweak your tactics to achieve the kind of organic growth you admire in other companies (maybe your competitors).

I talked about these 8 points more in-depth here.

I leveraged my experience and the issues I’ve faced in the past 6 years while building #contentmarketing programs and teams that continue to perform after I’ve left.