How To Simplify Your Content Strategy

On the surface of things, simplifying your content strategy may seem rather counter-intuitive. After all, there are new pieces published online every day, detailing the latest thing you simply must do, and you are probably receiving further advice from within your own organisation and from external SEO service companies as well.

Yet, in reality, content marketing does not need to be complicated at all. In actual fact, a more simple strategy can produce far better results in the long run, because it will provide you with more time to spend on the things that really matter. With that in mind, here are some tips for simplifying your content marketing strategy.

1. Quality Over Quantity

If you speak with any SEO service company about search marketing, the one phrase you will hear time and time again is ‘content is king’. There is no substitute for quality material, which engages readers and solves problems for them. On the flip side, throwaway content with little value will do more harm to your marketing efforts than good.

For this reason, the single best way to simplify your content strategy is by focusing on real quality, even if it means you publish less content overall. You may feel that sheer quantity can help you to gain an edge over competitors, but two high-quality pieces of content a week will have far more value than four average pieces.

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2. Consider Your Audience

Once you have committed yourself to focusing on quality, you need to think about your audience, which should include your existing customers and those you are hoping to attract. Ideally, you should try to identify:

  • Who is part of your target audience
  • What your audience’s primary concerns are
  • What sort of content they actually need

Once you have a better understanding of your audience, you and your search agency can adopt a far more simple approach of trying to satisfy their needs. For each piece you publish, you should have asked yourself why your target audience would care about it and precisely what problem(s) it can help to solve for them.

3. Prioritise Niche Content

Another great way to simplify your content strategy is by identifying niche topics related to your business, where you can establish real authority. Far too many content marketers fail to do this and end up providing wide-ranging information that other companies also provide. Instead, try to offer something different and more targeted.

“You want to highly scrutinise the content,” says Joe Pulizzi, writing for the Content Marketing Institute. “If the information isn’t truly differentiated, with limited competition, there is little chance you will break through. What is the content niche you are planning to cover? Where will you find the stories in this content niche?”

4. Make Use of Analytics

Finally, you should work with your search agency and make effective use of analytics to inform your marketing strategy. If you notice, for example, that blog posts on a specific topic produce great results, it makes sense to produce more of them. Similarly, if something performs badly, you should consider giving those pieces the chop or re-purpose that content so that it is more relevant.

Pay attention to things like click-through rates and social media shares, rather than just looking at page hits and decide which metrics are most important to you. Ultimately, the key to simplifying your content marketing is to trust the judgement of your audience. Give them what they need to solve their specific problems, and stop giving them generic content they don’t need.