Time is money. Grow your business in no time using these four content strategy tips!
Content marketing takes a lot of time and mobilizes resources (either yours or your company's), often with an unpredictable and slow dynamic of return on investment.
And yet, everyone agrees that developing a stable business flow is essential.
Find out how to implement four efficient Content Strategy Tips to save time and money to take back control, improve your marketing, and minimize expenses.
Don't wait to optimize your marketing! Let's start now!
A well-executed content strategy is based on four crucial and complementary steps:
We will go through these steps together.
A good content strategy is, above all, making the right choices in advance. We are going to spend some time on this because it is important!
What is a hub? A hub is a platform where you post content to engage your audience and potential clients. It can be your website, social, or even your physical store. Most businesses have one well-identified channel for their business: it's their main hub.
It's where you have the maximum audience or where your customers use or purchase your products. As a business, it is crucial to be clear between your central and secondary hubs.
To implement an efficient content strategy, we must focus on your main hub, not on the urge to create new articles or creatives everywhere.
Your central hub is where you centralize the content publication. Every other channel is secondary and reuses or re-cycles the content.
That is to say, where you want to build the value for your activity. It will differ depending on whether you are a product or service distributor, sole trader, or limited company. It is the principal place where your users take action on your products. For example, people will buy your products or services: website, physical store, or digital media.
The secondary hubs aim to widen your possibilities to reach an audience and enable you to multiply the content's visibility.
It works a little like a hive. You are the queen bee in the central hub, the source of life, while the secondary hubs are here to bring you pollen.
We will give you some examples, so you can understand and thus, choose what is best for your business.
Let's take the example of Shein or Amazon. Indeed, all their transactions are online; they have an e-commerce shop. It is easy; their principal channel is the website where the customers buy products.
However, an e-commerce website will use many secondary hubs according to the niche market and the public affected by the products. For example, Shein will use Instagram to connect with young potential buyers by posting attractive and efficient content. Thus, Instagram is not the main channel but a significant secondary channel for the company to distribute content and engage with its audience.
My central hub is my shop. It is where the major transaction takes place, and, thus, the customer's experience is the most important since my clients spend most of their time there and have the most contact with the product and the service. The website or social media are partial sales and advertising tools worth developing in this situation.
My favorite example is IKEA which managed to transpose its physical customer experience from shop to digital. Thus, the website became an additional integral part of the buying process. There is an excellent complementarity of the material and digital customer experience. Such a great example to follow!
Although word of mouth is often a norm, many business owners choose digital and social media as the main hub for products or services. Nowadays, getting in touch with clients and visibility with technology is easier.
In many cases, physical or online interactions are essential to use a service or a product.
In the digital era we live in, word of mouth is not enough as a craftsperson or a sole trader. Thus, it is essential to consider developing a central digital hub with an excellent digital content strategy. Indeed, LinkedIn works very well for an entrepreneur in consulting or business formation, whereas Instagram works better for creative and artistic professions (photography, paintings, tattoos).
In this situation, websites or social media are not the main channels but help sales and visibility tools. Indeed, the website is an additional step that guides a user when buying: this is what we call a brochure website. The aim of multiplying the platforms is not sure to be proven, and the content marketing strategy of sole traders is to be managed on a case-by-case basis. That is to say that some independent workers, such as artists, will be more likely to use Instagram as their central hub than a physical shop.
For an excellent digital content strategy, it is preferable to use a media you own as your primary resource: your website. Indeed, even if you can use Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, or even Tiktok, these platforms don't belong to you, and the content you post is not yours anymore. Compared to a website, you have very little room for manœuvre and feedback concerning the users' interactions with your content. However, many sole traders succeed with Instagram or LinkedIn only.
Although I prefer websites for sole traders or limited companies, it is not essential to start with them. You can use Instagram and Facebook, which offer payment and even appointments features.
Now that you know which hub suits your activity best, we will move to the second step of a good content strategy that saves time and money: quality creation in a sufficient quantity.
The goal: more likes, less content!
In other words, fewer posts, more quality.
Social media exists because its users create content and interact. Although commitment has been much more critical these past few years for algorithms, the constant pressure of creating and posting exclusive content in great quantity is enormous.
Suppose you are a big company with substantial budgets and an entire team (which is not often, don't worry). In that case, you can consider a content strategy that could equal the volume and variety of national and international media. But even then, it will not be sure that you are using your resources as efficiently as possible.
Indeed, for a few years, ROI (Return On Investment) has been more important than the volume of posts. In short, a quality and well-thought post per week can have more impact than two daily posts. Impact matters!
Now that your content is ready and you have identified where to post it, you have to distribute it.
The main hub is used as a home base, whereas secondary hubs complete or support the marketing efforts produced on the main one. For example, your website will be your central hub, where customers can buy your products or services. Still, social media will be your secondary hub, where you get visibility by advertising.
Learn how to create suspense like a real media expert. Take the example of journalists or publicists. Use methods that make sense to your audience and the context you are developing. For example, if you want to get young people's attention, using social media and especially Tiktok, following the trends would be a good way of getting the visibility you need.
Your top piece of content appears on your central hub since it is your principal platform and your audience's purpose. That's why it is vital to reveal extracts of your original piece of content on secondary hubs to make your audience want to read more or to look up your products' characteristics.
For example, a travel agency that proposes tours of Dublin, where our agency Marketing Ohma is set up, can use an Instagram account as a secondary hub. Without revealing all of their knowledge, the posts can enhance the monuments of Dublin, tell historical stories, or even encourage users to stop by restaurants. We highlight without showing all the information on the agency's website. It is an illustration of a local content marketing strategy in Dublin.
In marketing, we call it "repurpose your content." That is to say, adapting the content you posted on your main hub for others.
By releasing parts of your blog article content and adapting the text and images to the platform you used as a secondary hub, you reuse a work you had already done.
For example, take a blog post on Botanics that will list the flowers to plant in your garden in March. The blog post is excellent and written for an online garden center, and it displays many flower categories and experts' advice to look after them. The website is your central hub, and social media is your secondary hub. Starting from this blog post, you have as many posts as possible about flower categories. Indeed, each can be the subject of an individual Instagram and Facebook post or even a video.
By doing so, you multiply the possibilities by starting with only one post.
You create quality content that your audience wants to read. Congratulations!
If a post worked well, use it again!
JK Rowling's Harry Potter book series was a success. And JK Rowling reused a method that won its spurs for her audience!
Do as JK Rowling did. Find a concept that works in your niche, a significant subject for selling or using your product, and offer different varieties.
For example, Harry Potter was a success, readers loved it, and it is by far the best book series sold by the author. So it was content that aroused the readers' interest and, thus, buyers of the product. It was then normal to keep pleasing them and offer them a variety of new pieces of content with the same theme, such as Harry Potter: a History of Magic, Harry Potter: a Journey through a History of Magic, or even Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
For further information concerning content strategy, you can check the content marketing service or the digital marketing strategy.
