Nerds and Words

Your own content strategy in 5 easy steps

 

Being relevant and engaging on social media is no easy job. You need a lot of content for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and it looks like you have to always be inspired and full of never-before-seen ideas. Well, not exactly. Creation is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Or, more precisely, 99% research, planning, and structure. So you don’t need to worry about it: there are no muses or “content fairies” whispering impactful ideas in your ear- all you need to do is dive deep into the topic you want to elaborate on and have a bit of strategic thinking. This is why today we’ll be talking about a few tools and principles that will help you design your very own content strategy that can be easily adjusted to fit your business and niche.

 

Let’s dive in and see what this is all about! 😀

 

1. Research

 

Research is the engine powering your strategy. You can’t do without it so you’ll have to learn to enjoy doing it. The guys from CoSchedule have put together this awesome content marketing research checklist that sums up perfectly every stage that you need to cover in order to get to know your audience and understand their preferences:

 

 

At this stage, you will also meet your competitors and choose the topics you want to approach later on. A useful tip would be to set up a Google alert with the name of your competitors to find out in due time about what they’re up to and what’s happening within your industry. Yet Google alerts can be just as helpful while generating content ideas: once you decide on the keywords for your website and your business, you can compile a list of all the other words and concepts that are related to them and set up Google alerts for each and every one of them. This way, you’ll never be left behind and you will never run out of inspiration.

 

Here are 25 sneaky tools from Neil Patel to help you “spy” on your competition. Most of them are free and will help you make sense of what works and what doesn’t (content-wise), what topics have already been covered by your competition, and how much room you have for coming up with new topics of interest for your audience.

 

As for keyword research (including the search volume and the state of the competition, so you know what’s relevant and what your position on the “content market” is), we recommend the following tools:

 

 

• Wordstream
• Google Trends
• Keyword Generator by Ahrefs
• Keywords Everywhere (comes as a Google Chrome extension)

 

2. Idea generation

Starting from the keywords that you have identified during the research stage, it’s time to look for a way to “connect the dots”, thus laying the groundwork for the future content strategy.

 

Here, we recommend these super nice tools:

 

• Miro, a website that helps you do some thorough mind mapping (meaning that it allows you to navigate from one concept to another until you’re done splitting your field into the smallest possible units; this way, you’ll end up with a visual scheme supporting your content strategy)
• Answer The Public, a tool that gathers data from search engines to offer you fresh ideas and insights right from the source (aka from their users/your prospects)
• Hubspot Blog Ideas Generator, that does exactly what its name tells you: it gets you out of trouble when you can’t think of anything new for your blog
• BuzzSumo, both the free version and the paid one
• Quora and other similar websites that help you see exactly what people are asking (about you and your niche but also at a more general level); this way, you’ll find new ways of structuring your content and you’ll make sure that the topics you approach are relevant to your audience

 

Oh, and for those of you who were curious about what a mindmap looks like, here is a nice example that’ll show you exactly why this concept works so well in the business world (hint: it’s all about visualization, baby):

 

 

 

3. Planning

We’ve got the keywords, we have some content ideas; what’s next? Planning and structuring our efforts, obviously. This is when we choose how we will schedule and deal with the available pieces of content. It’s just like running a marathon: we don’t go full in otherwise we risk running out of “breath” pretty quickly. Exhausting your creative resources too early along the way means failing the expectations of our audience, expectations that we have created ourselves. What we are going to do instead is think about frequency and consistency, trying to find a tempo that will work for both our business and the audience. Then we are going to write down a content plan.

 

For content planning, you can use:

 

• Excel or Google Sheets if you are a rather old school person and would rather choose the beaten path; Google Sheets offers you more room for personalization, as well as online backup solutions for your content calendar
• Hubspot’s content calendar, that comes with templates that you can easily customize depending on the social networks you want to prioritize
• CoSchedule, for larger teams and more ambitious projects (it’s a paid tool that’s totally worth the money, as it comes with lots of cool features like color coding for better organizing your projects, syncing options for your WordPress blog, and many more; you’ve got a 14-day free trial and if you think you found what you need, there 3 affordable packages that you can choose from)

 

4. Execution

Whether we’re talking about social media or the company’s blog, you’ll also need to focus a bit on correctly formatting your text, as well as on visual elements. Execution can make or break an idea and you’ll want to put your concepts in the right light. So, without further ado, here are the tools that will help you shape these ideas:

 

• The Hemingway text editor: an app focused on fluency, it helps you get rid of all the unnecessary elements so that your writing will be clear and concise
• Dreamstime, Shutterstock, and Unsplash for stunning stock photography to enrich your blog or social media posts
• PngTree and FreePik for PNG and vector images (these will come in handy when you’re looking for small, impactful graphic elements to complete the visuals for your Instastories or social media posts)
• Canva for creating and editing your visuals- it’s easy to use and you’ve got lots of features and ready-made templates that you can use; plus, their team always knows what’s up and they’re keeping the templates fresh and up-to-date 
• You can even create logos for your company or projects in Canva. If you’re not a Photoshop wizard but you still want them to look professional, we also highly recommend Remove.bg, a website that automatically removes the background from pictures and graphics and even has an option that allows you to manually correct the picture, as the algorithm doesn’t always correctly identify what to erase and there are tiny lines left that you’ll have to erase yourself
• Crello is similar to Canva and allows you to create clean and eye-catching designs for your social media posts; another option would be Adobe Spark in both its free and paid version
• YayText is for when you want to make your copy to stand out on social media; you’ve got lots of cool formatting options, besides strikethrough, bold, and italics

5. Community engagement

It’s cool to ask for feedback and nudge your audience by involving them in your business every once in a while. Whether you’ve run out of content ideas or it just seems like your people have been suspiciously silent lately, the following “tricks” are a must in building a healthy community on social media. Plus, they involve playing around with some features already provided by the very social platforms you’re using, so why not take advantage of them?

 

• Go live! On Facebook or Instagram, without any props or intense preparation. Every time you think there’s a special occasion or a moment that you want to share with your audience, don’t hesitate to go live. You don’t have to turn your living room into a full-on studio, with lights, mic, and lots of professional cameras to cover each angle. Choose the best spot, make sure you’ve got good lighting conditions and no background noise to ruin the transmission, and there you go. Your social media audience actually values authenticity above staged events so they won’t be hard on you if you lack professional equipment. It’s the story that matters.
• Use Facebook polls. Are you facing an important decision and you feel like your audience could help you make a better choice? Do a Facebook poll. You can also use these polls to find out more about the people in your audience and their preferences. 
• Use every single option/format on Instastory. They’re specially designed to encourage participation and to help you connect with your audience in a more authentic and meaningful way.

 

Now that you’ve got your content strategy…

 

All you need to do is stick to it. We’ve gone through all the stages, we’ve talked about free (or fairly cheap) tools and instruments, we’ve also hidden a few “pro tips” here and there… You’ve got everything it takes to create and kickstart your content strategy. You just need to gather up the courage and start writing for your business. In case you’re not prepared to make this kind of commitment just yet (or if inspiration left you for good), give us a sign and we’ll help you put your content strategy back on track.