Running out of ideas for your content strategy?

Content strategy approval – how to win buy-in for your ideas

So, you’ve completed the research and fully understand the business focuses and audience. You’ve created the personas, organised the brainstorms and come up with a host of creative content to set the web on fire. Now all you have to do is pitch the ideas and get the buy-in of your client or MD.

Easy huh? Well, not always.

Part of the reason this can be harder than necessary is because some people struggle to understand that off-page content, in particular, is not designed to be a sales pitch. (It almost doesn’t matter what you write about, as long as the article is interesting, and the link is relevant and appears naturally.) It is therefore imperative to explain the true purpose of each piece of content from the very beginning and highlight the benefits of variety - it is, after all, the spice of life.

At Zazzle Media we have worked hard to create content strategies that not only list all our data-informed content ideas, but also explain what each content type can deliver, whether it is:

• Articles to help build quality links from relevant sites across the internet.
• In-depth features to be hosted on household name/media sites with lots of traffic to help promote brand awareness.
• Evergreen on page content such as eBooks and White Papers to give a client’s site authority and win Google Brownie points.
• Blog posts to help build audience engagement and give the client a voice, as well as an opportunity to promote products and services.
• Infographics to help display data and facts in a visually appealing manner to be hosted on and off page for links and social shares.
• Interactive games/quizzes which have the potential to go viral

Tools to help ensure your content ideas are the right ideas

Great ideas are at the heart of every content strategy but you need to make sure that you get a mix of content types which will be of interest to the audience you’re writing for.

Content tools that can help you do just this are:

• Facebook Graph Search which is great for giving you an insight into your audience’s likes and dislikes.
• Ubersuggest and Google Key Word Planner  to help you find longtail opportunities to include in your content.
• Freebase and SEMrush to establish semantically relevant topics.
• Buzzsumo, Social Crawlytics or QuickSprout will give you a snapshot of most socially shared content around a certain topic.
• Searchmetrics to help identify evergreen content opportunities according to most searched phrases.

Setting up an approval process for managing your content

Some clients/MDs will be more than happy for you to just get on with the work and will not want any involvement in the process; others, however will want to be included every step of the way - from agreeing article titles, approving potential placement sites and seeing first drafts of everything to ensure the assets stay on-brand.

This can obviously cause delays in the content creation process so it is important to establish some ground rules to prevent unnecessary hold-ups and keep everyone happy.

We use an Excel spreadsheet to list every idea and ask for feedback on each one to help save time further down the line.

There are, of course, certain guidelines to follow to make a piece of content great, but no one person will write an article or design an infographic the same way. Everyone will have an opinion and just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it is wrong.

In order to keep everyone on side you cannot bullishly ignore other’s views or opinions, but you do need to be clear about the number of amends/changes you will make. Of course, you should correct any grammatical errors or literals that may have slipped through the net, but constant changes for changes sake are not helpful.

Wherever possible get a clear brief detailing what information someone wants included, the tone of the voice you should adopt and any brand guidelines you should follow.

Also agree a timeframe around how long approvals should take – at Zazzle we give people 48 hours to give us their feedback, if we haven’t heard anything by then, we take this to mean they are happy for us to proceed.

Although you should always listen to feedback and try to accommodate other’s views, you should not be afraid to occasionally disagree with them, remember they have employed you for your expertise and are looking to you for advice but make sure you explain the reasons why you are recommending a certain course of action.

Putting the ideas into a content plan

Once the rules have been lain down, the ideas pitched in and agreed, the next step is to create a content plan.

Not only does this help everyone see what you will be producing and when, it also enables you to keep on top of content flow. (It is after all, imperative to produce a steady flow of content.)

All the content produced by Zazzle is based on journalistic principles. We understand the value of providing different types and styles to attract a wide audience. In a newspaper or magazine you will find hard-hitting news stories, human interest stories, picture stories, in-depth feature articles, advice-led articles, personality profiles, fact based stories, opinion pieces and columns.

The same rules should apply on-line. Some of the content types we focus on, which feature in the Smart Insights Content Type matrix include:

• Short form blog articles.
• Infographics.
• Video.
• List Features.
• Interviews.
• How to Guides.
• Reviews.
• Case Studies.
• News Articles.
• Whitepapers.
• Ebooks
• Short Form
• Q&As.
• Guest Blogs.
• Cheat Sheets.
• Testimonials.
• Long form feature articles.
• Blogger Challenges.

Search engines love sites which have a variety of content types, linking to it and reward those which have a host of amazing on page content which adds authority and enhances the user experience; this therefore needs to be at the heart of everything you produce. 

Getting the content flow through an editorial calendar

So how do you keep track of all these content types, the hours, workload and delivery.

Via an editorial content calendar, of course. And the critical element here is in ensuring you understand the principle of true ‘content flow’. What is it? Simply put it is the art of delivering content over time in a way that creates variation and surprise.

As content is an art form it abides by the same rules as music and if you look at how music is structured great ‘pieces’ will always ebb and flow; have huge crescendos as well as calmer moments to amplify the important parts and amplify the effect of the high points.

Content strategy is exactly the same and assets should be organised in the correct ‘order’ to ensure the reader, or customer, keep coming back for more.

An editorial calendar, therefore, sits at the heart of that planning process and it is essential in providing you with a place to plan out ideas and key topics, assign writing tasks to team members and tie in with specific calendar events such as Halloween or Christmas for instance.

It is, in essence a framework to keep everyone organised and focused. Whether it’s a combination of documents, an Excel spreadsheet, an online tool, or just a monthly email you send to your team, the key is that it works for you. In the end, whatever helps to smooth out your process and keep you on track is the best editorial calendar format.

Content marketing is a strategic venture. It’s all about understanding what customers want and giving it to them in an easy format everyone can understand. The editorial calendar is a place where everyone can view the whole content and the execution of the goals within it.

Copyright/Image Credit: Zazzlemedia