Content Strategy Guide For Startups – 2022 Edition

With an effective content strategy based on up-to-date data obtained by identifying and testing the right variables:

This article will not be about why you should have a content strategy, as you can’t build a presence without a good content strategy in 2022 when value-based marketing has become so widespread and all your competitors have started their sales funnel by generating interest through value creation.

Instead, you will read a detailed guide that includes the steps you need to prepare a content strategy that is versatile and integrated with your other digital efforts, starting with the question of what is content.

Whether you’re going to make a decision with an in-house team, an outsourced agency, or alone, this guide will have some questions you’ll have to answer at some point, and some tips for easy conversion measurement.

When you can give the right answers to these questions, you are effective and growth-oriented; You will be able to set up a content strategy consisting of planning, production, and distribution stages, and you will be able to identify the right content that will grow your startup.

I aim to start with definitions to make sure we’re on the same page, then add another to the list of widely used words that don’t have an operational definition: content!

Although the dictionaries simply state the content as “the sum of the essence, thoughts, feelings, and images that are intended to be given in oral or written expression”, this expression is not descriptive enough for a content definition specific to digital marketing and media.

We are not alone in the fact that content is a difficult phenomenon to define.

David Carr gives a definition to get started here. When we aim to simplify his content definition to reach an up-to-date definition, the following picture emerges:

What is Content?

Produced to be shared with stakeholders and customers; media output that people actively and voluntarily consume in exchange for their attention or money.

With just this sentence, we can begin to outline our content strategy plan;

Stakeholders and Customers

Think about your target audience once again. Who do you need to reach your short and long-term goals?

Are all of your potential customers the target audience of your content? Probably not. What does your target audience do, what do they consume, what do they read, and where do they spend their time? What do they think? What are their daily routines? What are the sources of motivation, and what are the pain points? Who among them would be your ideal client, and why? How do we attract his attention from our competitors?

After considering all this, it would be okay if we answered only these 4 questions:

• Who is our target audience?
• Who are our ideal personas?
• What content does our target audience currently consume?
• What questions is our target audience currently looking for answers to? What are the problems that digital seeks solutions for? What solutions can you offer?

Active Consumption

What we are talking about here is not the active user, because the user of content that you will use digital channels during the distribution phase is already active. What we are talking about is that the communication to be established through content is more than transmitting a one-way message from the receiver to the source.

The only thing that will do this is to take action. What you expect from taking action depends on your business goals and where you are in your strategy; From comments to user-generated content, you may be targeting many conversions, from leaving an email to continuing to watch the video until the end.

You should be able to construct a funnel that will determine the objectives for which you will use the necessary call-to-action phrases, strong words, and proven marketing principles in your content. One of the things you should do at this stage is to start thinking realistically about what kind of conversion you are targeting and at which stage of the communication you will establish with your target audience. So the first questions to answer are:

• What will be the general purpose of our content?
• What are the measurable goals that serve this purpose?
• What are the transformations that will achieve these goals?
• Which of these transformations can be the source/reason for others?

Volunteering

You need to persuade people to voluntarily consume the content you produce to achieve your business goals. How? You have to create a reason for them to follow you and consume your content. Will you have a lot of fun, will you save people from getting lost in big data, will you give information, will you announce the news in your niche before everyone else? Are your answers to these questions appropriate for your brand identity?

Are your corporate tone of voice, brand identity, and communication style consistent with each other?

• Is there a motivation for consuming our content, will we need to produce this motivation?
• Is the content we produce compatible with all of our corporate identity elements?
• How will our content strategy relate to our marketing efforts?

Attention

Considering that you actually want the attention and time of the users you expect to consume your content can provide you with a perspective that you can use when constructing your content strategy. On this subject, Tim Wu’s The Attention Merchants is an appropriate resource for all levels of interest. Wu simply divides attention into good and bad; Good attention is deep, long-term, and voluntary, while bad attention is quick, superficial, and provoked, instantaneously. So another point we have to decide is what attention we aim to gain.

• What kind of attention do we want to gain with the content we produce, how long will they be consumed on average, and how much focus will they require?
• Through which channel can we reach the audience that is ready to give the kind of attention we desire?
• What are the magnets that will make our content stand out?
• Do we need to establish a long-term relationship with the target audience of our content?
• Is it possible for us to convert lead at an earlier stage?

Media

Although we have already closed the traditional media era, which McLuhan called the psychic message, we cannot ignore the influence of the medium on the consumption of content. Because the attention you demand with a 30-second reel video requires a different kind of attention than reading your founder’s autobiographical book, we need to be sure of what audience we’re reaching before deciding on a channel.

Then, answering the questions of which audience we will reach from where, what channel our audience is on, and what content formats are working on that channel are among the things we need to do before we even start planning.

The most obvious point where content marketing differs from traditional marketing methods is the pluralization of communication channels. When you analyze and understand your ideal customer personas and identify the right moments to meet them, you will have determined your distribution channels.

When you prioritize the distribution channels according to your business purposes, you will have determined many points such as the type, subject, and tone of the content you need to produce. All that remains is to do the resource planning necessary to produce the content.

• Through which channel can we reach our target audience?
• What types of content do these channels require?

Can’t give clear answers to these questions? Great!

A well-structured content strategy, especially for a start-up business, can only be established with data obtained over time.

That’s why we’ll start with the types of content that require the least amount of time, effort, and expense. Every answer we can’t give to these questions, which you shouldn’t be able to answer clearly without doing the necessary tests, will constitute a variable for one of the tests we will run.

In order to detect these variables, you must make predictions for each question that you cannot answer from the above questions. You should take your time and examine what your competitors are doing, and identify possible answers to these questions. And you should choose options by getting the opinions of as many people as possible.

At this point, you have identified your first test subjects. You can read the detailed A/B testing guide we wrote.

Is Content Still The King?

Content is no longer the king.

Even if you produce the greatest content, they can’t be effective enough.

I’m not trying to make an endless and inconclusive quality-quantity comparison. I’m trying to explain that thinking about the distribution and measurement phase is more important than any step you take for your content strategy.

Content is unlikely to continue to be king, as Bill Gates’ 1996 article Content is King was not written in 2022 when millions of new content are produced every day.

So, unfortunately, you missed the point when just producing content would make your venture a better place. In 2022, in a well-constructed content strategy, how the content will be distributed has become more important than the content itself.

Being a regular producer is another issue as important as distribution. Search engines and social media algorithms love stability. Because people like stability. By producing regular content, you can gain the trust of your audience, and you can organically reach your goals such as brand awareness or website traffic by repeatedly appearing in front of them. So the questions we should ask are:

• How will you not get lost in all the other content written, shot, and drawn on the same subject? How will you be found?
• How will you retain the people you reach, how often will you produce content, and how will you continue to reach new people in the meantime?
• Where will you direct the traffic you get with your content?
• How will you measure which distribution channel works best?

KPI

The answer to all questions! As we mentioned at the beginning, determining and following the right KPI is one of our main focuses, as we will shape our content strategy with the current data we have obtained through tests in order to create an effective content strategy, and since we will set measurable targets at every stage and constantly optimize it. The important thing is to decide what questions to ask when determining a KPI. Because when you determine the KPI, you will also decide what is important to you.

Content marketing KPIs can be summarized in 5 categories in general:

1. Acquiring qualified customers: 

• Interested monthly unique person.
• The monthly qualified single person is interested.
• Cost per interest (lead).
• Cost per conversion.
• Average conversion time.
• Customer retention rate.
• Customer churn rate.
• Net promoter score.

2. Website and traffic metrics:

• Monthly website traffic.
• Returning and new customers.
• Average session time.
• Website conversion rate.
• Cost per click.

3. SEO optimization:

• Inbound links.
• Organic traffic.
• Organic leads.
• Organic sales.
• Page authority.
• Google PageRank.
• Conversion rates of keywords.
• The number of unique keywords driving traffic.

4. Paid advertising:

• The number of unique users attracted by paid advertising.
• The number of conversions driven by paid advertising.
• Cost per sale.
• Cost per conversion.

5. Social media:

• Traffic from social media.
• Social media attention.
• Conversion rate.
• Audience size engaged.
• Engagement rate.

To sum,

Although the priorities of your content strategy will change according to its general purpose and other goals, you need to be able to measure these KPIs in order to measure the success of your content in general. You can use Google Analytics, Hotjar, Mailchimp, Facebook Pixel, and Twitter Tag to track these KPIs.