Fundamental to any success you might have with your content marketing is determining where exactly content fits within your organisation.
There is a lot of debate among brands and marketers about who ‘owns’ content strategy. Which part of the marketing function is really responsible for this?
This is a crucial question within large organisations and is one that external content agencies that are experts in content-led marketing and content amplification can increasingly help with.
Content Marketing Strategy
There are many misconceptions about who ‘owns’ the content process.
Is content strategy the responsibility of your SEO team? Or perhaps your social media team? Or maybe your PR or corporate communication team? The answer is, of course, all of them and none of them.
As Justin Pearse wrote in The Guardian this week ‘any content a brand produces must be developed purely to satisfy its consumers’ interests.’
All of these marketing departments should therefore have input into the process. The core of your content strategy should be what you want to say and who you want to speak to as a company. It’s that simple. Your content strategy is not therefore a search or social or pr strategy.
Let us review the different sections in more detail:
-
Search strategy vs content strategy
Content is now at the heart of any search engine optimisation strategy. Search engines love unique, quality content that enhances the user experience. Keywords and content gap analysis are important elements of search and are welcome add-ons to your content strategy (keywords can help spark the creative juices for content ideas); but your content strategy is far more than just a list of keywords and landing pages.
-
Social strategy vs content strategy
Content is the lifeblood of any brand’s social platform. Whether a B2B approach on Linkedin and Google+, a consumer angle on Facebook and Twitter, or something that incorporates all social platforms; content is what drives brand engagement. But the content needs to appeal to the right people, as well as the right platform. Social strategy informs the overall content strategy, but it should not rule it. You need a content strategy in place to succeed with social media; but you don’t necessarily need social media to succeed with content marketing. Your content marketing strategy should come first, followed by a social strategy that makes it easy for your audience to share it.
-
PR strategy vs content strategy
Content marketing is not PR in ‘new clothes,’ likewise content strategy is not identical to your PR strategy. They should share fundamental similarities, such as brand message and voice, but they differ somewhat, often, with their target audience. For example, some PR and corporate communications strategies are targeted towards journalists and government, rather than the consumers they may want to target with their content strategy. Relying on your PR strategy to become your content strategy is not always feasible or advisable.
Content marketing agencies can help brands and their agencies formulate content strategy, as well as working with them to produce engaging content that can be amplified to distribute to your target customer base.
This is an extract from Content Amp’s Guide to Content Marketing which you can download from the site now.
Read more: