Setting Your Strategy
HOW TO KNOW WHAT AND WHY YOU’RE SPENDING SO MUCH TIME
ON THIS CONTENT THING
9 Questions you Need to Answer
1. Goals – What you want to achieve
2. Market – Who you’re talking to
3. Core message – What you want to tell them
4. Core topic – Umbrella topic
5. Categories – Supporting topics
6. Formats of content
7. Style guide
8. How you’ll deliver it (& who does what)
9. How you’ll promote it (& who does what)
Goals
What do you want to achieve with your blog?
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Subscriptions – IMHO, most reasonable goal
Sales – can’t sell directly, so hard to measure
Media Attention – backlinks, interviews, speaking engagements, mentions (trust, credibility)
Customer Support – retain customers and answer questions (reduce cost of call center)
White Paper/Ebook Downloads – may be top or mid-funnel, lead gen or lead nurturing
Demo Signups – funnel could be blog > downloads > demo signup (HubSpot is prime example. Form
always asks if you want a demo.)
How will you manage your blog/content team?
◦ Content Director, Managing Editor, Graphic Designer, Writing Team
NOTE: Your goal determines the metrics and KPIs (key performance indicators) you watch.
Market
WHO you serve.
Demographics & Psychographics
What problems are they facing? What fears, desires, hopes?
What do they like, dislike? What irritates them?
Are they leaders, followers, creatives, do-it-yourselfers? (their expectations from you)
How do they talk? What are the words, phrases they use?
What are their questions?
Core Message
What is the underlying message you want people to walk away with?
◦ Crazy Egg: To make your website more profitable (our promise), you need to be testing. Crazy Egg will
help you do that.
◦ Disney: A happy family creates lifelong memories. Visit Disney parks to have family adventures.
Value proposition
Value statements
Ways you can communicate this:
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10 Core Values (Zappos is the perfect example)
Manifesto
About page
Free download
Core Topic
The umbrella topic that supports your core message.
Examples:
CRAZY EGG:
◦ Message: To make your website more profitable, you need to test.
◦ Core topic: conversion rate optimization
◦ Content: blog, tutorials, now webinars
DISNEY
◦ Message: A happy family creates lifelong memories
◦ Core topic: family fun
◦ Content: TV channels, magazines, shows at theme parks (and theme parks, themselves)
Categories
Supporting topics based on the elements of or subtopics of your core topic.
For example:
CONVERSION RATE OPTIMIZATION
A/B testing
Usability
Analytics
Copywriting
Design
On-page elements (forms)
Vacations
Children’s activities
Cookbooks
Crafts
FamilyFun
Imagicademy
FAMILY FUN
Format
TEXT
◦ Blog posts
◦ Ebooks
Print book
White papers
Ebooks
Branded magazine
Memes
Screenshorts 
GRAPHICS
◦ Infographic
MEDIA
◦ Video
◦ Webinar
Podcast
Slideshare (presentation)
Style Guide
The elements that help you engage your target audience.
Based on who your audience is… their preferences… what they respond to.
LENGTH: short, medium, longer, epic
TONE: attitude, approach
STYLE: formal, casual, conversational, academic, researched, opinionated
USE OF IMAGES: how many, what type
This may change over time. Test different approaches to see what gets you the most
clickthrough, time on page, social shares, etc.
How You’ll Deliver Your Content
This is where it’s published. Most common…
Text: your blog, other blogs (guest posts), other platforms (LinkedIn)
Media: Videos on YouTube, podcasts in iTunes
Presentations: SlideShares, live/evergreen webinars, tweet chats
Print: newsletter, brand magazine
Social media: LinkedIn group, LinkedIn posts, tweets, Facebook posts
How You’ll Promote Your Content
Newsletter
Social media
◦ Frequent posts
◦ Promoted posts
◦ Make it easy to share (click to tweet, sharable images)
Individual emails to people you’ve featured
◦ Can build relationship, if you do it authentically
◦ Feels like spam if you don’t
Share to RSS, forums & content sharing sites (don’t try to do it all; set priorities)
◦ Scoop.It
◦ SlideShare
◦ Reddit
Alltop
Digg
StumbleUpon
Next Up…
Planning your Content: 4 key types of content and where they fit in your strategy