By Cassy van Eeden

Content without a strategy yields several disadvantages and can ultimately damage your brand’s credibility.

What is a content strategy?

As a marketer, there is a high possibility that part of your job includes content marketing. This in turn means that you will also be responsible for maximising the impact of the content. According to Dan Zambonini, founder and CTO of Bipsync, this means that you are making decisions about how content is published, treated, shared and so on. But what are you basing these decisions on?

According to CEO and founder of Portent Inc, Ian Lurie, a content strategy defines specific goals and outlines exactly how each goal is to be attained. It also prescribes how your content will benefit both your brand and your customer. Finally, a content strategy will “create a ‘profile’ of particularly successful content types that others can apply for the foreseeable future”, says Lurie.

A content strategy also explains how the content fits into and impacts the entire marketing plan, adds Lurie.

With a clear indication of what your content is supposed to achieve, and how, your job becomes a lot easier.

Why do I need a content strategy?

Co-founder of the Discover Africa Group, Andre Van Kets explains that, “Content alone cannot bring a project alive.”

Content strategist for Distilled, Hannah Smith, explains that “a lack of strategy can lead to generic content, and generic content simply doesn’t cut it anymore”. Generic content does not rank organically, it doesn’t get shared and it definitely doesn’t engage people. It is therefore “unlikely to deliver against your wider marketing objectives”, she adds.

You need a content strategy because without one “you’re in danger of creating content which could either confuse or alienate your audience, or fail to reach them at all”, says Smith.

Writing for Forbes.com, content strategist Anthony Wing Kosner, argues that a content strategy is just as important as a marketing plan. This is because – like any form of marketing – your content needs to stand out. And you need to have a plan as to how it will stand out. “Your content has to be awesome. It has to be truly helpful. It cannot be about you. It has to be about your customer’s wants and needs,” adds Kosner.

How do I build a content strategy?

Building a content strategy starts with research. There are three things that you need to base your strategic decisions upon: your company, your customer and your competitor. Research needs to be conducted in each of these areas in order to identify and understand the objectives of your content marketing, says Smith.

Lurie emphasises the necessity for a content strategy to be as detailed as possible. “No matter how repetitive it feels,” he says.

Another important element to consider when building a content strategy is how success will be measured and monitored, says Kosner. Your strategy needs to include whether or not you will consider how many early-stage search terms are driving traffic to your website; what percentage of leads are from inbound sources; and how well early-stage content engages with your target audience.

Over to our readers. What do you think? Is having a content strategy necessary? What else should be included in the planning of your content marketing?