{"id":1208,"date":"2025-03-06T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nurseagence.com\/?p=1208"},"modified":"2025-03-18T13:27:13","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T13:27:13","slug":"how-to-develop-a-content-strategy-in-7-steps-from-start-to-finish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nurseagence.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/06\/how-to-develop-a-content-strategy-in-7-steps-from-start-to-finish\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Develop a Content Strategy in 7 Steps (From Start to Finish)"},"content":{"rendered":"
Whether you\u2018re just starting out with content marketing or you\u2019ve been using the same approach for a while, it never hurts to revisit your content strategy plan and make sure it’s innovative and engaging for your prospects and customers.<\/p>\n
In this post, we’ll dive into what content strategy is, why your business needs a content marketing plan, and what steps you need to take to create your strategy.<\/p>\n
Plus, we’ll explore some examples of effective content marketing strategies for inspiration.<\/p>\n Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n Your content strategy is the foundation of the attract and delight stages<\/a> in your buyer’s journey that follows the inbound marketing framework.<\/p>\n Say your business goals include increasing brand awareness.<\/p>\n To achieve this, you might implement an SEO-focused content strategy to increase your website’s visibility on the search engine results pages (SERPs) and drive traffic to your products or services.<\/p>\n Along with attracting prospects to your brand, you can leverage a content strategy for sales enablement<\/a> and customer satisfaction.<\/p>\n Plus, with 70% of marketers actively investing in content marketing<\/a>, developing a good content strategy is critical to competing in your industry.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n A couple of years ago, I worked as a content writer for a literary company that had just launched.<\/p>\n Despite all the pre-launch meetings, the founder and CEO of the company didn\u2019t understand the importance of creating a content marketing strategy for our forthcoming website.<\/p>\n Three months after the launch, the CEO expressed dissatisfaction with the poor performance so far \u2014 neither the website nor the company\u2019s social media accounts were seeing organic traffic, and the paid ads were not converting at all.<\/p>\n I suggested that we create a content strategy plan for the next quarter.<\/p>\n Sure enough, by the end of Q2, we recorded an increase in traffic and conversions from both the website and social media profiles.<\/p>\n No matter the kind of company or industry you work in, a content marketing strategy is integral for the success of your digital marketing efforts.<\/p>\n When content creators, social media managers, writers, and other team members are aligned on goals such as brand awareness, lead generation, or customer engagement, they can produce content that consistently supports these aims.<\/p>\n This increases the chances of getting tangible results.<\/p>\n Carl Broadbent<\/a>, a digital marketing expert, values content marketing strategies for the alignment they bring.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter years of publishing blogs, ebooks, and videos, I\u2018ve learned that a strong content strategy acts like a guiding compass. It points you towards topics and formats aligned with business goals, so you\u2019re not just cranking out content for content’s sake,\u201d Broadbent says.<\/p>\n Broadbent also notes that teams will make mistakes along the way.<\/p>\n He recalls, \u201c\u2018I’ve made that mistake! Last year, we invested heavily in podcasts, thinking it would attract our target buyers. Turns out our audience preferred snappy infographics. Our podcast push fizzled out fast without the right strategy in place.\u201d<\/p>\n Ayomide Joseph<\/a>, a freelance content marketer for SaaS companies like Aura, Nextiva, and Trengo, explains the purpose of a content marketing strategy:<\/p>\n \u201cThe concept of \u2018strategy\u2019 in content marketing is simply to give you a roadmap that\u2019ll guide you from where you are to where you want to be,\u201d Joseph says.<\/p>\n For example, Joseph notes that if you\u2019re looking to drive more inbound leads via content, ideally, creating bottom-of-the-funnel content<\/a> is the way to go.<\/p>\n \u201cA content marketing strategy answers the questions, \u2018How do you go about it? What\u2019s the keyword you\u2019re going to target, search volume, difficulty \u2014 and what distribution approach will you utilize?\u2019\u201d Joseph says. \u201cIf you don\u2019t have a content marketing strategy, you\u2019ll be working blind.\u201d<\/p>\n A content marketing strategy requires you to plan the type of content to create, such as blog posts, infographics, videos, and podcasts.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll also determine the most effective channels for distribution, whether that be social media platforms, email marketing, or the company\u2019s website.<\/p>\n This planning ensures that content is consistent, timely, and relevant to the audience\u2019s interests and needs, fostering brand loyalty and advocacy.<\/p>\n When you map out a fully fledged content marketing strategy, you\u2019ll be able to allocate resources more efficiently, whether those resources are time, budget, or manpower, to bring the strategy to life.<\/p>\n By knowing the type of content you need to produce and the platforms through which you\u2019ll distribute it, you can direct your efforts and budget toward activities that offer the best return on investment (ROI).<\/p>\n A well-executed content marketing strategy can alleviate this problem by improving a brand\u2019s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).<\/p>\n High-quality, optimized content is favored by search engines and ranks higher in search results, which leads to increased organic traffic.<\/p>\n By targeting specific keywords<\/a> and topics relevant to your target audience, you can attract more qualified leads to your website.<\/p>\n By consistently producing high-quality, relevant, and valuable content, you can establish your business as a thought leader in its industry.<\/p>\n This authority builds trust with your audience, which is crucial for long-term relationships and customer loyalty.<\/p>\n A content marketing strategy ensures that your content not only attracts attention but also provides value and encourages your audience to return and interact with the brand further.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Here are some statistics that show the results a content marketing strategy can help you generate for your business:<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Since a content strategy plan is a roadmap designed to guide the creation, publication, and governance<\/a> of useful content, here are some key elements to include when creating yours.<\/p>\n What do you want to achieve with your content?<\/p>\n Do you want to increase brand awareness? Generate leads? Maybe improve customer engagement?<\/p>\n When you define the goals and objectives you want your content to help you achieve, you\u2019re establishing your North Star.<\/p>\n So, if you\u2019re not sure whether to include a certain type of content in your strategy, you can look to your North Star and determine if that content type will lead you in the right direction.<\/p>\n An audience persona<\/a> (or buyer persona) is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on data and research.<\/p>\n It helps you understand who you\u2019re creating content for.<\/p>\n To create an accurate audience persona, you\u2019ll need to conduct research through surveys and interviews and analyze your social media engagement to gather insights.<\/p>\n These insights include your audience\u2019s demographic information, interests, pain points, and content preferences, to mention a few.<\/p>\n Knowing this information will help you understand the content types, topics, and marketing channels that will help you reach your goals.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve gotten your audience persona down, review your existing content to determine what\u2019s working and what\u2019s not.<\/p>\n This way, you\u2019ll be able to identify gaps and opportunities for content.<\/p>\n In the content audit section of your content strategy plan, explain:<\/p>\n Pro tip: <\/strong>Use tools like Google Analytics and social media analytics<\/a> to evaluate the performance of your content. Look for patterns in what types of content perform best and use this to inform future content creation.<\/p>\n Next, decide on the types of content you will create (e.g., blog posts, videos, infographics) and the marketing channels through which you will distribute them (e.g., website, social media, email).<\/p>\n Choose these content types and channels based on your audience\u2019s preferences and where they spend their time online.<\/p>\n Consider experimenting with different formats and channels and measuring their effectiveness before choosing your ideal marketing mix.<\/p>\n This section of your content strategy plan outlines the steps for producing content, from idea generation to publication. This process includes assigning roles and responsibilities to other team members or freelancers.<\/p>\n Pro tip: <\/strong>Develop a content calendar to plan and schedule content in advance. Use collaboration tools to streamline the content creation process and ensure that team members (and\/or freelancers) are on the same page.<\/p>\n Now you know your audience personas, the topics that make your audience tick, the channels you\u2019ll use to distribute your content, and the content creation process.<\/p>\n The next step is to establish the metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the success of your content.<\/p>\n Define clear metrics for each goal, such as engagement rates for brand awareness or conversion rates for lead generation.<\/p>\n Use tools like Google Analytics and native social media analytics tools to regularly monitor performance and adapt your strategy as needed. You can also use HubSpot\u2019s analytics platform<\/a> to get a unified overview of your content distribution efforts across multiple channels, including social media, emails, and PPC advertisements.<\/p>\n Content governance involves setting standards and policies for content creation, publication, and maintenance to ensure consistency and quality over time.<\/p>\n In this section of your content strategy plan, you\u2019ll develop and include content style guidelines, tone of voice guidelines, and content quality criteria.<\/p>\n This ensures that your team members and\/or freelancers create consistent and cohesive content.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Now let\u2019s have a look at everything you need to have a thorough content marketing strategy in place.<\/p>\n Brand guidelines are documents that encapsulate your brand’s overall look and feel \u2014 its color palette, typography, personality, messaging, and so on.<\/p>\n Although generally used to establish a website\u2019s design language or set up ad creatives, brand guidelines also help with your content strategy.<\/p>\n You can build your content governance model based on your brand guidelines to ensure creative teams always develop content that aligns with your brand identity and drives awareness.<\/p>\n You can use your brand guidelines to specify your written or video content\u2019s style, tone of voice, the colors and fonts images or graphics should use, and pinpoint your image or video editing style, for instance.<\/p>\n Tools like Content Hub<\/a> also help maintain brand consistency \u2014 it features an AI-powered writing assistant that automatically generates or tweaks your existing content based on your brand\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n The terms \u201ccontent calendar\u201d and \u201ceditorial calendar\u201d are often used interchangeably, but they\u2019re slightly different.<\/p>\n An editorial calendar<\/a> looks at the bigger picture, giving a broad overview of the themes your content should cover within a specific time period. Meanwhile, a content calendar organizes each individual post within that time frame.<\/p>\n For example, an editorial calendar could simply state that all posts during October should center around Halloween, while the content calendar gets into the details \u2014 it organizes a series of individual posts, each covering a topic related to that theme.<\/p>\n Using editorial and content calendars simultaneously helps plan a thorough content marketing strategy and ensure cohesive topic coverage. It\u2019s also useful for streamlining content ideation processes and maintaining steady workflows.<\/p>\n On a similar note, content clusters are a series of interconnected posts that target all aspects of a particular topic in detail. Topic clusters help establish brand authority and target consumers spread across multiple stages of your marketing funnel.<\/p>\n For example, if your main topic is SEO, you could create a central post that offers a general overview of the subject \u2014 also known as pillar content. You can then branch off and create separate pieces that target all sub-topics related to SEO, like on-page, off-page, and technical SEO.<\/p>\n Again, content audits help spot topics that already do well. You can also use tools like HubSpot\u2019s Marketing Software<\/a> to set up content clusters and get insights into topic search volumes.<\/p>\n Make sure your content strategy is designed to attract consumers from all stages and actively contribute to generating conversions.<\/p>\n For example, the SEO content pillar I just mentioned would attract top-of-the-funnel consumers \u2014 leads interested in a specific topic but who are not ready to make a purchase just yet. The content pillar would offer just enough information to get readers to learn more about the topic.<\/p>\n An email newsletter<\/a> sign-up form at the end of the blog post could attract curious readers, drawing them into your ecosystem.<\/p>\n From there, a CRM tool<\/a> can store these details and set up personalized email nurturing campaigns. These would help drive leads further down the funnel and eventually turn them into purchasing customers.<\/p>\n The blogs that cover SEO sub-topics, however, are perfect for attracting bottom-of-the-funnel consumers. In this case, product mentions with links to product pages might be just enough to get these leads to convert.<\/p>\n Take a peek at your competitors. Get into as much detail as possible here \u2014 see what themes they cover, what content formats they follow, the channels they use, and how they perform.<\/p>\n This helps spot any weaknesses you can capitalize on, like not covering a particular topic in as much detail, for example. Meanwhile, knowing what content and marketing channels work best for them serves as another solid starting point for developing your marketing strategy.<\/p>\n <\/a> <\/p>\n Curious how former HubSpot\u2019s senior director of global growth Aja Frost<\/a> put together our content strategy?<\/p>\n What’s your aim for developing a content marketing plan? Why do you want to produce content and create a content marketing plan?<\/p>\n It may seem obvious, but these questions are the core of a useful content strategy.<\/p>\n Look at high-level business goals, notes from meetings, and notes from your team, then do some solo research to make sure your goals have staying power.<\/p>\n Once you have a list of goals, rank them from most to least important.<\/p>\n This can help you decide which parts of your strategy are an immediate need and which are for long-term action.<\/p>\n This step can also help with resource questions later in the process.<\/p>\n The SMART framework<\/a> can help you make broad goals more specific and actionable.<\/p>\n Know your goals before you begin planning, and you\u2018ll have an easier time determining what\u2019s best for your strategy.<\/p>\n Download this goal-planning template to determine your content goals.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n To develop a successful plan, you need to clearly define your content’s target audience \u2014 also known as your buyer persona<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is a crucial part of the planning phase of content strategy.<\/p>\n This is especially important for those who are new to marketing. By knowing your target audience, you can produce more relevant and valuable content that they’ll want to read and convert on.<\/p>\n If you don\u2018t already have defined personas, you\u2019ll want to analyze your data to find who you want to create content for and the types of content they enjoy.<\/p>\n This post has some useful tips for how to create buyer personas<\/a> using your data.<\/p>\n As you analyze metrics like contact trends and demographics, group your leads by what they have in common.<\/p>\n Then, look closely at these groups to find other similarities.<\/p>\n If you’re an experienced marketer, your target may have changed.<\/p>\n Do you want to target a new group of people or expand your current target market? Do you want to keep the same target audience?<\/p>\n Revisiting your audience parameters by conducting market research each year is crucial to growing your audience. Taking a closer look at your current customer segments<\/a> can also help you refine your personas.<\/p>\n Featured Tool: <\/em><\/strong>Buyer Persona Generator<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Early on, many brands start with blog posts or social media.<\/p>\n If you want to venture into different formats, run a content audit<\/a> to assess your top-performing and lowest-performing content.<\/p>\n If you’ve been in business for a while, you should review your content marketing efforts and last year\u2019s results.<\/p>\n As you review your content, be sure to record page titles, content formats, word counts, and a summary of what your content covers.<\/p>\n This can help you find areas for improvement.<\/p>\n Next, analyze content quality and whether your content reflects what’s most important to your audience.<\/p>\n Then, use that information to inform which direction you take next.<\/p>\n There are many ways to repurpose content.<\/p>\n This strategy can help you optimize your content on multiple channels.<\/p>\n It might mean grabbing your most popular blogs and creating YouTube videos, an ebook, or launching a podcast with that content.<\/p>\n Check out this post for more content-recycling ideas<\/a>.<\/p>\n Another way to approach your audit is to look at your team’s process.<\/p>\n Your content workflow<\/a> impacts how you come up with ideas, what you publish, and the quality of your work.<\/p>\n Do you have a strategic workflow in place, or is your workflow organized around the habits of your team? An audit can help you see blocks and slow-downs that can affect your content long-term.<\/p>\n Whatever stage you’re in, a content audit will help you decide what resonates best with your audience, find gaps in your topic clusters, and process and brainstorm fresh content ideas.<\/p>\n A few vital parts of content management include content creation, content publication, and content analytics.<\/p>\n You want to invest in a CMS to create, manage, and track your content in an easy and sustainable way.<\/p>\n Finding the right CMS for your team may take some time.<\/p>\n First, talk to your team about their current processes to get a sense of the top features you’ll need. Then, start researching the best CMS for your needs with our list of the best CMS<\/a>.<\/p>\n A CMS for a business should be easy to use, customizable, secure, and cost-effective.<\/p>\n With the HubSpot CMS<\/a>, you can plan, produce, publish, and measure your results all in one place.<\/p>\n Another popular CMS is WordPress, to which you can add the HubSpot WordPress plugin<\/a> for free web forms, live chat<\/a>, CRM<\/a> access, email marketing, and analytics.<\/p>\n This list of the best content management systems<\/a> offers a comparison between the tools above and other popular choices.<\/p>\n As you get to know your new CMS, be sure to put a content governance model in place<\/a>. This is a process to manage content creation, publishing, and maintenance.<\/p>\n It helps you make sure that each piece of content aligns with business standards and policies.<\/p>\n As your content presence grows, this model will also help you create processes for updating and removing outdated content.<\/p>\n There are a variety of content options, from written content like ebooks and blog posts to audio content like podcasts.<\/p>\n Great content strategy is a balance of decision-making, data analysis, and risk-taking. Those skills will all be put to the test in this step.<\/p>\n You may need different types of content for different personas and goals.<\/p>\n Take a careful look at your end goals and the actions you want each persona to take. Then, work backward to choose the right kind of content for each goal and user.<\/p>\n For example, say you’re trying to decide between starting a blog or a podcast<\/a>. Blogs tend to be better for conversion, while podcasts are great for building brand awareness.<\/p>\n Your goals and audience should be the deciding factor for which is best for your business.<\/p>\n Use a critical eye when you’re reviewing the resources you have for content production.<\/p>\n Questions like the ones below can help you narrow your focus and create a sustainable content strategy.<\/p>\n Using your personas, choose a set number of high-level topics to focus your content on. You can speed up the process and find relevant ideas with a topic generator<\/a> \u2014 simply type in a keyword and see what pops up, along with insights regarding search volumes to help gauge topic popularity.<\/p>\n Then, using your audience and topic choices, narrow down your chosen content formats and channels.<\/p>\n For example, say your team is launching a video channel, but they don\u2018t have a lot of experience. You might consider creating video shorts.<\/p>\n But if rankings for that topic tend to be long-form videos or podcasts, you\u2019ll want to think about that decision \u2014 do you want to stand out and hope your audience pivots to a new format?<\/p>\n Or should you get help creating the content you think will top the current competitive landscape for your topic?<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve made these big decisions about your content strategy, you\u2019ll be ready to get into the details.<\/p>\n Use your content audit, persona research, and goals to make the best content decisions for your business.<\/p>\n A quick review of this information before brainstorming can help you keep these insights top-of-mind.<\/p>\n Next, it’s time to start brainstorming ideas for your next content project.<\/p>\n Here are some tools to get the juices flowing.<\/p>\n Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n The Feedly RSS feed is a wonderful way to track trending topics in your industry and find content ideas at the same time.<\/p>\n You start by telling the software what topics you’re most interested in, and its AI tool will do the rest.<\/p>\n You won’t need to scour the internet to find new content ideas anymore. Instead, you can go through your curated list, compiled from news sites, newsletters, and social media.<\/p>\n Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Want to discover popular content and content ideas?<\/p>\n This company offers several market research tools, one of which uses social media shares to figure out if a piece of content is popular and well-liked.<\/p>\n This information helps you see which content ideas would do well if you were to create content about them.<\/p>\n Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Get your mind gears going with IMPACT’s blog title generator.<\/p>\n This tool works a bit like Mad Libs, but instead of joke sentences, it shows you common headline formats with blanks where you can fill in the subject you have in mind.<\/p>\n This brainstorming technique helps you put general ideas in contexts that appeal to your target audience. Once you have a headline you like, BlogAbout lets you add it to a notebook so you can save your best ideas.<\/p>\n Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n You can get blog post ideas for an entire year<\/em> with HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator<\/a>.<\/p>\n All you need to do is enter general topics or terms you’d like to write about, and this content idea generator does all the work for you.<\/p>\n This tool analyzes headlines and titles and gives feedback on length, word choice, grammar, and keyword search volume.<\/p>\n If you have an idea in mind, run a few title options through the headline analyzer to see how you could make it stronger.<\/p>\n Source<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n This is a great tool to use when you want to see where you’re at with your website and SEO efforts.<\/p>\n The Website Grader grades you on vital areas of your website performance and sends you a detailed report to help you optimize.<\/p>\n With this tool, you can figure out how to make your website more SEO-friendly and discover areas of improvement.<\/p>\n Brainstorming should be loose and unstructured.<\/p>\n It can be tempting to jump on an idea and start creating content right away. But instead, try to throw out your wildest ideas and see where they lead.<\/p>\n Then, take that list of content ideas and refine them.<\/p>\n To start, break ideas into groups and organize them around your goals, topics, or personas. Then, review each idea in detail and add specifics.<\/p>\n For example, say your topic is AI<\/a>. One of your content ideas might be image generation. You can break this idea down further with content for image-generation tools, text-to-image prompts, or how to edit existing images.<\/p>\n Another way to refine content ideas is to conduct keyword research<\/a>.<\/p>\n You can also define your process for refining ideas in your <\/a><\/p>\n
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Why Marketers Need to Create a Content Marketing Strategy<\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n
1. It aligns the team on goals and objectives.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
2. It guides content creation and distribution.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
3. It optimizes resources.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
4. It improves online visibility.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
5. It builds brand authority and trust.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Content Marketing Strategy Statistics<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Elements of a Content Strategy Plan<\/strong><\/h2>\n
1. Goals and Objectives<\/strong><\/h3>\n
2. Audience Persona<\/strong><\/h3>\n
3. Content Audit and Analysis<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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4. Content Types and Channels<\/strong><\/h3>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
5. Content Creation Process<\/strong><\/h3>\n
<\/p>\n
6. Measurement and Analytics<\/strong><\/h3>\n
7. Content Governance<\/strong><\/h3>\n
What You Need to Create a Content Marketing Strategy<\/strong><\/h2>\n
1. Brand Guidelines<\/strong><\/h3>\n
2. Editorial Calendar<\/strong><\/h3>\n
3. Content Clusters<\/strong><\/h3>\n
4. Marketing Funnels<\/strong><\/h3>\n
5. Competitive Research<\/strong><\/h3>\n
<\/p>\n
1. Define your goal.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Organize goals by priority.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Use the SMART framework to define goals.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
2. Conduct persona research.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Collect data and analyze it to find patterns.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Use your research to refine buyer personas.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
3. Run a content audit.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Find topic and formatting gaps.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Review content for quality and relevance.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Look for repurposing opportunities.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Create a content workflow.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
4. Choose a content management system.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Figure out specific CMS needs.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Choose the right content management system.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Adopt a content governance model.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
5. Determine which types of content you want to create.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Review personas and goals.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Assess your resources.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Choose the right topics, formats, and channels for your content.<\/strong><\/h4>\n
6. Brainstorm content ideas.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
1. Feedly<\/a><\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
2. BuzzSumo<\/a><\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
3. BlogAbout<\/a><\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
4. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer<\/a><\/h4>\n
<\/p>\n
5. HubSpot’s Website Grader<\/a><\/h4>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Refine and rank your ideas.<\/strong><\/h4>\n