We believe knowledge and ideas should be shared often. That's how we, together, transform the way the world does business. Now that you've learned how to create a content strategy, what advice would you give to someone looking to get started?
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Always be around your DOT of purpose. Keep playing around that. Everything will keep flowing in to suggest you the next best move. How you do it pivoting that dot to achieve success becomes the blueprint of strategy for others.
Creating a focused scope for your team in terms of content creation is so important especially for small businesses/teams. Content never has to be 100% done and final. For something like guides, prioritize a few topics and keywords and just begin creating. You'll continue to add 1 or 2 more sections over time as you target more keywords, learn from customers, and grow the business.
Content marketing cannot be practiced as per other's experience. Follow HubSpot's theory and build a tailored framework around it. The more you practice and get into details the more you understand what's working for you and your organization. Hubspot's framework is a great source for building a foundation for your company's content marketing strategy.
@Abhishikha Couldn't agree more that the more you get into the details in your practice, the more you're learn. Glad you're finding value in HubSpot's teachings. 🙂
My biggest content creation tip is to work backward. Figure out what the main point or message is that you want to convey. It is super important that each piece of content only has one message and one call to action. This way the audience will not get confused when consuming the content.
After you have established what your main point will be, only include information relevant to that message. This way the audience will not get lost with lots of extra words that make no sense. Clarity is key when conveying messages. Simplifying the call to action to increase engagement rate as well. For example, if you asked the audience to click on the link and subscribe to your emails, watch a video, and then share the link with friends, they might get confused and only do one of those things.
Have one piece of content, with one call to action.
- If you wouldn't share it yourself, or have your friends read it, think about why. Usually a sign that you're not proud of what you're putting out there and that it might not be authentic or interesting.
- For the first draft, think of a novel idea.
Novel ideas are:
Counter-intuitive Counter-narrative Shock and awe Elegant articulations Make someone "feel seen" Add the following in the second draft:
Stories Analogies Examples
- I ask people to leave feedback by highlighting every sentence that gives them a dopamine hit. These are the moments of novelty where they remark: "Ahh, that's interesting." For each hit, I increase a counter at the end of the corresponding sentence. Like this (3). After several people have left feedback, I look for long stretches without dopamine hits. Then I rewrite those sections to be more concise—or I inject more novelty (insights and surprises) into them. I rinse and repeat until the article has a steady cadence of dopamine hits.
Some strategy tips:
- Organic is the only channel that compounds. Effort today will reliably result in more traffic next week, next month, next year, and years after that. Compare that to a social channel like Twitter, where the half-life of a post might be as little as 18 minutes. - Movement-first vs distribution-next: Shift to a distribution-next strategy before the momentum of movement-first runs out. Ideally, you create a few pages built for organic search early on. Drive plenty of internal links to these resources and start building external links as well.
Wow @abbyfromcord! I wish I could upvote this multiple times and make sure everyone can check out some of the amazing advice your just layed out! What a thoughtful process for incorporating a steady cadence of 'dopamine hits' throughout your content. Also couldn't agree more about organic have an edge over other channels as it compound results over time. Thanks for sharing 😊.
Mentor and help - I'm a firm believer in helping others and mentoring. This helps with a content strategy because it creates positive relationships where people feel comfortable sharing ideas that normally they might stay quiet about - new is good, more new ideas to work with the better your strategy can be.
Love this advice. I'm a huge fan of mentorship as well, but never thought about how it can contribute to improving your content strategy as well. Thanks for sharing @SRobb !
Good point @SRobb. Making it easy and fun for people to collaborate with you can lead to more creative projects for people to work on. Not to mention building relationships across teams.