Developing a Content Strategy (Example)

So recently, we've started working with a new client from quite a complex edtech niche.

I wanted to show you how I developed their content strategy from scratch, and I wanted to break down the process step by step, so you might use it for your product, too.

So the first and probably the most important step is the two sessions that we host for every new client that joins us.

the first session is focused mostly on the audience, and the people involved in the buying process, or something you would call a buying committee.

in B2B products you, usually there are more than one person involved in the buying process.

There are people who influence the upper management, there are people who actually pay, so the decision makers, So if you have a complex B2B product, usually you are targeting more than one person.

And each of those roles involved in the buying process have different goals, have different aspirations, different frustrations.

So we gotta uncover them to make sure that we target the entire buying comedy, with our content.

The second session is all about the product, all about the, founder, and all about the team.

In this particular case, we will be publishing LinkedIn content on the founder's account plus their corporate page.

So we gotta make sure to uncover how the founder describes his journey, how did he find himself, building this product in the first place, and things like that.

But also during this session, I'm listening carefully to how the team naturally describes the product how do they describe their approach to solving their customers problems?

This is where I love talking to the product team.

They usually have the best insights, plus the sales team who is actually, out there on the field selling the product.

the goal of this is to reveal the language patterns that they use and to utilize them later in the content this makes sure that the content feels theirs.

I try to fit in to the company every time someone joins, storyangled, we want to fit in their company as seamlessly, as as possible to make sure the content seems authentic and not, you know, just developed by a content agency.

So this session is for that.

This session makes sure that the content doesn't sound generic or like a ghost writer, wrote it.

Now that I know all about the product and about the audience, I want to see what the competition is doing.

So there are four steps here.

The first one is analyzing the formats, so which ones perform, which ones are underutilized.

The second step is identifying gaps.

So I want to see what the competition is not saying or they're not saying it enough so I can use it and I can position my content in a way that is unique, novel, that sparks conversations.

The third step, is message mapping.

So I want to see how they are describing the customer's problems, what they are saying to entice, action, things like that, to understand how accurate it is, how good it is and how we can make it better.

And the last step is content audience fit.

So basically all of those three steps constitute the content audience fit.

So I want to, find the perfect intersection between our product's unique approach, and the audience's needs Here begins a more traditional approach to finding content ideas.

So the keyword research, but with an exception that I am not just doing a traditional keyword research because it's kind of dead.

of course it's useful to understand some high level insights.

But the two things that I'm focusing on more here is question based keywords and long tail phrases.

These to make sure that the content not only ranks well for very specific keywords, but also gets scraped by AI and is used by the AI responses because people are searching things in ChatGPT and all the other AIs increasingly more.

So we gotta make sure to optimize the content for that.

We're almost ready.

We have one more thing to do to make sure that the content that we're going to produce for the company is not all over the place.

we should have a North Star for all our content.

And this step is all about it.

So we have the customer voice analysis, we have the competitive positioning audit.

We have developed all the keyword research, everything.

We gotta make sure to define our why.

So this is where the positioning work starts.

We try to define one sentence that captures the essence of the unique approach to content.

let me show you a couple of examples So we have three examples here from my current clients.

The first one is a auto dealership consultancy business.

and they have a very unique method of solving their customers problems, which basically helps their clients uncover their first problems in a couple of minutes.

so the positioning statement is fixed profit leaks in your dealership in minutes, not months.

the second company, which is a SaaS MVP digital product agency, that helps non technical SaaS founders build their products.

the positioning statement is simple.

We make your SaaS idea happen.

And the third company which develops data analytics and process automation for manufacturing companies.

here the positioning statement is quite hidden because we needed to clarify the first.

This is such a complex niche, we needed to make it very clear what the company does.

we kind of hit the positioning statement a little bit lower.

we build BI systems that survive us, not just impress on demo day.

So as you can see, all of those sentences capture the essence of what the company does and not only what it does, but also what it makes happen for the customers.

Lastly, we have the first formats development and refinement.

So of course, even after the most intricate research, we have to write the first couple of blog posts, the first couple of social posts, and go back and forth to understand the brand's tone of voice.

Not only understand it but also sometimes develop it from the very beginning.

So we gotta make sure to go through a couple of iterations of the first content formats that we produce.

what it helps us do for the company and for us as well is to develop the brand vocabulary.

So we gather all the terms, the phrases that we use to make the brand instantly recognizable.

by repeating them, in the posts, we kind of build this image in our customers heads that we are the company for xyz.