Why do you write articles or blog posts on your website? What is your goal? How do you set up a content strategy that generates traffic to your website? This post will discuss developing a robust content strategy and how Progress Planner can help you succeed.
This guide covers the essentials of content ideation, planning, creation, and maintenance, with practical tips on leveraging Progress Planner features for optimal results.
Why are you writing?
What is the goal of your website?
Start with your why. Why have you built your website? Why do you want people to visit your site? Is it to inform them about your company, encourage them to purchase your products or have them come visit your physical store? The answer to these questions form the goal of your website.
Your content strategy should align with your website’s goal. If you publish articles online, you’re seeking an audience and want your articles to be read. Thinking about your website’s goal is the first step in a content strategy.
The goal of your articles?
Once you’ve determined the goal of your website, it will be relatively easy to decide on the goal of why you are writing. If you want to inform people or make them aware of your company or products, your articles will aim to inform or enhance brand awareness.
For most people, the goal of your blog posts or articles is to attract visitors to your website. Your writing could be (part of an) SEO strategy. You could also be trying to attract visitors via social media and advertising and your articles or blog posts could very well be what you’re promoting.
Make sure that you understand your website’s goal and the reason you are writing content.
Adapt to your audience
To write content that resonates with your audience, you’ll need to do some research. Who are the people you want to reach? And where could you find them? What kind of content will they enjoy? You should do some research and adapt your content strategy accordingly. Setting up a proper content strategy requires (at least) two types of research: Keyword research and audience research. Let’s explore the both of them.
Keyword research
Understanding the words your audience uses while searching on Google (or in other search engines) is essential. What are they looking for, which terms do they use, and what angle are they taking? What are the problems your audience is experiencing that they need help with?
If you want to know more about keyword research, I highly recommend Yoast’s blog and Yoast Academy. You’ll find a lot of resources there on how to set up keyword research properly. If you don’t have time to do a thorough analysis, at least check out Google trends and determine whether or not you are using terms that actually drive search traffic.
Audience research
Next to keyword research, you need to understand who will be reading your content. What do you know about them? What kind of content will they enjoy? And what is their level of knowledge?
You can do audience research in different ways. Do surveys on your website where you ask people what they enjoy reading, for instance. You could also do a survey via your newsletter. Perhaps you encounter members of your audience in person from time to time. Talking to them about your website could help you to understand further what content they would enjoy. Check out the comments to any blog posts you may have written or check the internal search function of your website to see what kind of search queries your audience uses. These kinds of analyses (albeit small) will greatly help you understand your audience!
Adapting your content strategy according to your research results
Once you understand what type of content your audience likes and the search terms they use, apply that knowledge to your content creation process. Adapt the style and tone of your articles to fit your audience. For example, if your audience is educated and very knowledgeable about what you’re writing, you can pull off a more difficult text with more jargon. If your audience is younger or less experienced (maybe even consisting of children), keep your language simple and accessible.
An audience is never a homogenous group of people. If you know that there are distinct and different types of people within your audience, you can use personalization to address them individually. For example, show returning visitors different texts or calls to action than first-time visitors. Check out PersonalizeWP for more information on how you can do that!
Planning
Once you have a good idea of why you are writing and what your audience looks like, you need to set up a plan. How often are you going to write? And what topics are you going to tackle first?
Make sure to craft a long list of potential topics you want to write about! And make space in your calendar. If you want your content strategy to succeed, you must ensure you have time to work on your content. Perhaps you have some room every Thursday afternoon? Block that time in your calendar to work on your articles.
Progress Planner can help here. Use it to draft a to-do list right there in your backend. Before you start working on your articles, think about what you need to do. Once you’ve finished, check out that to-do list again and make sure to add things that need work.
Creating
Writing content is a lot of work, especially if thorough research is required before writing your article. Perhaps you’re suffering from writer’s block or procrastination occasionally. The best advice I can give you in the creation process is just to start writing. Don’t expect perfection; just try to get in the flow. Perhaps start with articles and paragraphs that are easiest or most fun to write. Reward yourself after you’re done.
Need more tips? Check out my article about writing a fantastic blog post or my post about overcoming procrastination.
Maintenance
Your content strategy doesn’t stop after you hit publish—in fact, it actually never stops. You need to update your content regularly to keep it relevant. Nobody likes outdated content. People don’t like it and Google doesn’t like it.
Make sure to revise your content regularly, especially content that is prone to change. Not every page on your website needs to be updated as often. If you want to know more about the frequency of updating, check out my article.
We’re currently working on a new set of features in Progress Planner to help you maintain your content. Soon, we’ll be able to send you reminders about when to update your content and help you determine the type of content you should create for specific pages. This is a work in progress, so stay tuned!
Content strategy will never be easy
We’re developing a tool that hopefully will make the process of setting up and maintaining a content strategy a little bit easier for you. But it is never going to be simple. Writing content -even with AI’s help- will always be hard. You’ll always have to research properly to determine what topics and styles resonate most with your audience. You’ll always have to make sure that your content remains relevant and up to date. And you’ll always have to put in some work to create an excellent website. But you can do it! Go and make progress!