Design your content with your target audience in mind - a content strategy is the basis for content production

Often, when the content production boom hits, the organisation has a great enthusiasm to both rapidly establish new channels and rustle up content without thinking about the longer drama arc. It's true that planning takes work, time and thought, but with a content strategy in place, content production will deliver results, not just become a random Facebook post, and won't stop after initial interest.

Content strategy is the starting point for all content production and content marketing, derived from the organisation's strategy and communications strategy. It's like a goal-oriented plan for how the organisation will address and engage with its audience across channels, and how content will be produced in a way that supports the business.

1. Define your target groups and refine your buyer personas

It is vital for an organisation to know its target audiences and the buyer personas behind them, i.e. the precise descriptions of the people who represent the target audience. Who are we talking to through content? The same content will not appeal to everyone, so targeting must be kept in mind at all times.

Once the target groups and their order of priority have been defined, it is worth going very practical with the buyer personas and building real people from the personas. How old is the buyer, where does he/she live, what is the person's hobby, what kind of work does he/she do, what motivates him/her and what does he/she think and feel? What are the buyer's problems and needs that they are looking for solutions to?

2. Outline the purchase and content path

The next step is to think about the buying paths of the target groups, because the potential customer's journey to becoming a buyer always starts with the awareness of the need and ends with the decision to buy, after which the customer should be kept on the journey.

When defining the content path through the buying path, always consider at which stage of the process the content serves the person making the content. Is it trying to generate interest, build awareness and provide a solution to a problem? Or is the content intended to capture the interest and persuade a buyer who has already reached the consideration stage, or to keep an existing buyer happy and continue the relationship?

3. Define the channels of communication

It is then time to consider where your target audiences spend their time, where they are most effectively reached and where they look for information. Existing communication channels that just exist and buzz around in a void serve no one, so each channel must have a clear role and meaning. It is also worth considering the characteristics of the different channels: what they are suited to and what format the content needs to be in. As the aim is also to maximise the reach and consumption of content, it is important to plan the distribution of content carefully.

New communication channels are also emerging at a rapid pace and the characteristics of existing channels are changing. It's good to stay aware of trends, but it's not worth going into new channels just assuming that everyone else is there. Is our target audience spending time on this channel?

4. Design the content and its rhythm yourself

Now we come to the design of the content itself. However, a content strategy is not the same as a content calendar or a publishing plan, but focuses on thinking about content themes at the top level, why a certain type of content is published and how it will help target audiences.

The next step is to create separate content calendars and publishing plans for the channels in use. The content calendar or publishing plan will show what content will be published on each channel, in what format, when it will be published and the budget available for, for example, advertising the content.

5. Set targets and indicators

As a content strategy is an enabler for long-term content production, targets and metrics must be set for the effectiveness of the content. Only then can the strategy's performance be reviewed at regular intervals and any necessary changes made. Objectives are defined before indicators, so that indicators can be used to monitor the achievement of objectives. Objectives and metrics can relate to issues such as visibility, content consumption and engagement, content consumer activation, conversion and sales.