Content Marketing Strategy

Who this is for

Anyone standing up a content programme from scratch — 11 tasks from audience research through to measurement. It's aimed at the stage before you have a publishing habit, when the temptation is to start writing immediately and work out the strategy later.

Audience before topics, topics before calendar

The first tasks exist to stop you producing content that's about your product rather than about your reader's problem. Those two things overlap less than most teams assume, and the gap is why so many company blogs get traffic that never converts and conversions that never came from the blog.

Do the keyword and topic research properly. It's the difference between publishing into a search demand that exists and publishing into one you imagined.

Cadence beats volume

The scheduling task is the one that determines whether this works. One piece a fortnight, sustained for a year, outperforms eight pieces in a burst followed by silence — for search, for subscribers, and for your own ability to tell what's working. Pick a rate you can hold on your worst month, not your best one.

Distribution is not optional

Publishing is the middle of the job. The distribution tasks — repurposing, outreach, internal linking, email — routinely deliver more reach than the writing did, and they're the ones that get dropped when the week gets busy. If you only have capacity for one thing, write less and distribute more.

Timing

Run this as a rolling quarter. Add due dates for the production tasks if you're working with freelance writers; leave them off if you're the only one publishing.