Originally published October 15, 2021 , updated on August 29, 2024

Almost every business that’s serious about scaling has looked into content marketing and how it can help their business. The latest content marketing trends have shown there is an increased need to create a content writing strategy. 

Content marketing is nothing without a strategy. You could even go as far as saying that content marketing efforts are all for naught if they lack a sound writing or distribution strategy. 

Below we detail some of the ways in which strategising your content can help your business in the long run. 

A Strategy Helps You Define Your Audience

In order to create a content marketing strategy of any sort, you will need to know exactly who your audience is. Anyone trying to create a content writing strategy will be forced to first consider who it is they’re writing for. This makes defining your audience the first step towards creating a successful strategy for your content.

For the sake of ensuring clarity, it’s useful to create customer/buyer personas during this step. There are plenty of articles that can guide you in creating buyer personas, but a good starting point is to ask the right questions. Who is your desired audience? What work do they do? What media do they consume? How much money do they earn? How old are they? What are their after-work and weekend hobbies? 

Answering these questions will not only dictate what type of content you write but also where it goes. There’s a lot that hangs on defining your audience. It could be the most important part of nailing down your strategy, so be sure to add it to your to-do list. 

A Content Writing Strategy Will Help With Work Distribution

Nobody likes to be overloaded with impending deadlines and excessive amounts of work. Having a writing strategy will help to ensure that work is evenly distributed amongst your team. It will also help with assigning topics to certain writers. 

Perhaps one of your team members is an SEO content copywriter. They may be better at writing about SaaS companies than they are at writing about finance. Having a content writing strategy will ensure that team members are assigned work that’s in their wheelhouse. This is all because it’s thought out ahead of time, so there’ll be no last-minute scrambling.

Having a strategy is a way for team members to know what’s coming up, what they need to plan for, and how to best manage their time. No one likes having work added to their pile at the very last minute. A strategy will ensure that there’s little room for this to happen. 

Strategies Keep Everyone on Track

A well-planned, well-thought-out strategy will keep everyone on the right path. No strategy means that nobody knows where they are going, what they should be doing, or how to go about it. It can lead to copious amounts of confusion, missed deadlines, and missed opportunities. 

A strategy clearly communicates the goals and vision of a content campaign. Without it, everyone is just shooting in the dark. But having a clear strategy provides goalposts for people to aim for, and that makes scoring that much easier. 

A Fully-Formed Strategy Allows for Forward-Planning

We touched on this a bit in a previous point, but creating a content plan gives people time to plan. With a fully formed strategy, the team is aware of the objectives and what it takes to get there. By knowing this, they can manage their time and workload accordingly.

It also allows for other details to be added to the plan, ensuring optimal organisation. If you have a writing strategy, it gives the social media team an idea of what to post and when. This helps campaign teams to visualise tasks and prepare for them as they approach the launch of each post. The additional space may even inspire your team to develop other initiatives within the campaign, like SEO optimised content writing. 

A Strategy Will Highlight Areas for Improvement 

Much like the audience analysis, a SWOT analysis should be done before coming up with a content strategy. You need to know where your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats lie. 

Perhaps out of all of these, the weaknesses section is of utmost importance. This will expose the areas which need of improvement. Perhaps you find that you need more SEO content, or that your social media posts are a bit too wordy. Knowing these things will determine the direction that you go in from here on out. 

What’s the Downfall of Not Having a Content Writing Strategy? 

When you fail to create a strategy for content or other important aspects of your business, you might find yourself a bit lost. With no clear idea of where you want to go and how to get there, it’s far too easy to venture down the wrong path, or worse – to stay stagnant. 

If you fail to plan, you run the risk of losing out on key content opportunities. For example, an e-commerce business is would benefit from creating pieces that relate to Cyber Monday – the big online shopping day after Black Friday. A carefully considered strategy would make use of this opportunity by ensuring some posts relate to the occasion as it draws closer to the time. 

Where to From Here? 

Now that we’ve convinced you that you need a content writing plan, you may be wondering where to go from here. We’ve got that covered, too. 

Once you’ve decided to go ahead with creating your plan and everything that goes with it, there are some immediate next steps to consider. You can allocate this task to an internal team or person. Or you could hire a content marketing and strategy agency to assist. Whichever one you decide to go with, ensure that they have a clear brief of what your expectations are. You can collaborate with professionals to come up with this brief. But before the project officially begins, be sure that contributors have it down in writing. This will ensure a smooth process going forward. 

Once you’ve assigned a team to the task of coming up with a strategy, set deadlines together and then allow them to get on with it. While arranging regular check-ins is important, be careful not to micromanage your strategising team. This can hinder creativity, which is hugely important when it comes to ideating for a strategy. 

Now you know why a content writing strategy is a key to the success of any marketing endeavor. You will need to ensure that you get it right if you wish to meet your marketing and business objectives. A bad strategy can damage your business, while a good one sets a strong foundation for future growth. With the world being more online than ever before, now is the perfect time to polish your strategy and written content. 

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