What Freelance Writers Want to Know About Content Strategy
Are you a freelance writer? Are you bored writing formulaic blog content?
If you’re like a lot of writers, you’re curious about the content strategy side of things. What does it mean to plan a content strategy, and how can you expand your skillset to flex your brain and sell bigger packages?
If you think content strategy could be the ticket, you’re right.
A Content Marketing Institute study found 33% of companies with a content strategy aren’t documenting it! Another 27% have no strategy at all.
These are opportunities!
What IS a Content Strategy?
You can think of it like planning a trip. You wouldn’t just throw some clothes in a suitcase and head out. You’ll have a destination. Will it be warm? Cold? City? Beach? Will you fly? Will you drive? Will you ride your bike?
When you know your planned destination, you know what clothes to pack and how you’ll get there.
Your content strategy is the same.
Plan your content strategy
· Who’s your target audience?
· What questions do they have? What do they already know? What content do you ALREADY have that you want to repurpose or plan a campaign around?
· What are your goals? 10 new inquiries a month? Podcast invitations? Becoming a recognized authority?
Once you’ve answered those questions, you can draft a list of topics your audience cares about. You can plan a topic cluster that centers around the intersection of their concerns and your product/service.
What Subject Matter Experts (SME) can you access for quotes? Who’s going to write your content? If you’re a freelance writer, you might raise your hand here.
How can you make your content different from what’s already published on the topic? We’re past the point of “borrowing” liberally from the same top Page 1 resources. That SEO tactic worked in 2017 and now doesn’t work.
Google’s pushing E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust.) It’s another way to promote interesting and valuable content.
Here are a few ways you can discover new content ideas:
· Have a sales team? Ask them about the top questions, concerns, and complaints.
· SEO keywords are a useful guideline, but they’re not gospel. Which terms have the most likely buyer intent? Which ones are high-level 101 types of content? Who’s your buyer, and what are your goals? Your answers will help you determine what to publish.
· Troll forums — Reddit, Quora, Review sites, where does your audience hang out, and what are they saying about you?
You’ve Published, Now What?
Too many great pieces of content wither away on page 57, never to be seen by the people who want to read it if they only knew it existed.
Where will you publish it? How will you repurpose it? For example, if you publish a high-value blog post, repurpose that puppy! Pull out key quotes or interesting bits to reshare on the social channels where your audience spends time.
Reshare and republish in a week/month. Don’t “assume” that because you published it once your audience saw it. Social moves fast. Update your content best performing regularly and redistribute it.
How Do You Measure Content Performance?
I asked this question on Twitter and LinkedIn and got a range of answers. Those answers go back to your initial goals.
· Google Search Console for organic search
· Hubspot for conversions
· Looker studio (I’d never heard of this one!)
· A course from Jimmy Daly’s Superpath on measurement
· Even a link to Google Sheets for marketers tool.
There’s no shortage of measurement tools. The key is to pick one thing you have access to and make it a habit to look at the numbers.
Then, when you see a spike in traffic when you publish zyx, you can analyze it for clues on whether it was a fluke, got picked up by big(ger) media, or struck a nerve with the topic or timing.
You can redistribute the piece again to attract more eyeballs. In a month or six, you can revisit the piece and see if you can update it with a new perspective or new information.
As you can see, planning and measurement are essential ingredients of any content strategy. If you like digging into data, this could be a great fit for you. You could create a process around it and sell content marketing packages.
How to “Containerize” Your Services and Charge More | by Jen Phillips April | Jan, 2023 | Medium
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