written by
Lisa Van Impe

30 Tactics for a Top-Notch Content Creation Strategy

Content Marketing 11 min read

Did you know that content creation is the task that most B2B content marketers outsource? A whopping 45% of marketing professionals report that their content marketing efforts struggle to strike a chord with their target audience. That's why you need a robust content creation strategy to help you both strategize and implement.

From finding target keywords to outlining a content calendar - a content creation strategy involves a series of crucial steps. In this article, we share 30 tactics to inspire your content creation process.

Table of contents

Why you need a content creation strategy

In the absence of a well-defined strategy, you’ll end up publishing random pieces of content now and then. Worse still, you might post your content at a time when your specific audience is least likely to be active.

The best way to avoid such a situation is to outline a great content strategy framework. It offers a plethora of benefits, such as:

Targeting audience interest, prioritizing organic search, and bringing content collaboration under one roof should all be a key part of your strategy.

It’s time for us to outline a few useful tactics to help you build a content creation strategy that works for your content managers and your writers.

Part I: Performing Content Research

From identifying your target audience to selecting relevant high-volume keywords - gathering audience research insights is at the heart of every successful content marketing strategy. Here are a few tips to help you get started:

1. Use Online Surveys

If you already have an extensive mailing list, you can conduct an online survey to understand your audience better.

2. Leverage Audience Polls on Social Media

Social media polls are particularly useful for understanding your audience’s pain points and aspirations.

content marketing most important business resource poll
Poll reveals Social Media/Marketing as the most critical resource for business development in 2016 | Image via Colonial Life

3. Monitor Blog Comments

Doing this will give you an idea of your readers’ expectations, problems, and needs. It can be very beneficial when developing or tweaking your content creation strategy.

4. Focus on Social Listening

Monitor branded hashtags, and brand name mentions on various social media platforms. Also, keep an eye on the comments section of your social media posts.

5. Use Analytics Tools

Explore Google Analytics and social media analytics for a more in-depth insight into your existing audience's demographic parameters and content marketing metrics.

Tip: How to Build Impressive Analytics Reports for Your Clients in StoryChief

6. Don’t Ignore Keyword Research

From blog posts and social media captions to video content descriptions and Instagram hashtags - keywords will come in handy at every stage of your SEO and content creation strategy. Make sure you identify meaningful and trending keywords in your niche using SEO tools like keyword research tools and keyword gap tools such as:

StoryChief’s AI-driven AI Keyword Generator

7. Define Clear Goals

Using one of the best goal-setting frameworks, the SMART methodology, will help you define smart goals for your brand and content.

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Realistic
  • Time-bound

This will help you create detailed goals and high-quality content.

Part 2: Developing your Content Creation Strategy

You can’t jump right into the process of creating and distributing top-notch content. You need to outline a robust content creation strategy first. Here are a few tips that’ll come in handy at this stage:

8. Brainstorm Content Ideas

Gather your team and start jotting down all content types you think will resonate with your audience. Make sure to browse competitors content. You can also use a tool like AnswerThePublic to find the questions your audience is most likely to about a particular topic. When you've got many ideas, list them in an Excel spreadsheet and start researching each topic.

To ensure content variety, it is important to come up with a sufficient number of different types of content during the brainstorming process. Here are some of the most popular content types:

  1. Videos
  2. Podcasts
  3. Infographics
  4. Memes
  5. Social media posts (tweets, jokes, one-liners, captions)
  6. Animations
  7. White papers
  8. Webinars
  9. Landing pages
  10. Newsletters

9. Perform a Content Audit

Find your best-performing and worst-performing content assets across various channels. Doing this will help you identify the topics, different formats, and distribution channels that are driving maximum traction.

Inside of StoryChief, you can use various filters and searches to find content that needs to be updated. One easy way to find opportunities is to look for posts with low SEO and readability scores. Our SEO and readability optimizer gives you a score for each and tips on how to improve it.

content updates and optimization

10. Outline a Content Calendar

A content calendar outlines your content creation strategy and distribution schedule, so you’ll stay on task and consistent. You’ll find a plethora of content calendar templates online to help with your content creation strategy.

With StoryChief, you can manage your content calendar, create content, publish it, and promote it all in one place.

Tip: The Perfect Content Marketing Calendar Template

11. Create a Content Marketing Playbook

A content marketing playbook (CMP) acts as a quick reference guide that outlines your organization's content marketing best practices. It facilitates collaboration and coordination within your team and makes it easier to train new employees.

12. Leverage a Content Marketing Platform

Marketing managers can simplify their content management process with StoryChief. The content marketing platform enables them to manage various types of marketing content such as blogs, social media posts, podcast scripts, webinar scripts, video scripts, landing pages, and more.

The platform offers many useful features like AI-powered copywriting, SEO optimization, content planning, review management, translations, and multi-channel publication and impact analysis to help you streamline your entire marketing workflow.

Iprov, an agency, switched from using multiple SEO tools and copy-pasting content manually into their CMS to collaborating and publishing from a single dashboard. The team at iProv calls StoryChief "the one-click wonder" because publishing podcast content, social posts, and email workflows are just a click away.

join StoryChief

Part 3: Creating the content

This step is the most anticipated part of content marketing. If you've built a strong content creation strategy, this should be straightforward. Here are a few more effective tips:

13. Set Up Your Blog

If you haven't set up your blog yet, it's high time you get started. You can use a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress or HubSpot to build a lovely blog in a few simple steps. You can also leverage StoryChief on WordPress, Drupal, Webflow, Wix, and many more.

14. Publish Keyword-Rich Content

If you’re writing blog posts, make sure you optimize them using the right keywords. However, avoid over-stuffing your content with irrelevant keywords. Instead, place your keywords in the following sections:

  1. Page title
  2. Meta title
  3. Meta description
  4. Introduction
  5. Heading (H1) and subheadings (H2, H3)
  6. Image alt text
  7. Conclusion

StoryChief’s SEO copywriting tool can help you with the correct keyword insertion in your blog posts too. All you have to do is enter the focus keyword on the platform, and it'll show you what needs to be done! You can try this and many other content marketing features for free for 7 days.

StoryChief’s SEO copywriting in the blog editor

15. Optimize Your Content Structure

No one likes to read a long wall of text. While long-form content performs better, you need to make it readable and scannable. Use short sentences and paragraphs. Also, divide your content into individual sections using meaningful subheadings.

With StoryChief, you can optimize your blog for both readability and SEO by following specific instructions based on your unique content.

16. Write Compelling Headlines

Use a crisp, snappy, and eye-catching headline that piques the readers’ curiosity and creates a sense of urgency.

AI can easily come up with more (and often better) headlines faster than a human writer can. Here is an example of headlines created by AI Power Mode on the topic ‘AI in content creation’:

- The Future of Content: How AI is Revolutionizing Creation
- Unlocking Creativity: Exploring the Role of AI in Content Production
- From Algorithms to Art: How AI Technology is Transforming Content Creation
- Writing with the Machines: The Rising Influence of AI in Content Generation
- The Power of AI: Enhancing Content Creation through Artificial Intelligence

17. Use New Content Types and Formats

Apart from blog posts, you should also consider using other content formats such as:

  1. Videos
  2. Podcasts
  3. Infographics
  4. Memes
  5. Social media posts (tweets, jokes, one-liners, captions)
  6. Animations
  7. White papers
  8. Webinars
  9. Landing pages
  10. Newsletters

The final selection of content formats depends on your target audience, marketing objectives, and budget. Also, it depends on the distribution channels you plan to use to reach your audience. You can create blog posts for different types of content, such as podcasts and videos, and promote them from your blog, so you boost organic web traffic and drive visitors further down the sales funnel.

Tired of juggling multiple tools for content marketing? Join 5,000 marketers who manage website content, social posts, videos, webinars, podcasts, and whitepapers - all from one central content marketing calendar.

18. Use Awesome Images

Make your blog posts more valuable and enriching by including relevant, high-quality images, illustrations, and infographics. We have a media library, full of all of your previously used content (so you can add images from old blog posts). Plus, we integrate directly with Unsplash for free access to high-quality stock images.

media library for re-using images

19. Include a CTA

Whether you’re publishing a blog post or a YouTube video, make sure it includes a compelling call to action. Here are a few examples of attractive CTAs you can use:

Call to action examples - content creation strategy

20. Publish Case Studies and Checklists

Publishing case studies is an excellent way part of a content creation strategy to build credibility, authority, and trust. List your client's problems and highlight how your products/services helped resolve their issues.

On the other hand, checklists can be a simple compilation of useful tips, tricks, and hacks presented in a downloadable format. You can use them as a lead magnet to build your mailing list.

Content Writing Checklist
Content Writing Checklist by StoryChief

21. Optimize and Repurpose Existing Content

Update existing blog posts to ensure that they continue to be relevant and drive traffic. Likewise, you need to check whether the keywords they're ranking for are still relevant to your goals and brand.

It's a good time to repurpose your blog posts into more engaging formats such as infographics and SlideShare presentations. You can even turn a podcast episode into an insightful blog post and further repurpose it as an animation.

22. Curate Relevant Content

Keep an eye on the trending and popular content in your niche. Get creative and think of ways to incorporate trending content on your blog or social media profiles.

23. Host Interviews & Webinars

Interview relevant influencers and industry thought leaders on your podcast. Repurpose it as a blog post or even YouTube videos. Share snippets on social media to garner tractions.

On the other hand, webinars help you interact with your audience and better understand their needs. You can even use them to influence purchase decisions.

Webinars as a content creation strategy

Tip: Try StoryChief to collaborate with your team on webinar scripts, and distribute the content multi-channel with just a few clicks.

24. Leverage Guest Posting

Do you want to breathe new life into your content creation strategy? Consider inviting a renowned writer in your niche to contribute to your blog.

Tip: Become a guest blogger and reach more than 20,000 marketers

25. Try Newsjacking

Watch out for the latest industry trends and news and try to piggyback on relevant news. It's a great way to make your content viral.

26. Harness the Power of User-Generated Content

Publish client testimonials and user reviews on your website and social media profiles to build reputation and trust. You can even reward customers for uploading pictures or videos featuring your products on their social media profiles.

27. Use a Project Management Tool

A project management tool is instrumental in helping your team monitor the progress of each content asset. That, in turn, ensures that every content piece has been revised and edited before the scheduled date of publishing.

Part 4: Tactics for Effective Content Distribution

A great content creation strategy is of no use unless it reaches the right people at the right time. Here are a few tips to distribute and promote your content:

28. Use the Right Channels at the Right Time

The key to efficient content distribution is to ensure that you share it on your audience's most preferred channels. Also, make sure you select the most appropriate channels for each step of the buyer's journey. Here's a simple guide to help you:

buyer's journey for content creation strategy

Timing is everything. Use website and social media analytics to determine when your audience is most likely to be active on various distribution channels.

29. Leverage Social Media

Irrespective of your product and niche, your potential customers likely already use one or more social media platforms. Ensure you identify the right content formats into your content creation strategy and publishing times of each social media channel for maximum traction. Using a social media tool can help you determine the best times to post for each channel.

30. Don’t Ignore Emails

Emails are beneficial for nurturing active leads and building a long-term relationship with your existing customers. Make sure you reward your email list subscribers with unique content in the form of:

  • Newsletters
  • Insider tips
  • Free trials and demos
  • Early access to new products
  • Free resources such as e-books, tools, guides, et cetera
Highlighted resources in newsletter

Conclusion

It's impractical to execute an inbound marketing campaign without outlining a robust content creation strategy in today's day and age. Start by identifying your target audience and focus keywords. Next, create a content calendar outlining the content creation and distribution schedule.

When it comes to creating content, the key takeaway is to use various formats that will connect with your audience and communicate your brand story. Also, it’s essential to repurpose your existing content and share user-generated content. Lastly, don’t forget to promote your content across the right distribution channels.

Pro tip: You can use StoryChief to do all this: Brief your writers, write content, optimize for SEO, and distribute your story, all in one place. Get started free today.