Great content strategy is all about being practical and not guessing for successful execution. This is the best way a creative content can flourish. To you help you create great content for your blog, business or client, we have come up with a checklist for a great Content strategy.
What is a valuable content
This checklist is especially useful for digital content writers and digital marketing team. There are 5 main benchmarks that define a great content strategy:
- Findable
- Readable
- Understandable
- Actionable
- Shareable
Findable Content
When you start to create content, remember that no user will have the need to find your content unless you send them directly. Also, even if you send an email, it might be left in the spam folder or unread. Make sure you are also keeping the mind the guidelines for good SEO to increase the chances of getting a successful content. Before heading ahead, we assume you know what keyword research is.
Making content for webpages findable
- There should be just one H1 tag on your page, whereas the H2 tags can be multiple. Html tags help in improving the SERP ranking and also lets the search engine understand what the page is all about. You can also use H3 tags if necessary but they will not benefit your content strategy equally as H1 and H2.
- You must fill up your metadata(title, description, and keyword) according to what your page is all about.
- Include interlinking to other pages of your site as well.
- Do not forget to include alt tags in all your images so that they can appear in the image searches for any user query. Alt tag should be related to your image.
Making video content findable
- The best bet to improve the visibility of your videos is to post them on Youtube or Facebook. With Youtube, the advantage lies that you count the exact number of views on your video.
- Whenever you post your video, try to include your keywords in the title and provide an informative and keyword-rich description for a great content strategy.
Making audio content findable
- Do audio content distribution in different formats such as MP3, WAV, and WIFF, so that it is available to different audiences. There is no point creating a content which some specific user cannot access because of the wrong audio format.
- Write a title and description for your audio file. This information is usually written on the page where the file can be downloaded.
- Use this audio on a relevant content web page where these both compliment each other.
Readable Content
Even if your content strategy is great and the users find your content, is it properly readable to them? This question is largely for the textual content on a page. Read below for some great tips on how you can make your content more readable.
- Remember to include the most important topics of your content on the top. Most of the users tend to look for any important topic towards the beginning of the content.
- Always write in short paragraphs. Try to include not more than 3 sentences in a single paragraph. And also, try not to include more than 3 paragraphs under one heading.
- A great content strategy includes bullets and lists in the content.
Understandable content
When the topic in hand is complex, it can become a hard task to create content that users can easily understand. Read below for some great tips on how can you create an understandable content-
- Choose the right type of content- video, audio, images or text.
- Develop personas for each type of audience and see what type of content complexity can each user understand.
- Always talk about the context of your content. Try to explain even the basic topics to your users. This because of many people of jumping content in between.
- Adopt one single level of reading to each of your projects and stick to it. This reading level can be decided from the user persona and research.
Actionable content
Anybody who creates content wants the users to take some action. It can be contacted for any inquiry or service, signing up for a newsletter or simple buying any service or product. Read below for the best tips on how can you make your content actionable-
- Include a call-to-action
- Give feature to your users to comment or ask any question. For example, let users post a direct comment on your Facebook company page. Also if you are allowing comments on your contact us page, make it easily accessible.
- You can also include links to other content as well on your site so that users can read those as well.
Shareable content
It is pretty obvious that anybody will trust his friends and colleagues more than any brand or business. Then how can you make them share your content with their peer? Read below for the best tips on how can you make your content Shareable-
- Try to instill an emotion in your users with your content. People tend to share something that is more controversial or trendy.
- Explain why should they share your content. Give them a solid reason to do so.
- You can make users share your content by including a line such as “People usually share content with those they think might love it” at the end of each content.
- Make it easy for your users to share your content by including sharing buttons or widgets.