Content strategy.

Why a strategy, if you can just publish

Without a strategy, content comes out as an afterthought: an idea came up — you wrote it; it didn't — you skipped a week. The pieces are unconnected, topics repeat, and there is no answer to the question “what did this achieve”.

A content strategy answers four questions: why we are doing this, for whom, about what and how we will know it worked. Once the answers are written down, the main pain disappears — the daily “what shall we post today”. The topic comes from the plan rather than being invented an hour before publishing.

The second effect is accumulation. Pieces gathered around one subject reinforce each other: they get found in search, they get linked to, they keep the reader longer. Scattered posts do not work that way.

Step one: the goal

The goal is stated specifically and verifiably. “Raise awareness” is not a goal, because it is unclear when to consider it achieved. “Get enquiries from the blog”, “reduce the load on managers with pieces that answer frequent questions”, “bring search traffic on questions about choosing” — these are goals that make it clear what to do.

There should not be many goals. One main goal and one or two supporting ones is enough to keep the content from being pulled in different directions. If the goal is sales, a feed of entertaining posts will not lead to it, however much reach it gathers.

Step two: the audience and its questions

Valuable content solves clients' problems rather than restating the company's merits. To understand what those problems are, you do not need research — you need to look where they are already written down.

• Correspondence with clients and questions to managers — the most accurate source of topics.
• Search queries on your subject: what people ask and in what words.
• Comments and reviews, including those of competitors: they show what people found lacking.
• Objections at the sales stage — each of them turns into a separate piece.

Out of this set comes a list of topics for several months ahead — and topics that someone definitely needs.

Step three: topics and formats

Topics are conveniently arranged by stage: the person does not yet understand what their problem is; they understand it but are choosing a solution; they are choosing a provider. Each stage needs its own material, and most often the skew is towards the last one — companies write only about themselves and their services.

Formats are chosen to fit the topic, not the other way round. A how-to is easier to read as text, a comparison of options as a list, a process as video, a short takeaway as a post in a channel. The same material is often worth releasing in two formats: a full article on the website and a short summary on social media.

A useful rule: every topic should have one main piece that all the others link to. That way the blog does not turn into a set of similar articles competing with each other.

Step four: the publishing calendar

The calendar is the most practical part of the strategy. It is a table where each date has a topic, a format, a platform and an owner. It is convenient to plan a month ahead and review once a month.

Choose the frequency by your real capacity. A schedule you can keep is more useful than an ambitious plan that collapses in week three. Regularity matters more than volume here: the audience gets used to the rhythm, and search engines value sections that are updated consistently.

Seasonality and industry events are built into the calendar in advance — pieces for them are prepared not on the last day but two to three weeks ahead.

Step five: what counts as success

You need to measure what is tied to the goal. If the goal is enquiries, look at clicks from the pieces to service pages and at enquiries. If the goal is to reduce the load on managers, count how many times an article was sent to a client instead of explaining by hand.

The universal minimum for a blog: traffic sources, the most visited pieces, scroll depth, clicks through to services. For social media — reach, saves, comments, clicks to the website.

Conclusions are drawn from a series, not from a single post. After two or three months it becomes clear which topics and formats deliver results — and the next period is built around them rather than around what is more familiar to write.

Frequently asked questions

Where to start if resources are very limited?

With the five most frequent client questions. Five good pieces you can link to in correspondence are more useful than twenty random posts.

How often should the strategy be reviewed?

The calendar monthly, the goals and topics once a quarter. More often makes no sense: content does not show results immediately.

Do you have to run a blog and social media at the same time?

No. But the combination works better: full-length pieces live on the website and bring search traffic, while social media gives them their first readers.

What if you run out of topics?

Then the list was compiled from your own head rather than from clients' questions. Go back to the correspondence and comments — there are always more topics there than time for them.

What to do next

Set up a spreadsheet and write down the twenty questions you are asked most often. Put a format and a month against each. That is already a working content strategy — from there it only needs refining based on results.

We put together content plans and run publishing — that is SMM. Next, you may find useful our pieces on how to write engaging content and how to choose keywords.