A Quick-Start Guide To Content Strategy

You’ve probably heard the term “content strategy” getting thrown around more than ever lately, but what actually is it? Here at Parallax, we get asked this a lot.

The general definition of a content strategy is that it’s the planning of content creation, organisation of responsibilities and deadlines, and the tracking of the whole campaign. It’s all about developing an action plan that helps to achieve your business objectives and using content as an asset to assure you get there.

Why is a content strategy so important?

A content strategy is essential. A well defined content strategy is something that every digital agency should create to help clients stay visible online, target consumers more effectively and create a voice for brands. The strategy can then help create quality content, both on and off-site, reaching the right people at the right time.

Let’s go

If your digital agency been given the opportunity to create a new website for a client, you’ll need to start looking at their existing website and content.

We’ve put together a quick guide to content strategy for digital agencies. This is by no means a guide to a complete content audit or inventory, but just a few things to take a look at prior to an initial meeting or when writing a proposal.

Start with the Homepage

The homepage is the one of the first places that a potential customer will land when interacting with a brand. Getting it right is an absolute necessity – if it’s a poor experience for a user, and they can’t quickly find what they’re looking for, it’ll lead to abandonment.

Here are some questions to ask when looking at a client’s existing homepage –

First Impressions

• What are your first impressions?
• What message does the website seem to be giving to you?
• Do you feel like you should be able to click the links? Is it obvious enough?

How is it written?

• Is it written clearly?
• Is the spelling and grammar correct?
• Does it feel like a human is speaking to you or is it ripped straight from an internal marketing PDF?

The Layout

• What is the text to image ratio like? Is there too little information making it difficult to know what the business is about? Are you hit with a wall of complicated text that’s impossible to digest?
• Do the sections relate to each other and flow, or does it feel like a poorly stitched together piece of nonsense?

Dig Deeper

So you’ve made a few notes about the homepage, it’s time to investigate a few more areas of the website.

• What’s the main navigation experience like? Does it take you where you need to go easily or are you presented with a plethora of confusing options?
• How about the subpages – do they follow a similar format to the homepage? Or are they completely different?
• What about the content on these subpages, was it what you expected?
• How about the blog/news? Is this updated regularly? What’s the content like?

What about Social Media and SEO?

Social and search are incredibly vital and mustn’t be overlooked.

• Are there social buttons located on the main website? If so, are they prominent or hidden away?
• If they’re using social media, are they updating often? Are their social media networks deathly silent or bustling communities?
• What about the tone of voice that they’re using across social media – is it the same as that being used on the website or is it completely different?
• If they’re regularly updating content, is it good? Are they utilising images, videos, hashtags etc?
• What about the on-site SEO – can you see signs of their keywords being used?
• What does Google say? When you type their brand into the search engine goliath, what results are you shown? Is there any evidence of optimisation or use of PPC?
• Why not try something like mySEOtool to get a real understanding of how they’re performing across the search engines?

Don’t forget mobile

How’s the experience whilst browsing on a mobile device? Does it have a responsive website? What about an app?

In theory, by asking yourself some of the questions above, your digital agency should now have a clear understanding of the website in question and the client’s current issues, helping to put together a solution that they’ll be very happy with.

You’ll have looked at multiple points including user experience, search engine optimisation, social media and editorial practices throughout your quick content strategy planning. This should provide you with plenty of ideas whether it’s for the website design, build and overall digital strategy, or future content marketing campaigns.

If you’re looking for support on your content strategy, or looking to develop an engaging content marketing campaign, give us a shout.