3 Key Principles of Digital Content Strategy

Digital content strategy is an essential element of today’s content development process. The omnipresence of digital media and accessibility of platforms can make distributing brand messaging seem as easy as tapping a “share” button. 

In my experience collaborating with content marketing and PR teams in the ad/martech world, I’ve seen firsthand how businesses fumble when they fail to envision and articulate a dynamic, long-term digital content strategy. In this article, I’ll map out three aspects of digital content strategy where businesses often miss the mark: setting actionable goals, identifying and tailoring content to specific audiences, and iterating and evolving content strategy.

Actionable goals are the backbone of digital content strategy

As a writer, the first and most essential information I need to understand about a piece before I start drafting is the specific purpose the content is intended to serve: Is this blog post supposed to educate customers about a product? Is our intent to build trust and boost brand loyalty among a familiar audience? Or to compete with rivals’ traffic on high-value SERPs? Does the piece meet all its objectives, and how do the objectives of each piece in a month line up to serve the company’s overall business goals such as growing an audience and engaging existing customers?

A simple and handy yardstick for making sure that your digital content strategy—or New Year’s resolutions—don’t fall the way of 2021’s diet is to ensure that the goals aligned with your content are “smart”:

• Specific

• Measurable 

• Achievable 

• Relevant 

• Time-bound

These parameters ensure that the individual goals envisioned for each piece of content aren’t too big or abstract to be accomplished. For example, say you want to write a blog post teaching someone what programmatic advertising is. That’s a big topic. In that case, you’d want to reserve dives into the nuances of programmatic — for example, different kinds of programmatic transactions — for other blog posts, to which you can link in the pillar post, thereby maximizing organic traffic. But I’d also recommend anyone looking to write such a post ask themselves what the objective is. Is it to rank for the search “What is programmatic advertising?” That might be a tough sell, and the writer/company might be better off focusing on more granular topics more germane to their business and with less competition.

Know thyself—and thy audience 

Content published simply for the sake of content is too easily lost in the ocean of our highly saturated media environment. Worse yet, undifferentiated and unrelenting messaging runs the risk of sparking annoyance among your audience instead of cultivating awareness. An effective digital content strategy is one that is based on specificity (refer back to the “S” in “SMART”) in several ways—all of which are prerequisites for crafting content that will ultimately make waves. 

First, a specific digital content strategy should rest on a clear understanding of the business’ unique value and position in the market. It uses this understanding to cultivate a unique and engaging narrative to shape all communications. Moreover, such a strategy is attentive to form: it understands the unique strengths and features of different platforms and actively uses those features to its advantage. For example, if you’re just taking blog posts and copying and pasting them onto LinkedIn, you’re not only risking turning off an audience by blasting them with homogeneous content but also wasting your time by failing to optimize for LinkedIn’s algorithms, which prioritize certain content formats.

Furthermore, strategic content is crafted with specific audiences in mind. It’s tempting for companies to want messaging to be as broad and inclusive as possible—why risk excluding any potential customer? In actuality, the big-tent approach can actually undercut opportunities to connect with multiple, differentiated groups and spark different but potentially valuable types of engagement. Businesses that make the most of their digital content are those that aren’t afraid to think beyond the customer and the target audience. Do a little more research into a variety of audience profiles, within and across platforms: what are the questions, interests, and pain points of not just customers but other potential stakeholders such as investors and the journalists and influencers you want to amplify your messaging? Anticipating and addressing a more diverse set of audiences gives your messaging a distinctive edge and expands the potential impact of your brand’s narrative.

Digital content strategy is a process, not a product 

There is no one-size-fits-all formula for executing a winning digital content strategy. You should view this strategy not as a static and iron-clad law but an evolving, dynamic process.

Think of your digital content strategy kind of like a scientific hypothesis: it is an evidence-based plan of action aimed to produce certain desired results. But the experiment isn’t finished when all the content has been written, published, and promoted. To be able to judge the success of your hypothesis, you need to analyze the data that your experiment produces. Digital content strategy operates via a similar feedback loop. Remember those “SMART” goals of yours? If they really live up to their name, they will be measurable. Useful metrics for assessing the impact of your content can take a variety of forms:

• SEO: Has the organic traffic to your site changed since the launch of a new series of articles?

• Social shares: How often have posts or videos been shared, and where do they receive the most interaction?

• Lead generation: What kind of fluctuations do you see in your newsletter subscription rate? How is your conversion rate impacted by new campaigns?

Potential content metrics are numerous and often very specific: you want to focus on those that are most relevant to your specific goals. Then, it’s time to revise and repeat: your “hypothesis” for maximizing the impact of your content should be adjusted, tweaking the form and substance of your messaging based on what’s working and what isn’t. 

Too long; didn’t read

A generalized, static, or nonexistent digital content strategy isn’t just an inefficient use of your marketing budget that leaves potential leads on the table. It can also dampen the impact of the digital content you are producing. Successfully tapping into the value of content requires a creative, informed, and dynamic approach to digital media and your targeted messaging.

The cliché about life being a journey and not a destination also holds true for your digital content strategy: the value comes from investing in the process. Approaching content strategy without fear of trial and error will allow your messaging to become more precise, ultimately elevating the difference it drives for your overall business goals.