Content strategy is still a murky area for many Non-profit organisations and social impact campaigners.
In May this year CEO, Greg Viljoen, presented a talk called at the Content Marketing Conference called Storytelling that doesn’t suck: beyond content marketing.
One of the cornerstones of this presentation was the need to create a content strategy in business; one that successfully identifies the purpose behind a good content marketing plan, the audience, narrative, objectives and more.
Content is the engine that drives modern marketing.
Yet, it is often seen as an expense rather than a business asset. This is often due to ROI’s being intangible and difficult to prove as a business driver.
The Content Marketing Institute reports that only 5 percent of B2C marketers consider their content efforts to be “very successful.”
However, it is important to note that the least effective content campaigns showed that only 16 percent had a documented content strategy.
In short; if you don’t have a clearly defined content strategy with clear goals and outcomes how do you measure its success rather than see it as a nice to have?
In the cause-based domain such as NPOs, social impact campaigns, and CSR initiatives, most understand the importance of telling a good story to convey the message behind the purpose, but how do we achieve this successfully?
5 Tips to improve your content strategy
Content marketing is critical to any form of social impact campaign.
Whatever the cause is, the story behind the campaign is vital to reaching a donor base that cares enough to contribute.
1. Your audience’s needs come first
Identify what content your audience wants the most, and which stories compel them to take action. Once you have identified this you can invest wisely in the tools and technology to reach them effectively.
2. Create content silos
It is very important to categorise one’s content into different silos. How else can you effectively measure the KPIs on your content strategy?
It is also important to ensure all aspects of telling the story are covered.
3. Become an authority in your space
Content is digested for two primary reasons; entertainment and knowledge.
In the cause marketing domain, creating content that helps your audience by offering useful, relevant and meaningful information, you become an authority in this space.
4. The right content in the right format
Consider how the format and structure of your content should vary to best fit each digital platform that you share your stories to.
Understand the difference between content formats; video, blogs, social media platforms all require a slightly different approach and appeal to a varied audience.
5. Give your content time
Understand that a good content strategy takes time and requires ongoing attention. There is no silver bullet.
Yes, you may create a video that goes viral or write a blog that outperforms other content, but the sum of all the parts is important to understand.
There are many examples of content created up to a year or two earlier, that suddenly gains traction or becomes even more relevant than when created.
So, don’t always expect all content to give immediate results.
Keep the faith and continue to plug away with an ongoing content strategy and your desired results are achievable.