How to Build a Successful Content Strategy in 9 Steps [2024]

A powerful content strategy helps you tell the right stories, connect to the right audience, and inspire that audience to take action.

At its core, it aligns your output and resources—ensuring you create content that resonates with your customers and drives your business goals forward.

In this guide, I'll break down everything you need to know about content strategy.

You'll learn how to build it from the ground up and how to measure success.

What is a Content Strategy?

A content strategy is a comprehensive plan for using content marketing to reach your business goals. It guides your efforts to create engaging, valuable content at each stage of the buyer’s journey—from awareness to retention.

Every successful content strategy has six core elements: 

1. Goals, objectives, and metrics: The fundamental purpose of the strategy and KPIs you’ll be tracking.
2. Target audience: The buyer personas you’ll attract and engage with your content.
3. Content plan: The type of content you will create, topics to cover, and a content calendar to schedule and organize content publication. 
4. Content production: The guidelines for content creation, approval, and maintenance.
5. Content promotion: The content distribution channels, such as social media, email newsletters, blogs, and third-party platforms.
6. Budget and resources: How resources will be allocated between teams, tools, and other marketing activities. 

Why Do You Need a Content Strategy?

A content strategy ensures that your content creation efforts are aligned with your business objectives and resonate with your target audience. 

After nearly 10 years in the content industry, I’ve learned that it’s the only way to organize your content marketing efforts and achieve tangible results.

Here's why a well-defined content strategy is essential:

• Efficiency and effectiveness: Planning your content in advance saves time and resources, allowing you to allocate your marketing budget wisely and maximize your impact.
• Data-driven decision-making: A data-driven content strategy empowers you to create high-quality content that truly resonates with your audience, driving engagement and conversions.
• Continuous improvement: By tracking and analyzing your content's performance, you can identify what's working and what's not, and make data-backed adjustments to optimize your strategy over time.
• Strategic alignment: A content strategy ensures that your marketing efforts directly support your business goals and cater to the needs of your audience. It's no surprise that 80% of highly successful content marketers have a documented strategy, according to our State of Content Marketing Report.

Content Strategy vs. Content Tactics: What’s the Difference?

Content strategy and content tactics differ in their function, focus, scope, and alignment with business goals.

• Content strategy is the long-term plan that outlines how content will contribute to achieving business goals.

• Content tactics translate this long-term strategy into actionable tasks that can be accomplished at various transition points. 

Step-by-Step: How Do You Create an Effective Content Strategy?

Crafting a successful content strategy involves more than just creating content. 

It outlines the understanding of your business goals and your market, and how your content bridges the gap between the two.

Watch this video for a quick recap of the content strategy workflow:

Next, I'll break down the steps we take to build a high-performing content strategy at Semrush:

Step 1: Define Your Content Strategy Objectives

Every successful content strategy begins with well-defined goals. 

These goals should connect your content marketing efforts to your broader business objectives. Remember, creating content just because everyone else is doing it isn't a good enough reason.

Consider questions like:

🚀 What are our key business objectives right now?

Example: We aim to increase awareness and sales with a certain customer segment.

🚀 How can these goals be supported by content marketing?

Example: We’re going to increase awareness by generating relevant organic traffic through educational content. We will then convert this traffic by nurturing leads with product content. 

Remember, your goals should be SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

Here are some sample objectives you could list:

• Develop a community of engaged followers by growing newsletter subscriptions by 25%
• Reduce customer churn rate by 15% using content marketing over the next 5 months
• Generate a 25% year-on-year increase in lead generation
• Boost awareness by increasing organic traffic by 34% in the next 6 months

Step 2: Analyze Your Audience

Your audience and their needs will dictate the topics you cover, the content formats you create, and the distribution platforms you choose.

That’s why it’s so important to analyze your audience and understand their preferences. You will want to understand their:

• Pain points: What customer questions and challenges could you address with your content?
• Buying behavior patterns: How exactly do they shop for solutions, and how could you reflect this process with your content funnel?
• Communication preferences: Which content formats and channels are they most likely to engage with?

There are many ways to carry out audience research. 

For example, conducting customer surveys and focus groups, analyzing direct customer inquiries, and using website analytics tools like Google Analytics (GA4).

To save time, you can also use specialized audience analytics tools like Semrush’s One2Target. 

All you need to do is simply enter a domain (yours or your competitor’s) and get a detailed audience report. It’ll cover demographics, socioeconomics, behavior, and other data.

You can also monitor social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Quora, and Reddit. 

For example, imagine you’re targeting cat owners. Head to Reddit and look for communities of cat owners.

Analyze relevant questions posted by the users and check comments. These can become a great inspiration for future topics in your content plan.

You can even engage with them by sharing relevant advice and featuring your content.

Step 3: Research the Competition

Researching your competitors is a crucial step in building a successful content strategy. 

By analyzing your competitors' content strategies, you can:

1. Learn from their success
2. Find out what resonates with your audience
3. Spot gaps in your content strategy and plan
4. Avoid their mistakes

To get started, identify three to five direct and indirect competitors. These companies might serve the same audience, offer a similar product/service, or sit in the same sector. 

Next, analyze the content they publish on their websites and social media profiles. Answer the following questions:

• Which topics do they cover with their content?
• Which content formats do they use (blog posts, videos, templates, etc.)?
• Which channels do they distribute their content on (social media, newsletters, etc.)?
• Which posts get the most engagement (likes, comments, shares) on their social media channels?
• What audiences do they seem to be targeting?

For example, we can see that Purina—a pet food brand—creates articles targeting dog and cat owners. They cover various topics including pet health, training, and feeding.

You can also dig deeper and learn which website pages generate the most organic traffic for each of your competitors. 

Head to the Organic Research tool, input your competitor’s domain and open the ‘Pages’ report.

Use all this information to inspire your own content strategy and look for existing content gaps. 

Search for topics your competitors haven't covered, formats they haven't explored, or channels they haven't used effectively. 

And, note topics and formats that seem to generate a lot of traffic for your rivals.

Step 4: Analyze Your Existing Content 

This step is essential if you have been creating content for a while and looking to strategize your efforts.

It's usually my starting point when I refine our content strategy.

A content audit evaluates the existing content in your ecosystem, what’s missing, and opportunities for improvement. 

When auditing your content:

• Identify content topics and formats that generate the most traffic, engagement, and sales
• Find content distribution channels that deliver the best results
• Determine average conversion rates and other metrics you can expect from your content

For example, you might find out that blog posts about cat toys generate the most conversions for your business. You might also see that the average conversion rate for such blogs is around 0,3%. 

Such information can give your content strategy an important direction and help you set up realistic KPIs.

To implement this step, use analytics tools like Google Analytics. 

For instance, you can set up conversion events and segment your data by content type, traffic sources, or engagement metrics. 

Step 5: Define Your Content Topics 

Next, select the high-level content topics (or content pillars) to include in your content plan. 

The primary source of information? Your audience’s pain points.

Go back to your audience research and list the key problems your customers want to address. For example, our cat-owner audience might be concerned about their cats’ mental health, physical health, or training.

From here, you can brainstorm specific subtopics and keywords you’ll want to target.

To automate this process, use AI content creation tools like ContentShake AI.

First, open the tool and select your settings. Add a few keywords describing your business and select your target region (up to city level).

From now on, you will receive weekly new content ideas based on what’s trending in your niche. They will also be tailored to the local audiences in your target region.

Next, choose the content idea and click ‘Generate article.’ 

The tool will ask you to select a few items (like your preferred content length and writing style), find target keywords for your content, and generate an SEO-ready blog post.

Step 6: Choose Your Content Formats

Next, think about the content formats you want to create. Similarly to content topics, this should stem from your knowledge of the target audience. 

For example, a B2B audience is more likely to read lengthy guides and watch YouTube tutorials. And, a B2C audience would rather engage with short-form video and social media content.

Some of the top content formats you can choose include:

• Educational blog posts
• Long-form and short-form video
• Podcasts
• Social media posts
• Customer success stories
• White papers
• Interactive pages and free tools
• Product-focused articles
• Reports and white papers

You can also think about your content formats from the content marketing funnel standpoint. 

It represents the customer journey from initial awareness to making a purchase—and helps you offer relevant content at each stage.

For example, Purina offers educational blog posts to attract customers at the top of the funnel.

Each article has internal links to other articles that explore related subtopics in more depth. Some of these articles also directly introduce Purina’s products.

Next, they offer dedicated pages about various cat breeds for cat owners looking for more specific information.

These pages also recommend Purina’s cat food and treats that best suit each breed.

Finally, customers end up on product pages that showcase products offered by the brand and describe their unique features.

Step 6: Create a Content Calendar 

It’s finally time to put your content plans together.

A content calendar is your organizational hub for content creation and distribution. It's a visual representation of your content plan, ensuring you stay on track and never miss a deadline. 

Think of it as your content strategy's command center.

You can organize your content calendar using spreadsheets or Google docs, or opt for a project management tool like Notion.

Here’s what it might look like:

Include the following fields when building your calendar:

1. Content topics and keywords
2. Target persona
3. Publish and due date
4. Owner/Writer
5. Status (e.g., in progress/done)
6. Content type
7. Link to the brief 
8. Live link

This approach will help you make your content operations more efficient and avoid delays in content production.

💡Pro tip: Your content calendar needs to be tied to your content marketing goals and budget. Make sure to estimate your production plans against your objectives and existing resources.

For example:

• How much traffic do you need to achieve your target conversions? 
• How many content pieces do you need to create to generate this traffic? 
• How much money do you need to spend per content piece? 

Step 7: Develop Editorial Guidelines

Editorial guidelines, also known as a content style guide, ensure consistency, quality, and alignment with your brand voice across all your content. 

Think of them as the rulebook for your content creators, providing clarity on everything from grammar and punctuation to tone and style.

So, what should you include in your editorial guidelines? 

• Grammar and punctuation: Clear rules on subject-verb agreement, pronoun usage, comma placement, and other grammatical elements. Include examples of correct and incorrect usage to illustrate the guidelines.
• Number and date formats: Specify how numbers and dates should be formatted in your content (e.g., using numerals for numbers 10 and above, spelling out months in full, etc.).
• Voice and tone: Clearly articulate your brand's personality and how it should be reflected in your content. Are you friendly and approachable, authoritative, and professional, or something else entirely? Provide examples to illustrate the desired tone.

For example, Cat Person has a fun, direct and casual tone of voice. This has to be translated through each content piece they publish on various channels.

To achieve this, use ContentShake AI’s ‘Brand Voice’ feature. 

Simply upload your writing sample (e.g., from your “About Us” page) and the tool will define your unique brand voice. 

From now on, all content you create with the tool will sound like you and your brand. 

It will also be adjusted for your specific audience personas.

Step 8: Define Your Content Distribution Strategy

Finally, think about ways to promote your content. 

It’s essential to get your content in front of the right people at the right time. To achieve this, you need to identify the most effective channels to share your content. 

Some of the key content distribution channels include:

• SEO: The foundation of organic reach, ensuring your content is discoverable in search engine results. Use SEO to attract people actively seeking information related to your industry or offerings.
• Social media: Sharing on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc., can engage your audience, spark conversations, and build brand awareness. 
• Email marketing: Deliver your content directly to subscribers' inboxes, nurturing leads and fostering relationships with your audience. Use email to share valuable insights, promote new content, and drive conversions.
• Paid advertising: Use targeted Google or Meta ads on search engines and social media to reach a wider audience and promote specific content pieces or campaigns. 

💡 Pro tip: A smart content distribution approach also includes content repurposing. It means adapting your existing pieces of content to use them for different formats or platforms. 

For example:

This way, you can reach more customers that hang out on different channels without breaking the bank.

Step 9. Track Content Performance

Finally, think about ways to analyze and improve your content performance. 

Having a content strategy without tracking your results is like sailing without a compass. You need to know if you're heading in the right direction.

The content metrics you’ll track will depend on your overall goals. For example, if you’re after brand awareness, focus on tracking rankings, organic traffic, and impressions.

Some common content marketing metrics include:

• Rankings: Your website's position in search engine results for your target keywords.
• Traffic: The number of people visiting your website or blog thanks to your content.
• Leads: The potential customers who express interest, like signing up for your email list or downloading a resource.
• Conversion rates: The percentage of visitors who take a desired action, such as making a purchase.
• Social media engagement: The number of likes, shares, and comments on your social media content. This helps you see what resonates with your audience.
• On-site engagement: How visitors interact with your website, including the pages they visit and the links they click.
• Content marketing Return on Investment (ROI): The profitability of your content marketing efforts, comparing the cost of creating and distributing content to the revenue it generates.

💡 Pro tip: Create regular reports to assess your content performance (e.g., monthly). This will help you quickly spot bottlenecks and identify tactics that work well.

Final Thoughts

Building a successful content strategy requires careful planning and execution. By following the steps in this guide, you'll be well on your way to creating content that:

• Resonates with your audience, 
• Achieves your business goals, and 
• Sets your brand apart from the competition.

Don't be afraid to experiment as you go. The most effective content strategies are iterative. 

Your audience’s needs, your business goals, and the platforms you use will evolve and adapt over time. Your content should evolve with it! 

Do you need some assistance on your journey?

Use tools like ContentShake AI. It helps you automate the entire content production process and lets you focus on building a smart content strategy.