How to Develop a Content Strategy: A Start-to-Finish Guide?

Content has become an integral part of marketing these days. In the past, the content was not as crucial as it is now. The reason is that nowadays marketing has changed to a great extent. Now the focus is on digital marketing which requires a variety of content. Without a content strategy, no business can survive and flourish. We are going to guide the users on how they can develop a great and effective content strategy for their business.

What is a Content Strategy?

Before we process further, it is also important to understand what really the content strategy is and what does it mean. It can be defined as the management of media, written, verbal as well as visual, for marketing and other purposes. For example, you create a video, you may write a blog post, you may start podcasts. All these are included in the content.

It Should Target Audience

When it comes to creating content, many factors are considered. The first and the most important thing is to find out who you are doing the content for. In most of the cases, people write for a specific audience. Like the tech bloggers want the tech readers to find their content. In the same way, every business has a unique user base.

It Should Solve Problems

Second thing is that you should solve some problems through your content. This is a quality of a great content strategy that it should solve some issues and give users reasons to believe in your content. If the content does not solve any issues, it may not be really attractive, informative and quality based. And such kind of content is useless.

It Should Be Unique

Content should always be unique. You cannot copy anyone’s content but ideas can be taken. Google blocks the websites which copy anyone’s content and use them on their own website. That is why content requires time, efforts and research. This process is not very simple.

Why Do Marketers Need a Content Strategy?

So far we talked about what content strategy is and how it should be. Now, we will be discussing the reasons why marketers need good content strategy for their business. Below are a few of the reasons:

·        For Marketing Purpose

·        Promotions and Ads

·        Attracting Users

·        Improving Brand Recognition

·        Educating the Users

Developing a Content Strategy

Follow these steps to develop your content plans:

1.     Define Your Goals

Content is not done without goals. Every business, marketer and company has some goals that they want to achieve with the help of the content strategy plan. Finding out these target objectives is important. Otherwise, the content may not be as effective as it should have been. You may want to increase website traffic, boost sales, increase lead generation and attract more customers. These can be the goals and content for every goal is different.

2.     Conduct Research

When you are done with defining your goals and objectives, you will have to perform comprehensive research. You should find out how the great content works, what kind of content you may need and what are the best places to get ideas. The research should also include various forms of content as well as its qualities. The research will help you become better at content.

3.     Choose CMS

Content managed system is the requirement of every business website. Without a CMS, you cannot publish and live your content. WordPress is the most popular and widely used content management system which is free a swell. You can choose any content management system according to your needs. Make sure, it is safe. You should also work on editing and formatting of the content because appearance matters a lot.

4.     Brainstorm the Ideas

Now you should start looking for content ideas. This process should involve everyone from the marketing team as well as the writers and bloggers. Input from everyone should be taken. Create a content plan with ideas for a month. This should be followed so that you don’t run out of ideas when writing content for your website and marketing campaigns.

5.     Define Content-Type

Content-type is also important. Every site needs the content of different types. Sometimes you need web content, while on other times you will have to publish blogs. Marketers also need guest posts, research works, infographics, videos, and podcasts. All these types of content are helpful to increase business ranking and bring the website on top.

6.     Write Quality Content

When you have everything ready, you should write content for your business website and marketing campaigns. Content should always be of great quality. Include the relevant keywords in your blogs, guest posts, videos and infographics. Quality should always be the focus. Take care of language and never forget who you are writing this content for.

7.     Publish and Manage Content

So far you should be done with writing your content. When your blog is ready, you should publish it on the website. Before you make the blogs live, work on the drafts. Make sure proper font style with size, colors, images and formatting is used. Content should look pleasing. It will improve readability.

You should measure the performance of your content. Like how it has performed, what are the gains, what you lost, the best things as well as the weak areas. Continue to improve your content with the passage of time. Focus more on quality and providing information to the users.

Is Your Child an Internet Troll?

The problem with our new generation is that everything the so requires its very own manual for the parents to understand what they have been doing. They go LOL instead of actually laughing out loud and say BRB when they’re going to be right back. Even the idea of talking to someone later has been abbreviated to TTYL.

With such terms in the mix, it is already pretty hard for a parent to understand what their child has been doing and has been up to at any given time on the cyberspace. With that being said, it is also quite hard for a parent to determine if their child is an internet troll or not.

Who is an Internet Troll?

An internet troll is a person that, more often than not, hides himself or herself behind the cloak of a sockpuppet account and uses the internet to spread hate. Such posts made by such individuals sow the seeds of discord with their words and make people argue with each other. They post inflammatory messages on online chat communities and blogs and upset people by writing racist comments about people from different parts of the world, stereotyping them and calling them names.

Psychological Mindset of a Troll

According to many surveys and researches conducted in the year 2013 and 2014, the year trolls took to the internet to spread hate speech, it has been found that people who usually troll the internet tend to possess various dark personality traits which may range from antisocial behavior to sadism to psychopathy.

These individuals take pleasure and feel good about themselves by hurting other people, much like a sadist who enjoys sexual gratification by hurting their partners in a number of ways. Similarly, these individuals also tend to be quite antisocial, using the internet to voice all the nefarious intentions and cruelty bubbling inside themselves and since they cannot let go of their demons by being themselves, they invent sockpuppet personality that is usually accepted by a general group of people for their for the purpose of punishing them or maybe to relieve their loneliness.

Furthermore, these people could be the real world equivalent to the Joker in the Batman series. The Joker is a certified psychopath and since the world and the way it works doesn’t make any sense to him or her, the set out to fix it in the way they think is right and while doing that such individuals promote hate and hurt on various social media outlets.

Ultimately, the main reason for a troll to do all that he or she does is to gain a reaction. For such an individual any sort of a reaction would do – positive or negative, it doesn’t matter. As long as it riles people up and gets them doing the things they wouldn’t have normally done. They are your basic tricksters, trying to get a reaction out of you by being pesky as hell.

What Role Parents Play Here?

As mentioned above, parents these days no longer have the time to keep up with their children and the fast-paced world that they live in. Thus, more often than not parents make the mistake of trusting their children too much and not paying any heed to whatever they are doing online or offline. Due to this ignorant attitude of parents, children that are mentally unstable, with unadulterated access to internet turn towards trolling and bully and harass innocent people online. By doing this, while your child is not physically harming anyone, he or she is doing a number on his or her psyche which makes it very important for parents to keep an eye on their children.

Since they are unable to physically monitor their children, what such parents can do is consider investing in parental monitoring applications. These apps can help them in not only keeping a close and very keen digital eye on their children wherever they may be, it is also the perfect medium through which parents can get tips whether their children are internet trolls and get them the help that they may need.

The Bottom Line

It is hard being a parent and learning that your child may be an internet troll when you thought they didn’t have a mean bone in their body. Still, once you have discovered the terrible affliction your child has soon enough, you can work towards helping them so that they can put their trolling tendencies at rest and be good and contributing individuals in the society.