Trying to Envision the Right Content Strategy? Try These Content Lenses

March 24, 2020
|In Content Marketing
|By Corey-Jan Albert

You’ve got a website. You update it from time to time. You write blogs and post on social media. But guess what – when it comes to content, that’s not enough anymore. To get your messages and information to the people you need to reach, you’ve got to have a content strategy. That is, you need a strategic combination of rich content that will help you engage with your audiences (including prospects, customers, influencers and even employees).

When you think of the different types of content you can provide to each audience, it helps to consider them through these three lenses:

  • Lens #1: Your Sales Funnel: Different types of content will be helpful to the people you want to reach at each stage of their journey. In the early “Awareness” stage, you want to help them feel like they’re discovering you, even as you are reaching out to them. As they progress to the “Consideration” stage, you aim to support their evaluation process. Finally, as prospects become ready to make their decisions in the “Buy” stage, it’s time to reinforce their confidence, helping them feel secure that in choosing you, they’ve chosen wisely and well.
  • Lens #2: Their Preferred Platform: Where do your audiences want to get different kinds of communications – at work, at home, or in transit? On their laptops, tablets or phones? Through a browser or a dedicated app? In some tangible, analog form like paper? When is it appropriate to reach out to them directly? And when should you streamline their ability to find you via a combination of search engine and social media optimization, as well as well-placed and timely advertising, articles, sponsorships, etc.
  • Lens #3: Their Experience: Many of us like to believe that our buying decisions are based solely on objective information and logic. But the truth is that our subjective emotions factor significantly into all of our decisions. Your audience’s overall experience reflects both essential information and emotional connection – and the right content strategy meets them at multiple points along that objective-to-subjective continuum.

 

These are just a few components of a comprehensive content strategy. You can – and should – examine many types of content through these lenses as you build yours.

 

Look through all three lenses together, and you will see how the right strategic combination of content will help you reach all of your audiences:

  • At every point in their journey
  • Where and how they want
  • In ways that touch them both objectively and emotionally.

In short, you’ll have a fully visualized content strategy to help you both connect with and guide everyone your business wants to influence and engage.