Alchemy for your brand: Working with a content strategist

You've got a great idea, and you need to get it out there. You know that content is king these days, but where do you start? The answer is simple: hire a content creator.

Content is the heart and soul of any brand. Good content can help you grow your audience, drive traffic to your site, and even make sales. But creating good content requires more than just a suitable idea—it takes strategy, planning, and execution. And that's where a content strategist comes in. 

In this post, I've outlined how a strategist will help you create your content strategy, the process of understanding where and how things will flow, and how to get the most out of your content creation approach.

Create a content plan.

A content plan is a document that outlines the goals, objectives and strategies for your content marketing efforts. It helps you to organise your ideas, decide what to publish, when to publish it and how often you should be publishing new material. A good content plan makes sure that all of your channels are aligned with each other so that they can work together in unison towards achieving one goal: driving traffic back to your website or landing page.

It's important because if there isn't careful planning behind what type of content should go where then it can lead to poor performance across multiple channels (and wasted time).

A content plan is also important because it helps you to stay focused on what's important. It's easy when you're constantly creating new content to get distracted by shiny objects and start spending time on things that don't matter so much. A content plan can help keep you on track and make sure your efforts aren't wasted.

Create a style guide.

A style guide is a set of rules and guidelines that govern the content you produce. It should be comprehensive enough to cover all your business needs, but flexible enough to accommodate changes in your organisation or industry. A style guide is also a living document--it's updated as necessary to reflect new practices, technologies and formats.

The primary goal of a content style guide is to provide a common language for everyone involved in your organisation's content creation process. This includes writers and editors, as well as developers and designers who will build the site or application you publish to. A style guide provides the necessary structure for all parties to speak the same language when discussing content.

Create a content audit.

A content audit is a process of reviewing and analyzing your existing content to find out what's working, what isn't, and how you can make it better. It's a way to get a clear picture of where you are before moving forward with any new projects.

Content inventories are useful for understanding how much content you have in total, but they don't show how effective that content is at achieving its goals. A content audit will help you understand which pieces are working (or not) so that when the time comes for creating more material, it'll be easier for both parties involved--you and your creator--to know what needs improvement or expansion.

Create a content calendar.

It's often said that the best way to be successful in something is by doing it five times (or more). This applies equally well to creating great content: if you want quality results from your writing efforts--and who doesn't?--then putting some thought into how those efforts will be organised will pay off in spades over time.

The content calendar is a visual representation of your content plan. It helps you plan and prioritise your content, see what's coming up next, see what's working, and make adjustments as needed. A good content calendar will help you avoid the trap of publishing too often or too infrequently; it makes it easier to see how much time you have available for each type of post (and whether that fits with your goals).

A content strategist can help you get your content strategy on track and keep it there

A content strategist can help you get your content strategy on track and keep it there. They're also great at helping with other aspects of content strategy, such as editing and proofreading.

In addition to working with writers, a content strategist can help you with other aspects of your business's online presence: social media management, SEO optimisation (search engine optimisation), web analytics reporting--the list goes on!

I hope this article has given you some useful tips on how to work with a content creator. If you're interested in learning more getting your content strategy on track, contact us today! hello@chutzpahcreative.com