1. How to Design a Content Strategy
for Your Business
By Vibrant Internet Marketing
June 6, 2012
All rights reserved. No portion of this document may be
used without express permission of the author. Vibrant
Internet Marketing is available to provide customized
presentation to help your business be successful. For more
information Contact me here.

2. Content Strategy
for Your Business
• How to Create Content that Attracts Online
Business
1. Know your audience
2. Conduct a content audit
3. Map content to the buying cycle
4. Create an editorial calendar

3. Content Strategy
for Your Business
1. Know your audience
• The more you know about your target audience
the more optimal the content you write will be.
• Build buyer personas for your target groups.
– A persona is a fictional representation of your ideal
customers
– Base your persona on real data extracted from
customer demographics and online behavior
– Make educated speculation about their personal
histories, motivations and concerns

4. Content Strategy
for Your Business
– Research your existing customer base to identify the
most common buyers for your products and services
– Segment different types of buyers
– Give each one a detailed description. Include:
• Name
• Job title
• Other roles
• Industry or company info
• Demographic info
• Anything else significant about the consumer that might
influence their buying behavior

5. Content Strategy
for Your Business
Analyzing the path that prospects take on the
journey to becoming a customer is a good
way to get insights about the needs and
challenges of your target audience.
The goal is to make better decisions when
identifying the characteristics of your ideal
customers and ways to nurture your new
prospects.

6. Content Strategy
for Your Business
2. Conduct a content audit
A content audit will help you:
– Determine how well you’re covering topics that are important to your audience
– Determine the mix of content types you’re offering
– Find gaps that you can fill with new content
– Identify great pieces of content that can be repurposed into other formats
A content audit will collect and examine all of the content you’ve created
List title and label according to:
– Type of content
– Topic covered
– Buyer persona
– Date created
– Leads/customers

7. Content Strategy
for Your Business
Evaluate your content audit.
• Balance
• Frequency
• Variety
• Best topics
Using your analysis, draw up a list of goals and
guidelines for future content creation.

8. Content Strategy
for Your Business
3. Map Your Content
– Identify the best types of content for each stage in
your buying cycle.
• Awareness
• Research
• Comparison
• Purchase

9. Content Strategy
for Your Business
4. Create your editorial calendar
• An editorial calendar is like a roadmap for
content creation.
– What type of content to create
– What topics to cover
– Which personas to target
– How often to publish to best support your
inbound marketing strategy

10. Content Strategy
for Your Business
Step 1. Use a calendar or a spreadsheet to record your
editorial plans. Plan at least 3 months in advance,
but longer (6 months or a year) is better.

11. Content Strategy
for Your Business
Step 2. Work backwards from your marketing
goals to guide your plan. Look at how much
traffic, how many leads and how many
customers you are aiming to generate each
month.

12. Content Strategy
for Your Business
Step 3. Fill in the dates on your calendar with
specific publishing tasks.
– Updating blogs 3 times a week
– Updating social networks daily
– Post new videos or podcasts each week
– Publish a new ebook monthly
– Host a webinar monthly

13. Content Strategy
for Your Business
Step 4. Note the following for each piece of
content.
– SEO keywords
– Stage of buying cycle
– Call-to-action
– Inbound marketing goals for that piece of content

14. Content Strategy
for Your Business
Step 5. Note important dates or external events
that are good hooks for specific topics or types
of content.
– Holidays
– Important dates for the company
– Promotions
– Online events (Twitter parties, Facebook events)

15. Content Strategy
for Your Business
Step 6. Look for opportunities to repurpose
content.
– Whitepapers
– Research reports
– Share details
– Use small nuggets of data

16. Content Strategy
for Your Business
Step 7. Create separate tabs for each type of
content you publish.
– Blog posts
– Webinars
– Ebooks
– Videos

17. Content Strategy
for Your Business
When you want to post new content, open this
document.
When you lack inspiration for writing, review
your editorial calendar to give you a visual
reminder of what you’ve covered already and
what you’re planning to cover. This will help
you narrow down your options.