How to Marry Content and Strategy for Maximum Impact

The only way to wring more value out of your content is to understand the intricate connection between your content and your strategy.

The only way to wring more value out of your content is to understand the intricate connection between your content and your strategy.

Now, don’t hit the back button just yet – I purposely left the word strategy out of the title of this article because I know that what you want is a magic bullet, but here’s the deal – content put in the context of strategy is the closest thing there is to the magic bullet.

The purpose of a business is to make and keep a profitable customer – the purpose of content is to help you make and keep a profitable customer – if that’s so – and it is – then why don’t people create content with that intention?

The idea of content marketing begins and ends for so many with – “It’s Monday, what the heck should I write today?” What if instead you thought a little bigger – what if you thought we want to be seen as the trusted, go-to service provider for what we do and our value proposition is that we bend over backwards to make you happy when nobody in our industry even tries to.

Now, perhaps you’ve had a strategy meeting with your team and you all agreed that’s your core strategy, but no one thought to bring that into the content you produce.

If you did you would:

• Write a blog post that outlined the 7 questions you should ask your current provider and make it a core lead generator
• Turn that blog post into a series of videos that the sales team can send out one by one to prospects
• Develop a Slideshare deck and presentation that you feature on your LinkedIn profile
• Turn that presentation into a value packed webinar
• Record the webinar and feature it on your homepage
• Create an autorepsonder series that delivers emails to prospects over the course of a month
• Create an infographic and shop it around to high traffic websites
• Turn your infographic into a direct mail postcard for a targeted blast
• Get seven of your happy customers to pose one of the questions via video and feature it all over your website 
• Dig up case studies that map to each question and extend the original post and graphics into an eBook

Did you see what I did there – I just took one landmark content idea and turned it into 10 useful iterations. See, the secret to success with content isn’t quantity – it’s intention. If you create content with the intention of finding ways to use it to create awareness, trust, connection, education and conversion, you’ll likely create an asset that provides massive return.

The secret to success with content isn’t quantity – it’s intention.

Now, understand this isn’t simply recycling content into different mediums, it’s giving the same content a different and needed useful stop along the customer journey.

Oh, and I didn’t even get to point where you turn this content into an evaluation process and ultimately a part of your service delivery.

So you see you don’t need more content – you need the right content in the right context – and that’s all.