media update’s Taylor Goodman has compiled four tips on how you can make your career as a content strategist a successful one.

So, what does an exceptional content strategist do, you ask? They perfectly capture what their audience wants while still keeping the business’s goals and objectives in mind. Their role, thus, requires an adaptable and organised personality to handle the multitude of challenges that may come their way.

So without further ado, here is how you can become exceptional:

1. Master the art of storytelling

As a content strategist, you're hired to tell a company’s story in a way that generates business.

A vital part of this is ensuring that your strategy is up to par to ensure that the story that you’re telling will bode well with your readers. When compiling your strategy for the story you want to tell, you need to do two things:

  1. Keep your business’s goals in mind; and
  2. Be passionate about what you do.
In terms of keeping the overarching goal of the company you work for in mind, you need to ensure that the content you generate mirrors what your company wants to achieve; this is a huge part of ensuring that your strategy is successful.

However, success is only achievable if you are driven by what you do. It is often said that people who do something they love never work a day in their life; this is a helpful principle to employ as a content strategist.

Being passionate about your company benefits you as it is easier to analyse and come up with original content when you are invested in what you're doing. Take the time to do research on your content and your company and your efforts will no doubt show in the quality of your work.

2. Make your content stand out

In the vast world of online content, it is important to stand out in order to grow your audience. A key concept to keep in mind when creating a content strategy is the content differentiation factor. This concept emphasises how content strategists should find what differentiates them from their competition, encouraging them to find their content niche and highlight it.

According to Julia McCoy from Search Engine Journal, some important questions to ask yourself when trying to create eye-catching content are:
  • Who are you trying to reach?
  • What makes your content unique?
  • How can you create content that generates traffic?
  • Why do you create content?
Other important concepts to consider when strategising your content is ensuring that you set goals for what you want to achieve and focusing on producing content that will deliver a high return on investment.

According to Sarah Aboulhosn from Sprout Social, five goals to consider when creating a content strategy are:
  • growing your audience
  • attracting new viewers
  • increased sales rate
  • boosting audience engagement
  • Increasing web traffic

3. Promote your content

Promoting your content is all about catching your audience’s attention, whether that is through visuals, great SEO tactics or engaging headlines. As a content strategist, analysing data and being ROI-focused comes with the territory. You need to ensure that you are generating business for your company, and a great way to do this is by promoting your content.

In doing this, ensure that you:

Utilise the most effective channels for your content

The plethora of social media platforms we find ourselves surrounded with can, at times, be overwhelming. To manage this as a content strategist, you need to find a platform that works for you. It is also important to keep in mind which platforms allow you to reach your audience most effectively.

Pay close attention to trends and consumer patterns

As you are promoting your content to attract an audience, it is essential that you spotlight trends and patterns among them. This becomes more clear as you delve deeper into analytics and engagement, which should tell you what time is best to post or what topics are popular among your audience.

Employ long-tail keywords

SEO and keywords are essential tactics when promoting content as they increase the likelihood of your content being seen by your audience, as well as potential consumers. A long-tail keyword increases this as it is longer , more specific and garners less traffic than shorter keywords.

Utilising long-tail keywords makes your content easier to find, especially when your audience is searching for more niche topics.

4. Do a content audit

As with most things, when formulating strategies for your content, you live and you learn. And the best way to learn from your mistakes is to do a content audit. This involves reviewing your content and seeing where you could improve, which allows you to gain insight into whether you are meeting your objectives, how your content is performing and if you have any gaps in your content.

It is here where you are able to gain more insight into whether or not your strategy is reaching your target audience, as well as if it is drawing in them in and leaving them wanting more. To ensure that everything is running smoothly, it is important that you are conducting these audits on a regular basis. This allows you to catch any small issues before they turn into bigger ones.

Are there any tips for being an amazing content strategist that you think we missed? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Now that you know how to be a great content strategist, be sure to keep on developing this skill by checking out these Five content consumption trends in 2020
*Image courtesy of Vecteezy