“High-quality web content that’s useful, usable, and enjoyable is one of the greatest competitive advantages you can create for yourself online” – Kristina Halvorson
Crowded markets are often a blessing and a bane for modern brands and businesses. The former, because such markets offer high visibility to any brand that conducts itself adroitly. The latter, because the presence of too many brands may trigger consumer fatigue and drown unique brand messages in the background noise. However, brand marketers have managed to evolve various techniques and strategies that allow a brand to gain and retain a competitive edge in public spaces.
A sharply focused content strategy figures high in this quiver of arrows. Content strategy refers to “the planning, development, and management of content: written or in other media. The term has been particularly common in web development since the late 1990s.” In line with this, each business must therefore strive to construct, refine, and propagate a distinctive content strategy marked by outstanding functional elements. For instance, brands that sell services must develop “a consistent storyline that is bound with the brand strategy and emphasizes a differentiated customer experience. (Therefore), developing a content strategy that builds a narrative over time is critical to success.“
A colorful representation of a modern flowchart can assist businesses to develop a winning content strategy. Content forms the core essence of such an illustration, and therefore, a series of stages stacked in a vertical configuration represents content inside said illustration. The canvas can now be populated with seemingly random stages that connect at regular intervals with the constituents of the stack described above. These random stages emanate meaning because they denote various aspects of developing a winning content strategy. These aspects may variously relate to the core problem area, developing a pitch for new customers, the lead element in the content strategy, the working parts of an email campaign, etc. Clearly, these stages are tuned to promote high visibility for the sponsor brand and afford space for the refinement of a winning content strategy.
Multiplicity often finds clear representation in areas of content development and promotion. Brand facilitators should take note of this fact when they seek to develop and refine a winning content strategy for their products and services. A flowchart can help map the actions and sequences that will help create such a strategy; such a diagram may emerge as a dense agglomeration of on-screen stages. The said stages arise from and feed into each other, thereby depicting the operational aspects of a winning content strategy. Emails, blog posts, info-graphics, banner ads, social media mechanisms, demos, videos, and analytics represent the various stages inside this flowchart. We must note the connections between these stages point to the individual features of said strategy. The visual impression may appear congested; however, to an expert brand planner, this flowchart represents a smart blueprint of a modern winning content strategy.
Freehand sketching and a relentless pursuit of the power of the human imagination can help brand managers develop sets of competent marketing plans and actions. Such a voyage may commence from the proverbial scratch and develop into a fully-fleshed winning content strategy that can take on the competition. Wide-ranging visibility may comprise the core objective of such a content strategy; hence, visibility must be positioned in the center of the illustration. Subsequently, brand managers may elect to drive an emphasis on digital techniques such as landing pages, blogs, website banners, calls to action, digital flyers, online coupons, case studies, white papers, e-books, etc. The circular image of the emerging flowchart allows readers and reviewers to gain an exact appreciation of the moving parts of a winning content strategy. We note the flowchart also allows for extensive revisions of the primary image, fuelled by information from ground level campaigns and feedback received in real time.
Conversion continues to represent a critical aspect of a winning content strategy. Therefore, every aspect of such strategy must focus on driving the quantum of conversions in favor of a brand or business. In cognizance of this, brand managers can devise flowcharts that resemble a sales funnel in outline and shape. The successive stage of said illustration includes strategies to reach new audiences, inform & engage with said audiences, and convert prospects into buying customers. This winning content strategy is informed by inputs that emerge from the sides of the illustration and feed into the stages mentioned earlier. The different stages of the buying cycle and various forms of content represent said inputs that drive the winning content strategy. We note each of these inputs must land at the appropriate stage in order to cast an optimal effect on the strategy. Additionally, the designers of such flowcharts may elect to append supplemental stages with a view to drive a faster attainment of stated objectives.
Vision and focus are necessary to shape and drive a winning content strategy. In line with this, brand leaders may institute an ongoing commitment by deploying analytical tools (such as flowcharts) to achieve said objective. The initial stage of this enterprise may hinge on the substance of content, wherein said actors evaluate and assess the validity of content in driving a certain content strategy. The subsequent stages in this flowchart may include workflow, the structure of content, questions on budgets, tools, and time, etc. These elements allow business leaders to assess the efficacy of implementing a winning content strategy prior to execution. The flowchart illustration remains instrumental in explaining various features to business leaders that have the power to veto a certain approach. However, the flowchart also enables brands to appreciate the various moving parts of a content strategy while assessing its utility in driving said mission.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) must find a position inside illustrations that depict a winning content strategy. KPIs are important because they allow businesses to assess the real world performance of a winning content strategy. In line with this, business operators may include multiple stages that indicate, inter alia, revenue earned by implementing a certain strategy, the sales leads generated by a marketing group, customer engagement metrics, the efficiency of executing said strategy, etc. These mechanisms, when installed inside a flowchart empower businesses to gain a clear view of the impact exerted by a winning content strategy. The subsequent assessment of the success of said strategy gains depth when readers review the entire illustration as an operating whole.
A winning content strategy can emerge when businesses sketch the dynamic forces at work inside a market landscape. Brands and customers can comprise a set of stages inside such an illustration; additional stages may emerge in the form of business goals, competitors, the contours of the market landscape, etc. In such a scenario, analysts and designers can work to chalk out an appropriate content strategy that will pitchfork a brand or business to forefront of the market. We can augment this winning content strategy by instituting market research techniques that decode customer wants & preferences; exploring the requirement to modify an existing product; encouraging existing customers to use a product in different ways; etc. The blueprint that emerges from these exertions can empower businesses to delineate the outlines of a content strategy that will guarantee best outcomes.
These lines of analyses can be instrumental in expanding the concept of devising a superb content strategy suited to modern markets. The flowchart plays a pivotal role in the creation and refinement of such strategy.
