How to Use a Content Strategist Role for Successful Inbound Marketing

In today’s world, content marketing has become central to many brands’ inbound marketing strategy. Content marketing requires strategy, consistency, lots of creative resources, and  

What is a content strategist?

A content strategist is a person who develops a strategy for promoting the company’s stories. He focuses on content planning, design, development, production, management, analysis, and measurement. Additionally, a Content Strategist is responsible for building the company’s editorial voice and personality and effectively determining channel selection, content needs, and distribution.

What does a content strategist do?

The key responsibilities and tasks of a content strategist include: 

• Defining brand messages for content 
• Establish content management, workflow, and governance 
• Creating and communicating a content value proposition 
• Prioritizing, planning, maintaining, and promoting content for multiple audiences and channels 
• Conducting stakeholder interviews 
• Briefing colleagues and delegating content tasks 
• Creating and working with audience personas 
• Performing content audits 
• Carrying out competitor analysis 
• Identifying opportunities and gaps in content 
• Finding opportunities to reuse and rework existing content 
• Optimizing content with SEO best practices 
• Creating and managing editorial calendars 
• Writing creative briefs and managing writers 
• Editing, proofreading, voice alignment 
• Publishing to content management systems 
• Using analytics tools to track content traffic, leads, and conversions 

What is the role of content strategist on a website?

A content strategist has to brainstorm multiple creative ways of attracting and engaging the audience on the website and produce engaging content. 

Ultimately, a content strategist must ensure website and all the assets it offers aligns with the brand and adds value to existing and prospective clients. The prime aim of an effective content strategist is to drive inbound traffic into the website and encourage the audience to take a profitable business action.  

Moreover, the content strategist must have excellent client understanding, writing skills, and significant SEO knowledge. The strategist must work with the company’s content management system, SEO research software, web analytics platform, and other tools that help the content planning and publication process. 

What is the role of a content strategist on social media?

The role of a content strategist on social media is to plan, write, and edit compelling content; ensure it’s clear, persuasive, and adequately distributed across multiple social platforms; and adhere to brand consistently. 

Other responsibilities of a content strategist to effectively utilize social media are ensuring all brand’s social media accounts have up-to-date content. Furthermore, content strategists must liaise with designers and writers to ensure social media content is appealing and informative. Training internal teams to maintain a cohesive social media strategy and staying up-to-date with advanced digital technologies are essential for a content strategist. A content strategist should also guide teams to effectively utilize several marketing channels, including Facebook marketing, influencer marketing, etc.  

What should a content strategist do to create a reader-friendly blog?

Consequently, a great blog is one of the key sections of the website which helps convert casual visitors to potential leads and loyal customers! 

A content strategist must follow the following 3 steps to create reader-friendly blog content: 

1. Defining the goals

Having a clearly defined goal will make all the other steps and all the hours of writing useful. To define the blog goal, ask these questions to yourself: 

1. Does the brand’s website need to generate traffic, leads and appointment, or increase sales? 
2. Do prospects and customers need to be educated about the products or services? 
3. Does the blog need to attract prospects outside the local area, like clients from overseas?  
4. Should the blog drive foot traffic to the main office or shop? 

It’s essential to choose no more than three objectives for blog content. 

2. Performing market research

To perform market research, ask yourself these questions: 

Where does the potential audience hang out online? 

Certain social media platforms, blogs, Reddit, Facebook groups, forums, etc. 

What are their major challenges at work? 

Maybe they need to find a partner, use a app better, integrate an API, learn new skills, or find funding. 

What sort of articles or content do they enjoy reading? 

Check Google Analytics for your blog engagement, find survey reports and research, talk to customers and prospects. 

The answer to these questions will help strategists perform market research. 

3. Gather topic ideas and keywords

Topics and problems to solve are the bread and butter of a blog content strategy. Without considering them in planning, you will have hard-pressed to getting top ranks on search engines. Without ranking, you’ll have a more challenging time getting consistent traffic. Of course, there’re several other complications like time spent on a page, page load speed, and the number of shares the blog received. But, if you master researching potential keywords, targeting those keywords in the article, and getting potential backlinks, you’ll have a better chance of increasing visibility on Google’s first page of search results. 

Ultimately, keywords are essential but don’t let them stop you from generating valuable content on the topic of your choice! 

Why is a content calendar essential for content strategists?

A content calendar keeps the content strategist on track, allows the rest of the company visibility to plan, and establishes a system to ensure the content is published on time. The best calendars also have channel distribution information, like email marketing info and social sharing baked in to make things easy and organized.  

Furthermore, a content calendar makes the content strategist’s workday less stressful by helping them plan an effective content mix. Content strategists know that sticking to a regular schedule is crucial, so fans and followers know what to expect. Besides that, planning content ahead of time allows content strategists to check the work and create a safety net in the workflow. Fact-checking, copy-editing, and clearing content with the company’s stakeholders are much easier when organized and using a regular cadence. It also prevents everything from little embarrassing mistakes, such as minor typos all the way up to a piece that accidentally depositions company messages or products. 

Is there any difference between content strategists and content writers?

A content strategist doesn’t always have to be a content writer and vice versa. Like an interior designer, a content strategist takes all the haphazard décor and crazy ideas and brings them to fruition. They help brands see the end goal, create the overall vision and plan the content.  

However, content writers are the wordsmiths brands and content strategists turn to for building a brand. They do research and storytelling with their words and build a relationship with the readers. They provide thoughtful content to establish a brand as a leader in the industry and educational material that drives traffic to the blog.  

What’s the key for content strategists to maximize a brand’s sales?

Content strategists have all the plans in place from building brand awareness to maximizing sales. They need content writers to connect with the audience, designers, and editors to add life to the website and social media content with appealing visuals. However, when it’s high time to make a sale, content strategists need persuasive writers (copywriters) that encourage customers to take action.  

A copywriter is a key for a content strategist to entice a visitor to become a loyal customer. With the correct content strategy, a copywriter will be able to write captivating copy, including social media, ad content, the website’s landing page content, and other marketing materials meant to generate interest in purchasing the product or service. They might also write technical documents, emails, or product descriptions, but the main goal is always to sell, be it a product, a service, an idea, or anything else. 

How Milestone can help with content strategy

Milestone provides content and SEO services for customers who use the Milestone CMS and for ones that use 3^rd party CMses. A content program involves a content audit, a content gap analysis, and can include schema gap analysis, and entity optimization. Milestone can produce the strategy and the content to help businesses increase organic traffic and results. 

Final thoughts on the content strategist

While the responsibilities of a content strategist vary according to the context, the aim is always to provide value to the audience. Whether it’s strong content, text, images, or marketing material to spread brand awareness and steer potential leads toward a conversion. 

Milestone increases acquisition by enhancing digital experience and increasing content visibility. Contact us at sales@milestoneinternet.com or call us at 408-200-2211.