Don’t Shelve Your Content Strategy

You’ll often hear those of us at Chartwell Agency preaching the important role content plays in marketing and communications strategies.

Really – in just a quick search of our website, you can find us blogging about it here and there and here.

Good content should be the foundation of everything you do, from websites to advertising to marketing collateral. Content in our industry is most often communicated through blogs, articles, press releases, messaging, social media posts and case studies.

After a coworker mentioned she’d gone back to an old blog of mine about a series of cell phone commercials, I started wondering about the shelf life of content. When we’re talking about the shelf life of a website, estimates in our ever-changing digital world show anywhere from three to five years. But as far as content, part of shelf life is determined on how you approach it and what you do with it.

Keep using keywords. Has it been a while since you’ve logged into your Google Analytics? Find (or reset) your password and log in to see where visitors are going on your website and what they’re searching to find you. Integrate those words into your content to frontload your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.

Promote it. Once you’ve created your content, you have to promote it. Do you have a news section on your website without an update in a while? That’s an easy place to help visitors to your website see what’s happening and see that you care enough to regularly update your site. Also, make sure to promote your content on your social media platforms and engage with your readers/customers/clients as they engage with what you’ve created. Most organizations don’t have to churn out new content all day every day – you can repurpose content as needed, but beware of too much repetition or getting stuck in a rut.

Consider digital advertising. In a perfect world, a strong content strategy would organically rank your website first/high on search engines such as Google and bring in enough leads to keep you busy. So many factors – namely, competition – make investing in digital marketing a necessary strategy in today’s world. The good news is digital is a highly trackable way to use content to reach your audience. Check out some of the success our clients have had using digital advertising.

As is often the case, these are just a few tips to keep in mind when developing your content strategy. If said strategy doesn’t exist or is collecting dust on the office shelf, we can help keep you on track.