Content Strategy: What Is It & How to Create One (2025)

By now, you know content is key to promoting your business and building authority, trust, and credibility with prospective customers. Marketers understand this too.

But here’s the thing: Successful content creation doesn’t happen by chance. It requires a well-thought-out content creation strategy that aligns with your goals, engages your audience, focuses on quality content, and measures its impact.

Learning how to make a content strategy that works for your business will help ensure you get a strong return on investment and start seeing results.

If you want to learn about the essential components of crafting an effective content strategy, I’ve got the answers in this guide.

Key Takeaways

• Developing a comprehensive content creation strategy ensures marketing departments use resources efficiently and effectively to plan and optimize their efforts. The different components include defining your goals and understanding your audience.
• Defining the goals for a content strategy can indicate the types of content businesses should focus on. 
• Researching audiences to understand the content topics and formats they are most likely to engage with is critical in a content creation strategy. 
• In addition to creating content, marketers need to focus on how to distribute it and how to measure its effectiveness, including the revenue it brings in. 

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What Is a Content Strategy?
• Step 1: Define Your Goals for Your Content Strategy
• Step #2: Research Your Audience for Your Content Strategy
• Step 3: Analyze Your Competition
• Step 4: Run a Content Audit
• Step 5: Brainstorm Content Topics and Formats
• Step 6: Build a Content Calendar and Publish
• Step 7: Amplify Your Content Strategy
• Step 8: Measure Your Results for Your Content Strategy
  • 1. Consumption Metrics
  • 2. Social Sharing Metrics
  • 3. Lead Metrics
  • 4. Sales Metrics
• Step 9: Listen to Your Customers to Improve Your Content Strategy
• FAQs
• Conclusion

What Is a Content Strategy?

A content creation strategy is a detailed plan for creating, distributing, managing, and measuring the effect of marketing content designed to appeal to prospective customers across all stages of the marketing funnel. 

Key elements of a successful content marketing strategy framework are:

• Defining the goals and objectives.
• Deciding on content types.
• Conducting audience and keyword research with content marketing tools.
• Selecting the platforms where you’ll share your content. 

While the ultimate goal is to get more traffic and convert users, marketers use content strategies to spread awareness of products or services, cultivate trust, and build up brand authority. Of course, it should also help you achieve your business goals, like getting more clients or better brand recognition.

Step 1: Define Your Goals for Your Content Strategy

Great content isn’t created just to get views and clicks: You create it for a specific purpose. 

Some of those reasons could be increasing brand awareness, bringing in new customers, attracting past customers, or increasing sales. You could be doing it for several reasons—or even all of them. 

For instance, long-form, heavily researched content like case studies and white papers might be of little use in converting users at the top of the sales funnel. However, it’s valuable for building authority and converting users closer to the bottom of the funnel. On the other hand, short SEO-optimized blog posts could help boost brand awareness and organic lead generation, effectively engaging users at the top of the funnel and driving them toward further interaction with your brand.

Defining your goals is vital when developing a content creation strategy. 

For example, if you’re an e-commerce fashion brand looking for new customers, create engaging content for social media ads and email newsletter campaigns that promote a discount for first-time buyers. You can turn this into a SMART goal with something like this: 

• Specific: Run a set of TikTok ads and send out three emails. 
• Measurable: Use unique discount codes and analyze click-through rates to measure conversions.
• Achievable: Targeting the right demographics and using the right platform. For example, regular TikTok ads and personalized emails to your audience.
• Relevant: Ensure the content aligns with customer acquisition. For example, send emails with the subject line “Top 5 Winter Looks You’ll Love.”
• Time-bound: Set a deadline for getting new customers and decide what you’ll do at each stage. For example, you could start with pre-launch teaser ads and emails for a few days, focus on getting testimonials and user-generated content, and then use a limited-edited CTA to complete a month-long campaign.

Step #2: Research Your Audience for Your Content Strategy

Before you create a content strategy, consider this: It will only be effective once you know who your target audience is. You’ll need to research their age, location, interests, the kind of content they already engage with, and which social media platforms they are on. These are all important details you can use in your content planning. 

Source: Interact

The best way to do this? By creating a customer persona.

Understanding your audience, their behavior, preferences, and pain points will help you narrow down your content strategy and which channels to target. For example, case studies can illustrate the value of B2B software solutions for businesses. Younger people tend to gravitate toward TikTok and Instagram on social media, while older users are more likely to use Facebook and LinkedIn. 

As a starting point, use data from Google Analytics GA and your social media channels to get insights based on your followers’ demographics and interests (their buying patterns and preferred platforms, etc.). Industry and marketing reports can also be valuable resources.

Step 3: Analyze Your Competition

Researching competitor content can provide valuable insights to jump-start your content creation strategy. 

Identify four or five of your biggest competitors and analyze their content. Explore their topics, formats (such as blog posts, videos, or social media posts), and the frequency with which they publish content. 

Investigate which topics and formats get the most engagement in terms of comments and shares, and analyze which topics they are (or aren’t) covering. Read user comments to understand the appeal. 

When you use competitor analysis, you can also look at:

• Likes and shares to understand engagement and what resonates.
• Content gaps.
• What isn’t working, or what mistakes they’re making.
• Their keyword and marketing strategy.

Use tools like Ubersuggest to analyze their keyword and content strategies. You can use your findings to target similar keywords and topics. You can also use it to research what content topics your competitors have written about.

I used Grubhub in this example to find keyword gaps. The results show keywords the competition ranks for, but Grubhub doesn’t.

Finally, don’t forget to consider things like voice and tone. Are competitors using humor to connect with users? Or perhaps they are taking a more serious and professional approach.  

Step 4: Run a Content Audit

A content audit helps you identify gaps, refresh outdated content, and repurpose existing assets. For example, an old blog post might be updated with new statistics, or a webinar recording can be repackaged into a blog post.  

You can also use a content audit to understand:

• Content performance: Which pieces are gaining traffic, engagement, and conversions, and which need updating or removal?
• New SEO opportunities: Refresh content with new keyword targets and fill keyword gaps. 
• Assessing content: Analyzing for relevance, accuracy, and freshness and deciding if content needs refreshing.
• Content duplication: Finding content you can merge or delete to avoid content or keyword cannibalization.
• Search intent: Determining if the content meets the user’s search intent and realigning content if needed.

To conduct an audit, create a spreadsheet to inventory every piece of content by type. This can include web pages, blog posts, social media posts, emails and newsletters, and documents and media. Organize them by format. 

You can then create columns for the topic or theme, who the intended audience is, and what stage the content is for (i.e., awareness, decision-making, etc.). 

Analyze the performance to see which types of content did well based on your goals. This can help guide your efforts moving forward. 

Step 5: Brainstorm Content Topics and Formats

Based on what you’ve learned from completing the above steps, you should have enough information to develop a well-crafted content creation strategy that aligns with your business goals, resonates with your audience, and integrates with your SEO strategy and keyword targets.

With your goals already determined, you can start brainstorming ideas to resonate with your audience, build brand awareness, and attract new customers. 

To achieve this, use the methods I’ve described so far. For example, use your customer persona to attract your ideal customers, Then, fill content gaps using your audit and competitor analysis. Next, integrate this with your SEO strategy to develop keyword targets based on your findings from the steps above.

Finally, figure out which format is most appropriate based on the topic and the audience. For example, The Metropolitan Museum in New York’s guide targets art lovers and consumers keen to learn more through its educational classes and lessons:

The Met also creates Gift Guides for buyers.

Step 6: Build a Content Calendar and Publish

Developing a content strategy is one thing, but keeping everything on track can be a struggle. That’s why you’ll want a content calendar. A calendar gives you a space to plan, brainstorm, and schedule content, improving consistency. It also helps you stay aligned with your goals, increasing your chances of success.

Map out your content planning for the next three or six months. Create a calendar to organize schedules and deadlines. Consider creating content around holidays, anniversaries, seasons, and other events to meet your audience’s search intent.

Here’s an example of a social media content calendar:

Calendars can help you map out timelines, too. A case study will take longer to create than a blog post, so you might plan to publish shorter content more frequently and larger projects once a month or once a quarter, depending on your resources. 

Step 7: Amplify Your Content Strategy

A sound content marketing strategy framework and targeted content creation are only part of the equation. It’s incomplete unless you get that content in front of your audience.

There are several ways to distribute your content so it gets seen and shared by as many people as possible. You’ve set up your customer personas so you know where your audience is hanging out online. Now, it’s time for the next part.

You could:  

• Post visuals or links to content on social media channels. 
• Collaborate with influencers who can share your content with their audiences. 
• Share content to relevant communities, such as groups on Facebook or LinkedIn (but avoid being pushy and salesy). 
• Use different channels, like email marketing, paid ads, and press releases.
• Reformat content for webinars, infographics, video content, or interactive content, like quizzes.
• Encourage employees to share content on their social media pages.

Ultimately, you’ll need to think strategically to identify all the resources available to you and truly harness the power of employees, customers, and influencers that can help you amplify your content. 

Here’s an example from Search Engine Journal using email to spread the word about its latest post: 

Step 8: Measure Your Results for Your Content Strategy

Successful content marketing means knowing what your audience liked and what they didn’t. You can only understand that if you measure your content marketing strategy results. By measuring key metrics and seeing what’s working, you have cold, hard data to apply to your future content and get better results.

Here are some of the most important metrics to understand. 

1. Consumption Metrics

Consumption metrics can show how audiences interact with your content, highlighting your content strategy’s strengths and weaknesses. 

 Some of the major metrics to pay attention include: 

• Page Views:  In Google Analytics, these show the number of times users see a web page or app screen and include repeated views.

• Engagement Time: This measures how long users actively engage with your content rather than just passive time spent on the page.
• Bounce rate: Bounce rate shows the percentage of sessions that aren’t engaged. For example, they find your page by searching for “easy dinner recipes”, skim read the home page, then leave within a few seconds.

• Downloads and shares determine whether people want to retain the content for future use or find it valuable to share with others. 

With this data, you can find answers to questions like these: Did:

• You craft a blog post that brought a huge traffic spike? 
• Your users spend more time on a particular piece or genre of content? 
• A piece of content garner a lot of comments or shares on social media? 

2. Social Sharing Metrics

Sharing on platforms like social media can be a great metric for judging your audience’s engagement. Ask yourself what type of content gets the most shares, who is sharing, which platforms are involved, and, most importantly, what content is converting. Google Analytics helps you better understand user behavior and measure social media ROI.

You can view data about your social media traffic under Google Analytics’ “Acquisition Report,” which shows organic and paid traffic. 

This report also shows:

• Engaged pages.
• Session duration.
• Number of completed conversions and other relevant social media data.

You can also get data from:

• Built-in analytics on social media platforms that show you how many shares a post gets.
• Adding UTM parameters to content links lets you know which platform users are coming from. 
• Using social media management tools like Hootsuite or SproutSocial. These gather and analyze data from all your social media accounts, all in one place. 

These metrics can be incredibly helpful for content planning. You can use them for insights to tweak your content topics, formats, and the platforms you use to increase social sharing and engagement. 

3. Lead Metrics

If you want to know how well you’re grabbing people’s attention, use GA to track lead generation. We’ve already covered some valuable metrics related to leads, like user engagement and bounce rate, but people interact in other ways, too, such as:

• Clicking a button or link.
• Downloading a free guide.
• Subscribing to a newsletter or a free trial.
• Filling in a form.
• Watching a video.

Understanding what users do to show interest in your website is a good way to define your leads, such as signing up for a free trial. Once you’ve determined what actions signify interest, head over to GA and set up the following metrics to gain insights and enhance your lead generation strategy:

• Conversion tracking (now called ‘Key events’): From the admin dashboard, set up relevant events (like subscribing to a newsletter or clicking a social media link) as conversions. 

• You can also create custom events for actions not inherently tracked in Google Analytics. Go to ‘Admin,’ then ‘Events,’ and make a custom event with your chosen parameters.

• Enhanced measurement: If you want Google Analytics to track user inputs like form interactions or downloads, you’ll need to enable enhanced measurement.

To do this, select the GA property you want to configure, navigate to the ‘Admin’ gear icon near the bottom left of the screen and click ‘Data Streams.’ Once there, choose the specific data stream to enable enhanced measurement, open the data stream settings for that property, then toggle on automatic tracking. 

You can also use GA to set up lead audiences based on user actions to analyze customer journeys and optimize conversions, monitor where your leads are coming from with Acquisition Reports, and use Engagement Reports to identify popular content. 

4. Sales Metrics

For most businesses, content generation should ultimately boost revenue. Therefore, if you have a revenue-based content marketing strategy, you need to measure the revenue generated by your content marketing.

In Google Analytics, you can set up event tracking for actions you want users to take on your content that typically leads to sales, such as downloading a white paper, filling out a form, or other calls to action. To track these, you need to set up event tracking. Google has a detailed tutorial to help you through this stage.

Step 9: Listen to Your Customers to Improve Your Content Strategy

Different phases of the customer journey require different content topics and formats. You’ll need to figure out what types of content will attract users at each stage. In other words, you have to develop the right message at the right time for the right people as part of your content creation strategy.  

By tailoring content to your audience’s needs and preferences, you can get better engagement and improve the user experience. 

One of the best ways to understand what your customers want is through feedback and data. For example, data from your social media accounts and email marketing provider will tell you which content gets engagement, shares, opens, etc. Surveys can then help you hone in on the type of content or formats your customers want more of.

FAQs

What is involved in content strategy?

Creating a content strategy requires considering your goals, researching your audience, analyzing your competitors’ content, and auditing your existing content. It also involves deciding how you will distribute, promote, and measure the effectiveness of your content.

What’s the first step of creating a content strategy?

The first step to creating a content strategy should be to define your goals. This will help guide who your target audience is, what kind of content you want to create, and where you will distribute it. 

What is a content strategy framework?

A content strategy framework is an outline of how you plan to create content. A framework might include your audience, keywords you will target, how often and when you publish content, and who will create the content.

Why is content strategy important?

If you want to rank high in search results, you need quality content. You also need good content, so when people visit your website, they want to convert. Content that doesn’t reflect your audience’s needs or interests won’t be effective.

Conclusion

Creating a great content strategy isn’t rocket science, but it can be quite challenging to implement.  

Following the steps outlined here will help you create an effective content strategy and identify key metrics to help you monitor the performance of your content. Still, expect to go through some trial and error when you start. Once you have a recipe for success, though, all you’ll have to do is rinse and repeat to see the kind of audience loyalty and growth you’ve always dreamed of!