How To Create An Authentic Content Strategy To Drive Business Objectives

People are increasingly turning to brands and businesses for their information, begging the question: Do you have a content strategy in place that provides value and breeds trust? At its core, your content strategy should aim to transform your business objectives and goals into a plan that leverages content into a means of authentically connecting with your audience. Let’s break down exactly what that looks like.

What your content strategy should be... and what it shouldn’t

A real, effective content strategy prioritizes delivering value to the consumer before requesting value in return. Simply put, content strategy leverages storytelling to bridge and fortify a bond between brand and customer through content engagement.

The result is an authentic, engagement-based value exchange built on trust and advocacy. Consumers are acutely fantastic at sniffing out inauthenticity, and their trust, once lost, is hard to regain. All successful content strategies share three important commonalities:

• Authenticity. It’s not just what you say. It’s how you say it with a consistent brand voice in a meaningful way that resonates with your customers.
• Brand Identity & Values. What is the “je nai se quois” that makes your brand your  brand? Your content must be imbued with the qualities, vision and core values that make your brand unique and valuable to the consumer.
• Discourse. Successful content strategies act as a two-way value exchange and communication pathway between business and consumer. Whatever you call it, the most effective content strategies take into account and incorporate the customer voice, opinions and feedback.

Creating an authentic content strategy

Developing - or even adjusting - a content strategy aligned with authenticity and advocacy  might seem mountainous, but it doesn’t have to be. Do a content audit to understand what you’re working with, outline your objectives and then put together a strategy that makes sense for your brand.

Here are a few steps to help get you started.

1. Do a content audit.
2. Take a look at your existing content and determine what’s working and what’s not. Utilize a content analytics tool to quickly get insights into your top and bottom performing content for easy reference during planning.
3. Develop a plan that ties content to actionable business goals.
4. Align your brand’s vision, mission and content with clear business objectives. Determine if your current content matches these goals, and if not, decide what can be repurposed and what you’ll need to develop from scratch.  
5. Be honest.
6. Be honest about your brand identity, your purpose and the value you deliver to your customer. Translate those values into developing content that speaks to and connects with your customer.
7. Determine your content executions.
8. Use your business goals to decide your execution strategy. These likely differ based on where your goals sit in the marketing funnel. A few examples:
9. If your goal is to increase brand awareness, try developing short form video content (think 30 seconds or less) that can be viewed and understood without sound.
10. If your goal is to increase consideration, focus on long-form content that engages readers and provides them with demonstrable value.
11. If your goal is to drive conversions, rely on short-form content with a strong CTA or offer that encourages a sale.
12. Include a distribution strategy.
13. A classic mistake most brands make is neglecting to integrate a distribution plan into their content strategy. If you create content, but no one sees it, did you even make it at all? Technically yes, but you get the point. Pro tip: A lot of your existing content can be easily scaled across the open web using Nativo’s ad formats.
14. Work smarter, not harder.
15. Content is an investment, and like any good investment, it shouldn’t be wasted. When creating new content, always think through how it can be reused and repurposed. For example, consider repurposing TikTok assets into a Stories execution through Nativo for increased scale.
16. Test, test and test again.

Optimize and refine your content as you go. It’s the best way to learn.

That’s it! You just created your content strategy.

If you followed the steps outlined above, chances are you just developed a top-notch content strategy focused on trust, authenticity and providing genuine value to your audience. A few (bonus) tips:

• Don’t overstep. Know where you are the expert, and more importantly, know where you aren’t.
• Be consistent and persistent with your content. Ensure that your site, thought leadership, blog and marketing are imbued with your brand voice and content strategy.
• Be agile and adapt. When it comes to content, learn what works and lean into it. If something isn’t working, pivot to what is.