The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Content Marketing Strategy

The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Content Marketing Strategy

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9 min read
Mar 19, 2024
Contributors: Christine Skopec and Connor Lahey
Table of contents

Content marketing is a type of marketing that involves creating and sharing valuable content with your audience.

It’s one of the most effective ways to grow your business—when done well.

And if you want to be successful, you need a solid content marketing strategy.

In this guide, we’ll teach you how to create one. But first, let’s start with the basics.

What Is a Content Marketing Strategy?

A content marketing strategy is a plan for creating and sharing content that appeals to your target audience. And helps you achieve your business goals.

You might assume that creating a content marketing strategy is complex. But that doesn’t have to be the case. It just needs the right elements.

At a high level, it should at least include the following information:

• Specific goals (i.e., what exactly you want to achieve with your content)
• Audience insights (i.e., who your content is for)
• Content types (i.e., what kinds of content you’ll create)
• Promotion plan (i.e., how you’ll distribute your content)

For example, let’s say you’re making a content marketing strategy for a website in the health and fitness niche.

Your goal might be to get a certain percentage increase in relevant traffic from search engines. The audience could be young individuals who want to lose weight and/or stay fit. The content types may include blog posts and videos relating to workout plans and diet.

And to promote this content, you might distribute it via your email newsletter, your social media channels, and your website—to draw visitors through SEO (i.e., ranking in search engines).

Why Have a Content Marketing Strategy?

Without a guiding strategy, content marketing efforts can feel haphazard. But a well-defined strategy has several benefits:

• It aligns your content with business goals. So you don’t waste resources creating something that has no value for your company.
• It helps you get stakeholder support. You can communicate the value of your content marketing efforts to management and senior leadership. And get their buy-in.
• It streamlines your content creation and distribution process. You can plan, publish, and promote your content more efficiently and effectively.
• It enables you to analyze and optimize your results over time. You can measure and track your content performance so you can adjust your strategy as needed to achieve your goals.

And make sure it’s documented. Because our State of Content Marketing report shows there’s a correlation between success and having a documented content marketing strategy.

Now, let’s see how to actually create a content strategy.

8 Steps to Creating a Successful Content Marketing Strategy

Below, we’ll cover how to create a content marketing strategy for your business.

1. Set a Goal

The first step of formulating any content marketing strategy is to define a goal.

What do you want to achieve with your content?

Your goal will shape everything about your strategy, so make sure it’s clear upfront.

Potential goals could include:

• Establish yourself as a thought leader in your niche
• Increase traffic from search engines by 50% over the next year
• Achieve 30% year-on-year sales growth
• Improve customer retention by 20%
• Get 1,000 new backlinks (links from other sites pointing to your pages) in the next six months

Continuing from the previous content strategy example, let’s say your goal is to increase traffic from search engines by 50%.

2. Understand Your Audience

With your content goal(s) defined, the next critical step is to understand the target audience you’re trying to attract.

You can create the most mind-blowing content in the world, but it could be practically worthless if it doesn’t resonate with the right people.

To know your audience, you need to answer questions like:

• Who are they? Go beyond just basic demographics to their deeper beliefs, values, fears, and aspirations.
• What are their biggest pain points, challenges, and problems related to your products/services?
• Where do they spend time online? And which information sources do they trust most?
• What types of content capture their attention and compel them to take action?

Don’t rely on assumptions or guesswork here. You need real data from surveys, interviews, and other audience research tactics.

Use Semrush’s One2Target tool to gather some of these insights.

To get started, open the tool, enter at least one competitor website, and click “Analyze.”

In the “Demographics” tab, you’ll see the audience’s age and gender information.

This can help you tailor your tone and language to what might appeal most to that specific demographic.

In the “Socioeconomics” tab, you’ll find the audience’s household size, income level, employment situation, and education. Which can help you adjust your content to their lifestyle.

And in the “Behavior” tab, you’ll get insights into the audience’s online behavior. Meaning which social media platforms they use and the types of websites they visit.

This can help you decide which platforms to share your content on.

Looking at the overall research data, here’s some of what we learned about our audience for a health and fitness website:

• The majority of the audience is young individuals between 18 and 34 years old, with three to four people in their household and relatively low incomes
• Most work full-time and show a strong preference for video content on YouTube, as well as written material like blog posts from online publications
• They’re also active on social media sites such as Reddit, Facebook, and Instagram

3. Choose Your Content Types

The next step is to choose the content types you’ll focus on.

There are lots of content types you can choose from:

• Blog posts
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Ebooks
• Infographics

How do you know which ones are the best?

Both your goals and your audience insights should inform your choices.

Using our same example from before, we’re going to focus on blog posts and videos. Because they align with our goal of increasing our traffic from search engines.

Plus, our audience research showed a preference for those two content formats. Our intended audience likes to consume video content on YouTube and read blog posts from online publications.

4. Find Topic Ideas to Cover

Now, it’s time to discover the specific topics you’ll create content around.

If you’re focused on blog posts, you need to choose topics that have high search demand. Otherwise, you won’t get organic (unpaid) traffic to your site—which is one of our main goals for this strategy.

To find topics, use Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool.

Open the tool, enter a broad term related to your niche, and click “Search.”

Then, go to the “Questions” tab.

And the tool will display topic ideas in the form of questions.

For each keyword, you’ll see detailed insights such as how popular the topic is (search volume) and how difficult it is to rank for it in Google (keyword difficulty).

We’ll explain how to use this information to pick the best topics later. But now, let’s quickly see how to find topic ideas for YouTube videos that can drive views, engagement, and eventually website traffic.

To find these topics, use the Keyword Analytics for YouTube app.

Open the tool, enter a broad term related to your niche in the search bar, and click “Search.”

You’ll see lots of topic ideas.

In addition to topic ideas, the tool also displays the top videos associated with each topic on the right-hand side of the screen.

This feature provides a clear view of what successful content in your niche looks like.

Understanding this helps you create similar (or even better) content.

5. Prioritize Topics with High Potential

You now probably have hundreds of topic ideas at your disposal. But which ones should you pursue first?

Let your goal guide your choices. Continuing from the previous example, our goal is focused on getting more traffic from search engines.

So, we’ll need to prioritize topics that receive a fair number of monthly searches.

The Keyword Magic Tool organizes topics by this criterion by default.

But make sure the topics you choose are within your ranking capabilities. Meaning, they shouldn’t be too difficult for you to rank for.

Take a look at the “KD %” column to gauge the difficulty of ranking for each topic on Google. The higher the percentage, the tougher the competition.

Apply the same logic when selecting topics for YouTube videos. Our Keyword Analytics for YouTube app gives you the important metrics to make the right choices.

And when you’re ready, you can easily export these topics using the export button.

6. Create a Content Calendar

Now that you’ve prioritized your topics, it’s time to put everything in a content calendar.

A content calendar is a document that helps you plan, coordinate, and execute your content strategy. It records all the details of your upcoming content, such as the:

• Topic and title
• Owner
• Content type
• Status (writing, recording, editing, etc.)
• Due date

Maintaining a calendar like this helps you ensure consistency in your content publishing. And keeps you on track with your goals.

Also, make sure to define roles and responsibilities for your team members. So everyone knows what they need to do and when they need to do it.

You can use something as simple as Google Sheets to create a content calendar. Or you can use tools like Trello, Asana, or Basecamp if you need something more sophisticated.

7. Promote Your Content

Your content strategy should have a clear plan for distributing and amplifying your content to reach your target audience.

Here are a few content promotion strategies:

• Email marketing: Use your email list to notify your subscribers about your new content and encourage them to engage with it
• Social media: Use your social media platforms to share your content with your followers and drive engagement.
• Paid advertising: If you have the budget, you can also use Google ads and/or Meta advertising solutions to boost your content’s visibility and reach more people
• Content syndication: Share your content on third-party sites (like Medium) to tap into new audiences
• Public relations(PR): Utilize PR tactics to get your content featured in media outlets and publications that your target audience trusts
• Influencer marketing: Partner with influencers (famous bloggers and/or social media personalities) to share your content
• Search engine optimization (SEO): Optimize your content so it starts ranking higher in search results

Not every tactic will make sense for every business. And the promotion channels you prioritize should align with your goals, audience preferences (i.e., where your audience is actively consuming content), and budget.

For example, our audience research showed that for a health and fitness website, the primary audience frequently uses YouTube and other social media platforms like Reddit, Facebook, and Instagram. And they also read blog posts from online publications.

So social media, paid advertising, SEO, influencer marketing, and PR have to be our main focus when distributing content.

8. Monitor Your Performance

A good content marketing strategy doesn’t end with creating and promoting content. It’s also important to continuously measure the impact of your strategy.

This will help you see if your content is working toward your goals. And if you need to make any changes to improve your performance.

The specific metrics you track will depend on your goal.

For example, you can use Google Analytics to measure your traffic performance. This is the most widely used tool for tracking traffic data.

For YouTube, you can use YouTube Analytics to see how your videos perform.

To track Google rankings for each of your main keywords, use the Position Tracking tool.

Open the tool, type your domain name, and click “Set up tracking.”

In the “Targeting” section, configure your tracking preferences by choosing a search engine, device, location, and language.

Then, proceed by clicking “Continue To Keywords.”

Input the keywords you wish to monitor into the text box and add them to your campaign with a simple click on “Add keywords to campaign.”

Then, initiate the tracking process by selecting “Start Tracking.”

Now, the tool will maintain a continuous watch over your keyword rankings.

Regularly review your performance data to identify what’s working well and what needs improvement. And make adjustments based on your findings.

Start Crafting Your Content Marketing Strategy

You just learned how to create and execute a content strategy.

Now, it’s time to put these steps into practice. And start creating your own strategy.

Throughout the process, Semrush tools and data will help you effectively execute your strategy.

Try them for free. And see the difference they can make for your content marketing results.

10 Effective Content Marketing Tips & Strategies

Boost your content marketing with 10 proven strategies. Learn how to create, optimize, and promote content that drives traffic and engagement.

Alex Chris Updated March 13, 2025

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Table of Contents

• 1. Create a Content Calendar
• 2. Get To Know Your Audience
• 3. Publish Evergreen Content
• 4. Write For Users
• 5. Build Content Hubs
• 6. Publish Compelling Content
• 7. Optimize Your Content
• 8. Publish Content Consistently
• 9. Use Different Content Types
• 10. Promote your content
• Conclusion

Table of Contents

• 1. Create a Content Calendar
• 2. Get To Know Your Audience
• 3. Publish Evergreen Content
• 4. Write For Users
• 5. Build Content Hubs
• 6. Publish Compelling Content
• 7. Optimize Your Content
• 8. Publish Content Consistently
• 9. Use Different Content Types
• 10. Promote your content
• Conclusion

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Have you ever wondered what is the driving force behind successful online businesses? It’s not SEO or social networks, but it’s Content Marketing. When done right, content marketing can change any website’s fade.

Follow our 10 content marketing tips below and boost your rankings and traffic.

1. Create a Content Calendar

A successful content marketing campaign starts with a well-structured plan, and that begins with a content calendar. A content calendar helps you organize, schedule, and manage your content creation process effectively. Without a clear plan, your content efforts can become inconsistent, making it harder to engage your audience and achieve your marketing goals.

A well-maintained content calendar ensures consistency, which is key to building audience trust and improving SEO. When you plan ahead, you can focus on creating high-quality content rather than rushing to publish something last-minute.

Use tools like Google Calendar, Trello, or Notion to organize your schedule, assign tasks, and track deadlines. By staying organized, you’ll not only save time but also maximize the effectiveness of your content marketing strategy.

2. Get To Know Your Audience

Effective content marketing starts with understanding who your audience is and what they need. If you don’t know who you’re creating content for, your efforts may not generate the engagement or conversions you expect.

Before you start writing, take the time to research your target audience’s demographics, interests, challenges, and preferences. The better you understand them, the more relevant and valuable your content will be.

Start by analyzing your existing audience using tools like Google Analytics, social media reports, and customer surveys. Analyze their age, location, browsing behavior, and the type of content they engage with the most.

Use AI tools like ChatGPT to create buyer personas. These personas should include details like job roles, key motivations, goals, and preferred channels.

Once you have a clear picture of your audience, tailor your content to address their specific needs and interests. Speak their language, answer their questions, and provide solutions to their problems.

3. Publish Evergreen Content

For long-term success in content marketing, you must focus on creating evergreen content. This is content that remains relevant and valuable over time.

Unlike trending topics, which have a short lifespan, evergreen content continues to attract traffic and engage readers long after it’s published.

• It’s unique and original.
• It’s useful.
• It’s always relevant (not associated with a specific time period but it’s relevant whenever you read it)
• It is thorough, detailed, and informative.
• It is searchable – it covers topics users search for on Google

Examples of evergreen content include how-to guides, ultimate resource lists, frequently asked questions (FAQs), case studies, and beginner’s guides.

For example, an article titled “How to Optimize Your Website for SEO (Step-by-Step Guide)” will remain relevant for years, whereas “Top SEO Trends for 2024” will quickly become outdated.

Evergreen content will help you establish a solid online presence and, over time, build high rankings on Google, which in turn will get you more traffic.

4. Write For Users

I know it sounds cliché, but it’s true: you should write for users first and optimize for search engines second. A successful content strategy balances both.

If you create content purely for search engines, you risk publishing content that lacks depth, originality, and engagement. On the other hand, if you write without considering SEO, your content may never reach its intended audience.

Search engines exist to serve users by delivering the most relevant and valuable content. But for search engines to recognize your content’s value, it must also be structured and optimized properly. This means using clear headings, relevant keywords, internal links, and a well-organized format that is easy for both users and search engines to understand.

The best approach? Write content to satisfy the search intent of the user and THEN optimize it for search engines.

Related Guide: Read my previous guide on content SEO to learn how to optimize your content for search engines.

5. Build Content Hubs

When publishing content on your website or blog, ensure it is relevant to your niche and area of expertise. While this might seem obvious, many content creators make the mistake of posting unrelated content just because they find it interesting or because it has a high search volume.

For example, if you run a tech blog, posting about cooking recipes won’t add value to your audience or help with SEO. In fact, publishing off-topic or low-quality content can negatively impact your site’s rankings.

With Google’s Helpful Content Update (HCU) and core algorithm updates, content irrelevant to your niche or not providing real value to users may be seen as unhelpful, leading to lower rankings or even penalties.

The best approach is to structure your content around related topics that support your business goals. This is where content hubs, topic clusters, and pillar pages come into play.

A content hub is a well-organized collection of related articles that interlink to cover a subject comprehensively. Pillar pages serve as the primary, in-depth guide on a broad topic, while cluster content consists of smaller, focused articles that dive deeper into subtopics.

For example, if you sell coffee makers online, your website shouldn’t just have product listings. You should create a pillar page about “The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Best Coffee Maker” and then build supporting articles like “How to Clean a Coffee Maker,” “Best Coffee Beans for Espresso Machines,” and “How Water Quality Affects Coffee Taste.”

All of these articles should link back to the main pillar page, strengthening your site’s authority and improving SEO.

6. Publish Compelling Content

To succeed in content marketing, you need to learn how to create compelling, high-quality content that stands out. With so much online content, only the best, most helpful pieces will attract attention, generate shares, and rank well on search engines.

One key factor that makes content valuable is content depth. Studies show that long-form content (1,500+ words) performs better in search results and is more shareable on social media.

Rather than publishing content targeting a single keyword, focus on creating well-researched content that covers a topic in depth.

However, long content alone isn’t enough—it also needs to be engaging, visually appealing, and aligned with audience preferences. For example, fashion-related content benefits from more images and videos, while technical topics may require in-depth explanations and step-by-step guides.

To make your content more shareable and attractive, consider formats that work well across different niches, such as:

• Top 10 lists…
• Best-of lists…
• How to …
• 10 ways to…
• Most popular ways…
• Best tips for…

Also, remember that for your content to perform well, it must be better than your competitors.

Before creating your content, search Google, Facebook, and Twitter (or the network closest to your target audience) and analyze what type of content ranks highest.

Notice content length, type, quality, and format, and try to make your content better in all aspects.

Content that is not better than what is already ranked on Google cannot get high rankings.

So, spending more time improving the content is better than rushing to hit the publish button and lose your time.

7. Optimize Your Content

Creating great content is only half the battle—you also need to optimize it to rank well on search engines and reach the right audience.

Here are some basic content optimization steps you should follow:

Use relevant keywords naturally – Find the words and phrases people are searching for and include them in your title, headings, and throughout your content.

Write a compelling title and meta description – Your title should be clear and attention-grabbing, while your meta description should encourage clicks.

Use proper headings (H1, H2, H3, etc.) – Headings make your content easy to read and help search engines understand its structure.

Add internal and external links – Link to other useful pages on your site (internal links) and trusted sources (external links) to provide more value and improve SEO.

Optimize images – Use descriptive filenames and alt text (alternative text) for images so that search engines can understand them. This also improves accessibility.

Make your content easy to read – Use short paragraphs, bullet points, and visuals to improve readability.

8. Publish Content Consistently

Besides providing up-to-date and accurate content, another tip you can follow is to make sure that you keep a consistent publishing schedule.

Having a pre-defined publishing calendar will help you organize your time better and build a list of loyal fans.

Do not forget that new content is also an incentive for:

• Search engines to visit your website.
• Get more visits from your newsletter and RSS feed.
• Get more visits from social media.
• Keep your repeating visitors happy.

9. Use Different Content Types

Many people associate content marketing primarily with blogging, but it goes far beyond that. While blogging is a crucial component, content marketing includes various formats like videos, podcasts, infographics, case studies, and social media posts.

Some users prefer reading long-form articles, while others engage more with videos, podcasts, infographics, or interactive content. Using a mix of formats can create a more engaging and well-rounded content strategy.

Here are some content types to consider:

• Blog posts & articles – Great for in-depth information, SEO, and long-term traffic.
• Videos – Highly engaging and perfect for social media and YouTube.
• Podcasts – Ideal for audiences who prefer audio content.
• Infographics – Visually appealing and easy to share.
• Case studies – Show real-world success stories and build credibility.
• Social media content – Short-form posts, carousels, and reels help attract attention quickly.

Remember to repurpose your content. For example, if you publish a blog post, turn it into a short video summary, create an infographic for Pinterest, and discuss key takeaways on a podcast episode. Repurposing content across different formats not only saves time but also helps you maximize its impact.

10. Promote your content

Don’t expect your potential customers to search for your website, visit it, and buy your products.

When you publish a new piece of content, you need to promote it so that it gets the attention it deserves.

There are many ways to promote your content without exaggerating or taking risks, so the next step after hitting the publish button is to do a good promotion.

Here are some ideas to consider:

• Share on social media – Post your content on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, adjusting your message for each audience.
• Leverage email marketing – Send your latest content to your email subscribers with a compelling subject line.
• Engage in online communities – Share your content in relevant Facebook Groups, Reddit threads, or industry forums (without spamming).
• Use influencer marketing – Reach out to industry influencers who might find your content valuable and encourage them to share it.
• Run paid ads – Boost content using Facebook Ads, Google Ads, or LinkedIn Ads for more visibility.
• Build backlinks – Reach out to other websites and blogs in your niche, offering guest posts or asking them to reference your content.
• Use internal linking – Link to your new content from older, high-performing blog posts to drive traffic to it.

Conclusion

Content marketing is important for all types of businesses. The benefits of content marketing are numerous, and recent studies have shown that a large percentage of people (more than 70%) prefer reading articles about a company rather than reading advertorials.

When designing your content marketing strategy, you must find the right balance between content creation, user satisfaction, and conversions.

About the author

Alex Chris is a digital marketing consultant, author, and instructor. He has more than 18 years of practical experience with SEO and digital marketing. Alex holds an MSc Degree in eCommerce and has consulted with Fortune 500 companies in different industries. He blogs regularly about SEO and Digital marketing, and his work has been referenced by leading marketing websites. Connect with Alex on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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