What is a Content Strategist?

Good day, my SEO comrades! I hope all is well with you today. People who come to Search Engine Academy courses want to know what content strategists do. In SEO, content marketing is fairly new, and when done right, it works. But I will say this–don’t expect instant miracles, because that’s not what content and SEO are all about.

Content marketing is when you create content that is informative and relevant to your target audience. You create and share content to keep your current customers loyal to you and to engage potential clients. OK, got that part.

Now…what the heck do we really mean?

The Basics of SEO Content Marketing

You have to figure out what your target audience really wants to hear from you relative to your business services and products. You create a plan to make useful, unique, original content that’s interesting to them. You figure out which ways you’re going to publish that content (on your site? on another’s for link building as well?), and you use the relevant social media channels that your audience uses.

So, how do you know what your target market needs to read or view? Well, ask your sales staff. Hell, ask your customers and prospects. Got FAQs? Those are a great start for creating new content.

Run a survey. Do a poll. Do some research and find out what’s trending in your business area.

Once you’ve gotten some ideas, do some keyword research using phrases that support each topic or concern, and see if you can find some phrases that will help your content rank well.

Suppose you run a site that sells different kinds of headsets. You offer reviews, provide affiliate links to the products and let your readers post reviews and ratings. Cool!

I just did some very fast and dirty keyword research and look what popped up with about 30 seconds of hard work, bwahahahaha!!!

The first column on the left side is the approximate number of searches done in the last full calendar month–July 2013. The far right hand column is the approximate number of pages that have the keyword phrase in anchor text and title text. (Forget the middle column, that’s a relative interest scale.) Those numbers are very doable, don’t you think so?

I’d create some unique, useful content around those phrases. Then, I’d promote those pages on social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus. If I wanted to provide an article on another blog to get a link back to mine, I’m sure one of these keyword phrases could be used to develop an article proposal.

Creating a SEO content marketing strategy, depending upon your target market, isn’t hard. It’s doing the heavy lifting of creating the content constantly.

You need to decide:

• Are you going to do it yourself?
• If so, where are you going to get the time to create content and publish at least 3 times per week?
• Do you have a budget to hire a writer?
• If so, how can you get a writer who will send you first drafts that are at least 80% correct?

These are some of the questions and answers you’ll want to come up with. If it makes you feel any better, I’m right here with you in the same process–figure out what skills you need for your content workflow, feed the site constantly, and don’t forget to post published content!

And remember…promote your content in your newsletter as well as your blog, and legitimate content is also podcasts, webinars and videos!

Until next time…stay between the ditches, my SEO friends.

All the best to you,