Expert Content Strategy for Business: How to Turn Content into Sales, Not Empty Reach

Creating content with a million views is a goal adhered to by millions of users of social networks, where there are short videos and algorithms that promote them. In this article, I’ll explain why Million View Reels isn’t a sales strategy, and what content helps grow business metrics.

What is a Content Strategy

Content strategy This is a detailed plan for creating, publishing and managing content (texts, videos, pictures). It helps to turn chaotic posts into a tool for achieving commercial goals.

What a content strategy consists of

1. Setting goals and targets The question is, why do businesses need content?
2. Audience analysis For whom the content is created, what problems and pains we solve through content.
3. Positioning - what are the values of the brand, the features of the brand, the differences of the brand from competitors.
4. Tone of Voice (TOV) The style of communication with the audience (for example, strict, cheerful or friendly).
5. Formats and platforms What content to make and where to publish it.
6. Metrics assessment - how to measure results.

How a content strategy differs from a content plan

Content strategy A plan of action for a long period of time (from year to year) that we refer to when creating a piece of content.

Content plan A plan to publish content for a short period of time (from a week to a month). It specifies when we publish content, what format, text and visual we use.

How to Create a Workable Content Strategy

Step 1: Setting goals and objectives

The first step is to set the goal of creating content. It could be:

• Attracting new customers
• Building trust in the brand
• Increased awareness

Next, we must specify the tasks that we will perform in order to reach this goal. For example, if we set the goal of content – to attract new customers, the tasks may be:

1. Creating cross-content with partners (publish a joint post or Reels).
2. Develop interactive formats such as contests and marathons.
3. Creation of lead magnets for sales funnel (writing guides, checklists, creating video lessons, mini-course).

Step 2: Audience analysis

The main goal of target audience analysis (CA) is to understand who your customers are, what their problems are and what will make them make a purchase. Therefore, we need to create a document where we will prescribe the segments of our Central Asia, their pains, desires, objections and our solution to these problems.

For example, one of the segments of my agency “Smart SMM” is Experts who try to run social networks themselves.
Their pains. spend 3 hours a day shooting and editing or do not know how to mount. Because of this burnout, blogging is irregular, applications are chaotic.
Their desires - give the task of content SMM-specialist or agency, independently only to lead a story or Telegram. They also want the page to look presentable, not worse than competitors.

Their objections:

• SMM - expensive, no budget”.
• "It's unclear whether there will be coverage and applications."
• I had a bad experience with another SMM.

To know the pains, desires, and objections of CA, we need:

• Ask clients in person (through in-depth interviews, questionnaires);
• remember from practice;
• Search for answers in chat rooms/communities/comments of competitors.

Step 3: Analysis of Competitors

Competitor analysis as part of a content strategy is an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses in content from competitors in order to pick up good ideas / titles / topics for content and abandon bad options.

So when we do competitor analysis to develop a content strategy, we look at:

• What topics collect the most views, comments and likes and other indicators?
• What are they sitting on or not sitting on?
• What formats do they most often publish or skip?

Based on competitive analysis, we can improve our strategy by:

1. New content formats (for example, competitors make carousels and they have good performance, we can also try).
2. We have noticed that competitors are actively leading MAKS, we can also consider this as a new site.
3. Successful idea / topic (competitors often talk about a topic from your niche, and this topic always attracts a great response, we can also try to talk about this topic).

Competitive analysis - It's not about take and copy, it's about take and adapt.

Step 4: Tone of Voice

Just like Aviasales. I often see this phrase written on the Internet or “I want an SMM specialist like Aviasales”.

First, Aviasales has 50+ SMM specialists.

Secondly, their strategy is quite risky and not for every brand.

Because their TOV is obviously humorous, sometimes even below the waist, friendly and playful. And here it is important to understand that if your positioning is strict, official and serious, then just like Aviasales will not work.

And that's good. Otherwise, your customers would get dissonant and leave. But when we know exactly how we communicate with the audience, for example, you or you, respond with humor or officially, politely or familiarly, then the client will be much more comfortable with us, because he knows what to expect from us.

Step 5: Content funnel

Funnel content This is the path that a user takes from the moment they first saw your content to making a purchase.

Our challenge is funnelSo that the person slides down instead of falling out halfway. And it's done at the expense. warm up the audience.

How to warm up the audience

There are 3 types of audience: cold, warm and hot.

Cold might. Not just not knowing us, she may not even know about the problem. For example, a man formed a bald spot, he has not yet noticed it.
Our goal is to attract attention because the audience doesn’t know us. Therefore, we make the following content:

• Viral Reels
• Useful carousels
• Life hacks and trends

Warm audience She already knows about the problem, she's already found some solutions, including us. But not ready to buy yet. For example, a man chooses between a transplant, cream and leave as is and accept.
Our goal for a warm audience is to prove expertise, because the audience already knows, but does not trust. Therefore, we make the following content:

• Cases and results
• Customer reviews
• Personal histories
• Behind the scenes

Hot audience I'm ready to buy it, I just have to squeeze it. For example, a man decided on a transplant, found our clinic in 2GIS and waits for us to make a promotion at a discount.

Our goal is to sell because the audience already knows us, trusts us and is loyal to us. Therefore, we make the following content:

• Straight offers
• Information on shares
• Service announcements

It is a grave mistake to make content immediately to a hot audience, that is, constantly talk about promotions, products, lead for sale, but not publish content to a wide audience and useful.

The approximate ratio of content should be: 60% content for cold, 30% for warm, 10% for hot.

Step 6: Analytics

Decide in advance what KPI you will measure the success of your content strategy.

1. For coverage - views, coverage.
2. To engage - Likes, comments, saves, reposts.
3. For business. – clicks on links, number of applications (leads), sales.

I recommend creating an analytics tablet where you can enter data from social media analytics weekly/monthly and look at the growth of metrics.

It’s also important to keep track of what content is coming:

• what theme
• Was it a post/Reels?
• broad-theme
• What audience (male or female, age)

This way, you can scale viral content and achieve results in future content.

For example, our client flew Reels 14 million views. He helped to gain an audience and tightened the reach on other publications, but did not bring direct sales. But other posts, where we talk about stocks and products, are already steadily bringing applications.

We have reviewed all the stages of the content strategy, after which your posts will not just be published in a chaotic order to get something out, but will work on business metrics.

Getting a million views is actually easy – just post your cat. But in order for you to have sales, it is enough to put a post on 1000 covers, but they will be those who are really interested in your brand and product, and who now or in the near future will want to become your customers.