Content Strategy is one of those phrases that gives me goosebumps.

But I know not everyone feels that way. You might not at this point.

Especially if it feels like you’ve been blogging forever but have yet to see the ROI (Return on Investment).

When new brand voice development and copywriting clients come to work with us at The Voice Bureau, some of the questions we usually hear are: You’re going to tell me to blog more, aren’t you? and I think I need a content strategy but how will I have time to like, do my actual business, too? and What if my Right People don’t use social media?

There are answers to all of these questions, and while the answers lie in the nuances, here’s the big thing we always point our clients back to: You have to know your Right People. Understanding them tells you what you need to know to design content for them.

For us, content strategy is the truly exciting work of building out your brand conversation in the world. Helping you design an effective content strategy for your business helps you get answers to these questions:

• What does my brand talk about?
• How can I become a sought-after participant in the online conversation that’s already ongoing around this topic? (Or how can I pioneer a new thread of the convo through what I’m bringing that’s original?)
• What can I offer that’s fresh and needed, in just the way my Right People are ready to hear it?

And most of the time, we hear from you that you want to know where YOU can and should come into your content strategy. You want to understand your own fine line between total authenticity in your content and showing up like an expert, a teacher, or an advisor (especially if you don’t always feel like one). 

Let’s get you straight to the matter with three mini case studies of (fictional, yet based on actual) clients who’d be great candidates to learn to design content strategy. These values-based business owners are all of the mind to meet the needs of their Right People, their business goals, and their brand objectives.

Elena, a retired professional ballet dancer, owns a classical ballet studio. It’s a rigorous training environment for students ages 5-18, and high school age students must audition yearly to keep their places in the pre-professional training company.

The school and its performances are partially funded by student tuition (which is necessarily steep) and partially funded by a huge grant from a wealthy benefactor. The benefactor’s grant, which she’s been drawing from for the past 12 years, is dwindling, and the town where the ballet school is based is mostly working class and has been hit hard by the economy. Her students don’t come from wealthy families whose parents can pad the coffers. And government grants are few and far between and only stretch so far. Elena needs a content strategy and a social media presence that will increase her performing company’s visibility in the eyes of potential supporters; ardent art supporters who will help spread the good work, or cultured people with money to donate who’d be willing to drive in from the mid-sized city 45 minutes away for performances. Her dancers are good — among the best in the region by far — and her reputation is competitive. She knows that if more people saw them perform, she could raise better donations. She wants a content strategy that will allow her to stretch her marketing dollars, represent the school’s good name well, and generate interest (and donations) in the work she and students do.

Harriet is a money-and-chakra coach who works virtually. Her small but devoted clientele lives everywhere — from the northernmost reaches of Canada to Hong Kong to the South of France and back to Kansas, U.S.A. She met most of her first loyal clients in person — that 20% who consistently pay her bills each month — when she attended a big name, popular conference in the States that pulls in business owners from many industries. It was a great starting ground for her to drum up initial business, but referrals have not been particularly strong (all of her clients say they think of her as their “secret weapon” or “silent partner”) and she needs to branch out and get herself and her point of view in front of some new eyeballs. Harriet is ready to start sharing with more people what she knows about money and the chakra system, but isn’t sure what “somebody out there” would want to know. She’s especially not sure what would make anyone hire her after never having met her in person. (She’s a big believer in intuition and resonance and fears that the internet can’t replicate what happens in person.) And the idea of using Twitter every day makes her feel anxious around her heart center. She has a niece who’s pretty tech-y who’d be willing to help her blog, but she’s just not sure how blogging fits into the big picture of earning a great living — which is most certainly her goal. After all, it’s part of what she teaches her clients!

Jessi makes screened tee shirts. She hand-draws the designs — which are of woodland animals (rabbits, bears, foxes, squirrels, owls) performing unlikely activities (making an omelet, sketching next to the Seine, getting fitted for a brassiere). Her ex-boyfriend’s screenprinting company puts them on high quality, organic, ring-spun cotton tees in a variety of on-trend colors, including basic black, white, and gray. Her sizes range from juniors to plus size and most of the artwork is unisex, although she offers a variety of modern cuts that she’s found to be universally flattering. Each style is named after one of her friends, i.e. the Lexa, the Grace, the Evie. She loves her work and even scored a small write-up with a photo once in Glamour magazine, after which she had a rush of business to her site for the next two months and a steady thrum for the four months following that. Then business settled back into its normal rhythm of slightly profitable but not really life-changing. She knows people dig her stuff, but she can’t figure out how to use the internet to keep her stuff top of mind. She dreams of getting enough business to her online boutique so that she can finally out-earn what she makes at her day job (a marketing person at an arts non-profit in a major U.S. city) and go full-time self-employed. She currently sells her tees wholesale to three independently owned shops and would like to expand to more resellers, without having to set up booths at pricey trade shows, which she knows can be expensive, time-consuming, and often disappointing (especially for first-time vendors). She’s no social media newb; she has a blog and a halfhearted presence on Facebook, Pinterest, and InstaGram, but she really wants to figure out what to blog and post about besides “hey, look at this new design I’m working on!” She’s tired of feeling like she’s competing for sales with fly-by-night Etsy sellers and major brands like J.Crew, Old Navy, and Abercrombie for market share. (And is she actually competing with them at all? She has no idea how that works and how her potential buyers stack her up against other options.) She’s more than happy to be active in her online presence if she could determine the ROI.

Do you recognize yourself in one of these scenarios?

If so, it may be time for some Content Strategy therapy. At The Voice Bureau, we love helping clients design a workable, smart, yet non-grueling content strategy with their Right People at the center. Using an empathetic approach that considers your Voice Values, we figure out how YOU can position yourself to be an expert, a go-to person, and a sought-after conversationalist around the issues and topics that are important to you and your business.

Having a strong Content Strategy means more than blogging twice a week, ad infinitum (Spoiler: it can often be less!) and haunting Twitter 24/7 (because we don’t think that’s often a trait of a healthy, well-balanced person). You’ll learn how to decide which social media channels work best with your Right People’s consumption tendencies, and highlight your strengths as a content creator. You’ll learn how to consider what message you want to bring to the table, and how it aligns with a convo your Right People are already having (or want to have). And — yep — you’ll learn techniques for finding your Right People are online. (You know how everyone says, “Figure out where your ideal client is online and go hang out there”? Yeah. We’ll teach you how to figure it out, so you can be a fly on the wall if you want to be. Spoiler #2: There’s not a giant pool of your Right People just all hanging out somewhere online together, waiting for you to pop up and start regaling them with your genius. That’s a myth.)

Our new DIY Content Strategy course is open for registration, and we’d love to see you in there. Our beta group of 20 participants will receive ample support from Tami and me via weekly Office Hours in our private community, as well as on weekly calls that will keep right on going even after the beta is over. Plus you get lifetime access to the content as it’s continually iterated and improved, and as one of our original beta participants, you get to influence how DIY course content is delivered to future buyers.

Want more info? Check out The Voice Bureau’s Content Strategy DIY Beta here.

In the comments, we’d love to know:

What part of Content Strategy boggles your mind the most? What would you like to learn when it comes to designing a brand conversation that meets the needs of your Right People, and feeds your enthusiasm, as well?

[Image credit.]