Back in April I summarised Hubspot’s “Practical Guide to Killer Marketing Content” – http://kimtasso.com/hubspots-a-practical-guide-to-killer-marketing-content. There’s a new version out now called “A practical guide to building a killer content strategy” which you can download for free http://offers.hubspot.com/a-practical-guide-to-building-a-killer-content-strategy

Here’s a summary of the key points on content strategy:

1.     Create buyer personas

    1. Who are they?
    2. What problems they are trying to solve?
    3. What do they need most?
    4. What information are they searching for?

(there’s a useful template included)

2.     Identify the buying cycle

    1. Awareness
    2. Research and education
    3. Comparison and validation
    4. Purchase
    5. Map your content

3.     Build an editorial calendarUse Google calendar

    1. Work backwards from your marketing goals
    2. Log topic, title, date, format (blog, e book, webinar etc)
    3. Note SEO keywords and Calls To Action
    4. Use dates as a hook
    5. Look for opportunities to repurpose/recycle content

You might also like to look at the following blog posts on related subjects:

http://kimtasso.com/book-review-valuable-content-marketing-by-sonja-jefferson-and-sharon-tanton

http://kimtasso.com/book-review-mastering-story-community-and-influence-how-to-use-social-media-to-build-your-tribe-by-jay-oatway

http://kimtasso.com/book-review-share-this-the-social-media-handbook-for-pr-professionals-by-chartered-institute-of-public-relations

http://kimtasso.com/marketing-technology-vuture-tackles-social-media-verification-dynamic-content-and-extranets-made-easy

http://kimtasso.com/hubspots-guide-on-15-business-blogging-mistakes

More recently, there has been a move towards a pyramid strategy  for content strategy and management – which fits well in a thought leadership campaign – where there is hero, hub and hygiene content.