The Anatomy of a Content Marketing Strategy

(Disclaimer: Profanity.)

The anatomy of a content marketing strategy refers to six core components that move the needle to produce quality articles and whatnot for your brand:

1. Central message: If you have 30 seconds with your ideal buyer, this is what you would tell them.

2. Tech stack: Tools and platforms you use to go from ideation to publication.

3. Workflow checklist: This prevents you from doing unproductive and administrative tasks that bring zero value.

4. Content volume per campaign: Keeps an eye on the local finish line and is crucial for tracking ROI.

5. Timeline: None of the above matters if this doesn’t exist.

In the rest of this chapter, I’ve delved into each component and explained how you can set them up effectively and affordably.

1. Central message

The overall marketing message of every business can be written in one simple sentence.

“Buy our product.” 

“Hire our services team.”

Then, you need to expand that through what, how, and why questions. For instance, “why us over our competitors” and “how our employees care for you.” These become ideas for individual content pieces or campaigns.

Note that each of these questions can be answered in a variety of different ways. Consider the first example, “why us over our competitors.” 

You can write a detailed ROI-focused, value-based, quantifiable comparison. Another way is to describe your approach and highlight why it’s superior. Additionally, you can go the educational route by creating informative content that increases your credibility.

Again, each of the ways you can potentially answer an investigative question related to your company’s core marketing message can be a single content piece or a campaign.

After writing down the central message and all the investigative questions around it, spend some time listing different ways you can answer them all with your team. This will create a huge pool of ideas that you can just reach into when kicking off the next campaign.

2. Tech stack

There is too much noise on what tools are effective in creating kickass content for your brand that resonates with your potential customers, so I will keep it simple.

Google Docs, Google Sheets*, Notion, and ChatGPT.

The first three are free. I recommend that you get ChatGPT’s Plus plan for maximum efficacy. Some powerful features, such as Agent Mode and Deep Research, are extremely useful.

No, you don’t need any retarded keyword research platform or AI-aided writing assistant tools like Clearscope and Frase. 

The writers and teams that use these tools are dumb fucks who don’t understand the fundamentals of persuasive communication and are simply hacking their way by producing keyword-stuffed slop that AI models approve of. Sounds weird when I put it like that, doesn’t it?

Here’s how you use the tools:

1. Notion: Broad management of campaigns for easier tracking.

2. *Google Sheets: Use this instead of Notion if you are a boomer. Otherwise, this is unnecessary.

3. Google Docs: You already know why you need it.

4. ChatGPT: Finding relevant information quickly, aiding the creative process, repurposing, and proofreading. More on this in my ChatGPT content writing workflow.

   
   

3. Workflow checklist

Initially, it will be a document or a Notion page that outlines every step in your brand’s content production process, including the silly ones, such as “send the draft to X for approval” and “add meta details before publishing.”

Eventually, as you (or your writer) get used to it, this will become a cognitive asset, and you can tear through the steps quickly. 

Freestyling the process from the start increases your chances of missing certain administrative or routine steps in your content marketing journey. While forgetting to add internal links or alt tags to the images may not have a huge impact, it will reduce your campaigns’ efficacy in the long term.

Moreover, fixing them is a bitch and a half. There might be automation tools and whatnot, but manually adding alt tags to images to boost search engine visibility is a pain in the ass.

Another advantage of using a physical checklist is that you can quickly spot the inefficient elements in your philosophy. A simple example is how content marketing teams or professionals approach distribution.

Some might want to create promotional content for their articles, such as LinkedIn posts and infographics, along with the draft. In other cases, it might be more convenient to do it after all the articles are drafted at the end of the campaign.

4. Content volume per campaign

I’d suggest keeping the number of articles per campaign between 5 and 7. It can be as much as you want, but longer cycles also translate to spaced-out review phases. This minimizes how quickly you can learn and pivot. 

Next, think of the article length, the infographics situation, and promotional strategies. 

Typically, try to include a couple of infographics per 1500-word article. It will give you at least two extra LinkedIn posts per piece while increasing the dwell time to boost your organic visibility.

Note that promotional strategies mean extra content. You promote a blog post, for example, through more content related to that blog posts, which include social media posts, short-form Medium articles, and newsletters.

Let’s dive deeper into the distribution.

5. Distribution gameplan

Here’s a simple framework that will serve you for eternity: 

• Two LinkedIn posts: One will be a condensed version of the article. Another one will be a short-form problem-solution variation of the first post, but more personalized. Add one extra post per infographic.

• Instagram: These posts are now showing up in the search results of Google and Perplexity. You can post the infographics or simple images featuring people doing work because that’s the type of content that drives engagement.

• Carousels: The frequency of this type of content depends on the nature of the articles. If they are listicles, then you can create one per piece. If they are simply educational blog posts, you can create a couple per campaign. Post them on LinkedIn and Instagram.

• Snippets as posts: Medium and LinkedIn Pulse are two free platforms that will instantly boost your reach. If you are writing on trending topics, be sure to cross-post them on these platforms. Just a section of the article (~400 words) with a relevant image will suffice.

• Short videos: They are both easy and hard. Easy in the sense that they aren’t that complicated to make. Hard because it’s time-consuming. I can create about three one-minute-long videos in a workday. Some can create more, but this is a good baseline.

Spend one day creating the LinkedIn posts (including the carousel content, if possible) and cross-posting snippets in LinkedIn Pulse and Medium. Then, publish the same LinkedIn post content on Instagram.

On the second day, design the carousel and publish it on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Slideshare (optional). The remainder of the day, brainstorm video ideas based on the content piece. I would suggest three, but honestly, one is fine too.

Third day, create the videos and publish them on LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. My preferred software is Descript because you edit videos on the script, not on the timeline, which expedites everything.

Basically, you can consider five working days (maximum) to publish a 1500-word article and distribute it across various platforms. You can definitely write a newsletter within the same period of time if required, because you have one day of buffer.

6. Timeline

I just gave an overall timeline already in the previous section. Ideally, a campaign should take about a month, but shit happens, and things go out of hand. Hence, a better approach is to focus on one article at a time and consider it as a mini-campaign, especially when you factor in the promotional content you need to create.

This approach also gives you the flexibility to pause your content marketing campaign in the middle of an emergency. You can easily tackle a highly trending topic in the interim and return to the campaign without skipping a beat.

The biggest asset of your content marketing process is everything I’ve listed in this chapter. As long as you have them, you can take a vacation in the middle.

With that being said, I must admit that the strategy outlined above is not easy to execute, to say the least. That’s because the most critical component is an experienced content marketer who can create all sorts of content, including videos.

I am a guy like that.

It’s hard to find a content creator with seasoned marketing skills, and most of the time, you have to build that professional in your organization. Usually, hire a young and hungry dude, give him freedom to experiment, and reward performance. I am not a workplace expert or anything, so I will stop talking about it.

Timeline.

Let’s get back on topic.

So, yeah, as I was saying, nothing matters if things don’t have a deadline. The strategy outlined in this chapter gives you the freedom to focus on one content piece and treat it as a mini-campaign for maximum visibility.

And this can introduce complacency. It is critical to set minimum content volume goals per month and hit them no matter what. The only exceptions are extreme sickness, bankruptcy, and death. Otherwise, you must publish the set volume of content for consistency.

Wrapping up: Prep within a week

The above components of your content marketing strategy can be finalized within five working days or a week at most. If it takes longer, then you (or your team members) aren’t simply experienced enough and will struggle to execute this lean and agile content marketing plan.

Additionally, after you are up and running, planning the next set of articles should take no longer than a couple of days. When the head of content marketing in your team gets used to the rhythm, they can certainly do it within a few hours.

Unless it’s an emergency, you shouldn’t be losing time. In case it’s taking you longer, look back at your process and eliminate the administrative tasks and useless steps, which I’ve outlined further in the next chapter.

—

Next Chapter: Content Marketing: 5 Things to Ignore

Previous Chapter: Same as index

Index (with Prologue): Content Marketing 101: For Lean and Agile Teams