Creating a cohesive content strategy
Content connects with your audience, encourages traffic, and builds the trust required for sales. So why leave it to chance?
Content is a key part of your jewellery brand’s digital marketing strategy, inspiring and educating your audience and encouraging your organic search presence.
But despite its impact, content writing is often approached with less thought than sale-securing copywriting or brand-defining storytelling. And as content requires ongoing commitment, inspiration can vary in abundance.
But there’s a secret to negating inspiration-block and ensuring effective, impactful content. A content plan…
Why create a content strategy?
Content covers a huge variety of types, from brief and ephemeral social media to long-form, long-term website pages. Each piece of content has an individual purpose, but all work together towards the overall brand impression and objectives.
This cohesion is not achieved by chance. A content plan considers your overarching goals, values, and audience, and then outlines what individual content themes and types will be used to meet those needs. The core driver of a content plan is purpose, considering the aim and impact of each part.
Content produced without a strategy can easily lean towards one purpose – all education and no inspiration, all storytelling and no sales, for instance. A content plan ensures that all parts of the customer relationship journey are covered, from brand awareness to community building.
Finally, a content strategy makes life easier. Not knowing what to write or post is a feeling familiar to most business owners, but a well-defined content plan provides a welcome framework.
Strategy begins with story
The role of content is to serve your audience, so any strategy begins with them. For brands with a well-defined story, the way is already clear. Just like brand story, content strategy is at the intersection of audience needs what your brand delivers.
Content builds upon the key facets of your brand story, expanding on core themes and introducing supporting angles. With so much variety in how content can be presented and consumed, the lifestyle, values, and interests of your audience inform precisely what form your content takes.
When choosing content themes, consider your brand story as the backbone of your brand. Content that grows directly from your core story will be relevant and engaging. A content theme that feels incongruent with the overall brand story, however, undermines the strength and sophistication of your brand impression.
Content pillars & content rotation
Content pillars are key to an organised and coherent content strategy. Pillars provide a framework, guiding content creation and ensuring any month of content hits key business goals and brand story themes.
Content pillars cover the key facets of your brand story. Each pillar has a specific purpose within the overall strategy, moving along the story or customer journey in a particular way. Most content should not have a goal of sales. The aim of content is to inspire and inform, building connection and trust. This is reflected in the content pillars, predominately covering topics that will educate and engage the audience rather than sell.
A content pillar framework should include a detailed breakdown of each theme, considering what the purpose/goal of that pillar is and what media and commentary will communicate it.
Depending on purpose, some content pillars will be drawn on more heavily than others. A content rotation provides the order and frequency in which each pillar is used, ensuring a consistent coverage of brand themes across social media, website, and email content.
Blog post, page, or FAQ?
When it comes to writing content for your website, second to what you share is where you share it. Website content is most associated with blogs, but the topic in hand might be more appropriate for an evergreen page or FAQ feature. Part of your strategy should include how the content is organised on your website.
Blog Posts
Blogs are designed to be updated, so by nature this content won’t always be immediately accessible to a reader. This makes it perfect for topical and seasonal content and short-term collaborations.
Blog posts are also ideal for expanding on your content pillars in more depth. A blog can take a deep-dive into the meaning and symbolism of a particular coloured gemstone, for instance, allowing a customer with a particular interest to enjoy more detailed content.
If your blog archive is large or frequently updated, consider organising posts by categories, based on your content pillars. It allows readers to navigate to what interests them best, and allows older posts a chance to be discovered.
Even an infrequently tended blog is still a valuable resource. An old blog post can stay quietly on your site, stuffed full of keywords and value. If you know your blog will be rarely updated, clean up seasonal posts after the event to avoid looking obsolete. Consider removing dates from your posts entirely, creating a perpetual archive of resources rather than a hub of news and inspiration.
Pages
If you find yourself repeatedly sending customers to a blog, consider if it should be a page.
Create a page for core, evergreen topics that provide inspiration or information for the majority of your customers. Pages are great for educational and inspirational content, such as a spotlight on how you manufacture your pieces, sourcing stories, or a style guide. You can link to pages from your FAQs and footer/header menus, so it’s a great opportunity to highlight some of the key facets of your brand.
Some pages will be common to most jewellery brands, such as ethical promises or ‘the Four Cs’. But your brand story provides the inspiration to be creative with your pages, all the better to service your specific audience. Design-centric? Your customers might love a page of sketches and moodboards, for instance.
FAQs
Finally, your FAQs ‘mop up’ all the vital information that your customers need but don’t need long-form content or imagery to explore. Make sure your FAQs include all topics that customers frequently ask about or need to know. If this only takes a sentence or two to describe, your work is done.
If you want to add more detail to explain a ‘why’ or ‘how’, outline the key points in your FAQs and then link to a specific page for more. This may be a great approach for your ethical policy, for instance.