Many startups and small growing businesses overlook the importance of content, because they are focused on other matters. But content is essential to communicating your product, and reducing the cost of servicing your customers. Content strategy will help you make the most of your content. It is “the practice of planning for the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable content” (Kristina Halvorson). It can stop you worrying that you don’t have the ‘right’ content or ‘enough’ content. Done well, it drives traffic to your website and makes you money through improved branding, social engagement, usability and SEO.

Content strategy can help you solve these problems:

• We want to grow faster and we think good content might help
• Our app design is great but users are getting stuck on certain tasks
• We find it hard to get our team, including freelancers, to produce content in a consistent style
• We want to improve user engagement with our website but don’t know where to start
• We want to differentiate ourselves from our competitors to promote brand loyalty and increase sales
• Our content marketing feels uneven and we’re not sure it’s offering a good return on investment
• We’re not sure if customers understand how to use our product, or that we’re reaching everyone who might be a prospective customer
• Our landing pages look good but don’t convert very well
• How do we get good content when we don’t have a copywriter on the team?
• How do we tell if a freelancer is any good?

Read the full content strategy guide to learn how you can use content to solve these common business problems.