5 essential steps for building your content strategy on your blog / website

When writing content for your website or blog, it is essential to build a content strategy (also known as an editorial charter).

Many businesses and brands produce content, but few take the trouble to draft an editorial charter. Yet this charter is essential to the writing of your content — both in terms of substance and style.

This charter will allow you to assert your positioning. Moreover, if several writers contribute to your site, your charter will serve as a reference document that ensures a consistent tone across all articles and standardises your materials.

#1 Before embarking on a content strategy, you should define your objectives:

Why create a blog or a news section on my website? (to inform, to gain visibility…)
What is your positioning? (also in relation to your competitors)
Who is your target audience? (primary target, secondary target)

#2 Then build your editorial line:

Within this document — known as an "editorial charter" — sits the editorial line. This is simply your style guide, which sets out the topics to be covered and the tone of your articles or posts. Below are a few examples of questions to ask yourself:

What types of subject would you like to cover?
What tone would you like to adopt?
What register? (formal, informal…)
What style? (humorous, informative…)
What length for your articles? (350 words?)
What types of content (features, interviews, news…)?

#3 Decide on the architecture of your platform:

You need to categorise your content so that readers can easily find the information that interests them. Visitors must be able to navigate your blog or website easily and quickly — no more than 3 clicks to reach what they are looking for.

What are your sections?
Do you have sub-sections?
How will you integrate them into your site?

#4 Pay attention to your images:

Content is good, but content with images is better! Your articles should be well illustrated. It is up to you to define the style of imagery you want to use, without forgetting alt tags.

Illustrations, photographs, visuals, videos…?
What size?
Where on the page? (after the heading, within the article)

#5 Organise your content:

For optimal content creation, you need to structure your articles according to your various formats. > Heading

Introductory paragraph
Number of paragraphs
Highlight words in bold, italic, underlined…
Incorporate keywords to optimise your organic search ranking
Call-to-action to set up with a conversion asset?
What publication frequency would you like to establish?

In this editorial strategy, do not overlook social media, which also supports your site or blog.

Your social media strategy is inseparable from your content strategy. You simply need to adapt your editorial charter and make the necessary adjustments to suit your social media channels.