10 Ways to Strategize and Achieve Success

10 min readMay 18, 2019

Since 2016 I am working as a translator and writer, I would never be able to work with companies such as Eastpak, John Deere, and Caterpillar without a solid strategy. Having a solid strategy helps me in difficult times when I want to give up, and other times it just makes my life easier. I want you to also experience having a ‘guideline’ to boost your success. So read on, and learn 10 ways to make your own strategy and be successful.

A good content strategy requires great teamwork

Good content consists of many principles, including:

The User Experience
A good Design
Information Architecture to serve the reader
Copywriting might be the most important part
Development should always be ongoing
Search Engine Optimization must not be forgotten
Marketing on Social Media
Public Relations and Brand Building is an important factor

Every self-respecting business should have an easy-to-follow content marketing plan.

Gone are the days that one person handled several parts of this mix, today’s professionals only focus on one part of the puzzle. So yes, it does require having specialists in your (external) team in order to get the best result for your business.

Also consider the people that create it

When developing your own online content strategy, it is important to consider not only the content but also the writers that are creating the content. This way, the content is aimed more at the online audience, whilst fulfilling their expectations.

The contents’ goal can be to inform or to maybe to inform ánd sell. Whatever it may be, considering the content and the team behind it, this will make your content creator understand your online audience even more.

Keeping the governance factors in mind when creating content, will deliver a more usable and enjoyable experience for the reader.

What are Content Components:

Substance: topics, tone, style, what message we need to communicate
Structure: how we prioritize and break up the content into building blocks

What are People Components:

Workflow: the process, tools, and resources we need to create and maintain the content
Governance: consistency, integrity, and quality of the content

Conclusion: Considering Content ánd the Creators will help fulfill the expectations of the reader whilst achieving the business goals.

Match the Creators with the Audience

Several tests had been conducted with people of different ages and literacy levels. The results were surprising and intriguing, to say the least, it shows that users with low literacy levels struggle to complete basics stuff on the website that has been written for readers with high literature levels. This shows how important it is to adapt the content to the preferred audience.

To no surprise, users with a low literacy level were completing their tasks much faster on a website with low-level literacy content. But there is something else that might surprise you, read on, and learn what we discovered on this subject.

The tests also showed that people with a high literacy level were able to complete their tasks much faster on a website with a low literacy level. This shows how you should write your content, simple, and without too many difficult words. Every website user will thank you for doing this.

The Five W’s and H’s of online content

Anyone familiar with the rules of journalism knows the Five W’s and H’s: Who, What, Why, When, Where, and How. Some people argue that no content is complete without these six questions. In journalism, this makes complete sense since these six questions are what the audience wants to be answered when they are reading.

But what do these Five W’s have to do with online content?

Let me tell you, Rick Yagodich made his own version which is perfect for online content. It is called the Five W’s and H’s and when you follow these “Guidelines”, you are sure to have a water-tight content plan.

Why? Know the business case and objectives. What is the reason for this content?
What? Which message do you want to share with the reader?
Who? What is your preferred audience?
Where? Which platform do you use (location and device)?
How? How will the content be structured?
When? When and how do you want to create and publish the content?

Conclusion: When you answer those questions for yourself when creating, you are creating content that covers all the bases of good content.

The Tone and Voice of your content matters

Two powerful tools to influence your readers are Voice and Tone. These are two things to use in every part of your content, to put some personality and identity in your online presence. But keep in mind that the voice should always be consistent across all content. But the tone can be changed according to the type of content, and the subject.

The content curator of MailChimp, Kate Kiefer Lee, states that the tone of a brand should vary, depending on the emotional state of the reader. For example, a joke on a welcome page will build likeability and loyalty to the brand. But when a joke is used within a warning message, the opposite result can be reached.

MailChimp is very passionate about this subject, and they created a website which shows writers how to use the best tone of voice for their online content such as blog posts, tweets, alert messages, and even jokes.

This website is a great resource for every (aspiring) writer and marketer out there, and I suggest you have a look.

While you are reading on their website, realize that all their content is consistent, but the emotional state of the reader is considered in each different context.

SEO was and still is the main focus

Google keeps updating its algorithm, and many factors got changed also, including SEO. Some so-called experts say that SEO is dead, but they could not be more wrong. This is still a very important factor to include in your online presence, including all the online content. The recent updates from Google are making it harder each month to get a high ranking in the search engines. But this is not all that has been changed since the last updates.

”WHITE-HAT” IS WHAT IS ALL ABOUT

With this, I mean the tactics that are not completely honest, and I highly recommend you to not use those tactics. The reason for this is, that Google does not like these ”shady” tactics which can be things like using hidden text on your website (white text on a white background), ”link-spamming” (buying many links from lower-quality websites), and ”cloaking” (showing different content to the reader than what you show to the Googlebot). Fyi: I do never use these ”shady” tactics since I believe your website(s) will rank high when your online content offers great value to the reader. Google did penalize, mitigate, and sometimes even blacklisted some websites which were using these ”black-hat” tactics. So, does this mean that SEO is dead? Let’s find out.

The good thing about SEO is that more and more people are realizing that honesty is the best way to go, what I mean with this is that ”white-hat” SEO slowly replaces gray and black-hat tactics. Another good development is the fact that Google (amongst other search engines) rewards white-hat tactics, in order to get rid of spammy black-hat tactics. Another great tactic to use nowadays is to create a brand around you or your business, instead of using keywords.

Summary: Every single piece of your online content strategy should be designed with the best SEO practices in mind and absolutely no grey and black-hat tactics. Like I said before: I never use grey or black-hat tactics for any of my clients, and they rank well in Google, so trust me when I say: Only use white-hat tactics, it will pay off big time.

Break your online content into bite-size bits

When you are scheduling your content using a content managing content (CMS), you should always aim to break the content into smaller ”bites”. If your website looks like a big sea of words than you are certain to scare away potential customers. Another important factor to consider is the fact that people are used to reading in a certain way, in bite-size chunks that is.

Several big studies show that it’s important to have your web developers (or another person who sets up your CMS) set up separate fields for the bite-size chunks of your online content. The bite-size chunks can also be easily used in presentations due to their small forms. This way, your website will have much better visibility on mobile devices.

Summary: Structure all your CMS content into small flexible chunks in order to make the best use of the hard work of you ánd your team.

Use metadata for the biggest online impact

Metadate consist of several guidelines for programming, web developers can use these guidelines to help search engines (amongst other software) better understand the content on your website.

An example: If you write on your blog that you will not buy any apples anymore, you can use metadata to let the search engines know if you are talking about the fruit or the computer. So, metadata will make sure that Google (and other search engines) will show related content to the search instead of unrelated content that just happens to have the same name. (for example the movie ”ice age” and the natural ice age that happened ages ago.

So why should you even care about metadata, if all you want to do is get good online content on your website?

It will help you to make your online content stand out from the crowd
It can get your website unexpected visitors through sites like Airbnb
Metadata will make your website highly readable on all devices, including tablets and mobile phones.

Summary: When you or your developers create metadata on your online content, the visibility will improve greatly. So I highly suggest you use metadata.

Embrace the standards of the web like html5

These web standards are standardized best practices to be used by web developers while, for example, building websites. These rules were written by a group consisting of browser manufacturers and main search engines.

This list of rules also applies to non-developers, like newspapers and (copy)writers like me. For example one of these rules is that the main page of a newspaper usually show the big headlines with shocking news, while the other pages show less impacting news. There are no official rules to do this, but since readers have become used to this layout, it would be bad practice to change this layout.

The biggest reason to use these rules is to make your online content:

Easy to read on desktop, mobile, or tablet, on all major browsers
Easy to be found and indexed by search engines which will result in better rankings
Take advantage of new techniques like HTML5

HTML5 is a set of powerful web standards to incorporate many features like video, audio, and canvas elements. It will make sure that all these standards will be visible, no matter the size of the screen.

Summary: These web standards or rules, are very important to use. Together with HTML5, it will make your website much more enjoyable for your readers and search engines.

Invite users to share their stories

This might be the one important thing that will make or break your online business. And any content strategy should take care of this, so make sure to use or get ready to lose customers.

Something that makes websites successful is using the content of the user, for example sharing stories from customers. The big websites like Google, Facebook, and Youtube allow you to share your own stories and engage with other user content. Platforms like WordPress for examples, empower many users every day, by allowing them to easily create and share their own content.

Many experts (like Wroblewski) claim “in order to have a truly meaningful content strategy, we need to embrace the read/write concept”. To be interacting with the users, it is important to at least to the following: create a platform or outlet for your users to engage with you and/or other users.

This is an aspect of online marketing that many people don’t even think about it, but it is important. Not only publish content, but also make it easy to share and interact with. Ask questions, give tips, and show that you care about your reader.

Summary: The stories of your users might be more important than yours, this might sound strange but it’s true.

Conclusion

To make the most out of your online content strategy it is important to focus on the details after the hard work is done. Things like tone of voice and brand image cannot be forgotten, a good brand image is becoming more important each year. Keep your words simple and concise, this way you will not run the risk of scaring people away with difficult words. The website visitors will reward you for doing this.

So put on your white hat, start planning, create great content become the authority by structuring your content in bite-size bits and make your content shareable. Become their main source of information on that subject and do not forget to enjoy the growth.

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