Being authentic and organic is the best way to win in the new age of sports media. But don’t confuse authenticity for spontaneity and ambiguity. While being able to connect with your audience is a must, you also need to come with a plan. When you come prepared, you can execute to the best of your ability.
Already, we’ve written about how to run a cohesive team as a content director and editorial lead, and we’ve also written about how to use emotional intelligence as a team leader – to inspire and invigorate your writers. But what questions should you ask yourself in the actual planning phase? Here, we’ll dive deeper into that.
5 Questions to Consider When Developing Your Content Strategy
1) What are Your Goals and Objectives?
When we say “start at the beginning”, we mean start at the very beginning. To have a strong foundation with your content plan, you have to build from the bottom up. That way, when you have success, it all trickles down through your goals and objectives. When you know what you seek, pursuing it becomes that much easier.
With that in mind, what are your goals and objectives for your foray into the sports media space? Do you want to build a recognizable brand? Do you want to maximize audience engagement via social media and tools? Do you want to center your focus on informative editorials and subjective, thought-provoking analysis?
Not all of these are mutually exclusive – but understanding what your goals and objectives are helps focus your energy, and ensures that all of your inputs will be spent efficiently.
2) Who Will Your Audience Be?
Once you have your goals and objectives written in stone, you can expand from the content foundation to your audience. With these goals in mind, who will you be attempting to reach? Who is your ideal reader or viewer? What are they looking for, and how will your content quench their need?
You can identify your ideal audience members by searching for characteristics. What is important to them? If you’re seeking audience members who desire convenience, you might have a podcast campaign in mind. If you’re seeking audience members who crave in-depth statistics, analytical content could be your focus.
By projecting demand through this target audience, you can determine what you’ll be tasked with supplying, as you strive toward your goals.
3) What Mediums Offer the Most Potential?
In the sports media realm, there are a number of different mediums through which you can interact with your audience. Once you establish your goals and your target audience, you can then determine which mediums offer the most potential, as you look to reach your audience en masse.
Many sports media companies are tasked with diversifying their content across mediums – written, video, and audio – and you may no doubt be faced with this quarry as well. You don’t have to choose any one specific medium, but you can determine which medium you’ll focus most of your energy on, by reverse engineering your audience’s demands.
4) What Will Your Key Performance Indicators Be?
We’ve established your goals and objectives. We’ve established your target audience. And we’ve dispersed your work hours across the mediums you intend to target. Now comes the setup for reviewing and analyzing performance: Decide what your key performance indicators will be.
If you need a place to start, Google Analytics is a treasure trove of valuable trends and metrics. For written content, time-per-session and raw page views can paint a healthy picture of a piece’s success. Bounce rate helps track how compelling your site-wide content is, and how often you can keep a reader’s attention.
Of course, KPI’s aren’t limited to written metrics alone. Decide which KPI’s are best for you based on your audience and your mediums of focus, and track those thoroughly as you carry on with your work.
5) How Will You Review and Adapt?
Now that we’ve circled a source for key performance indicators, the last insight to consider is this: How will you review and adapt? The data alone doesn’t make a change. You do, as a content director.
If something isn’t working, find a way to divert course and spend your inputs more effectively. If there are ways to expand and enrich your offering, leave no stone unturned in the search.
