What are the best practices for content differentiation and positioning?

1 Define your content purpose

Before you start creating content, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with it. What are your content objectives, your value proposition, and your key messages? How do you align your content with your brand identity, your audience needs, and your market position? By defining your content purpose, you can create a content strategy that guides your content creation, distribution, and measurement.

2 Identify your content gaps and opportunities

One way to differentiate your content from your competitors is to find out what they are doing and what they are missing. You can conduct a content audit and a competitive analysis to evaluate your own and your rivals' content performance, strengths, and weaknesses. You can also use tools like keyword research, social listening, and customer feedback to identify the topics, formats, and channels that your audience is interested in and that your competitors are not covering. By filling the content gaps and seizing the content opportunities, you can create content that is more relevant, engaging, and valuable to your audience.

3 Create your content persona and voice

Another way to differentiate your content is to give it a distinctive personality and voice that reflects your brand identity and resonates with your audience. You can create a content persona that describes the characteristics, tone, and style of your content, such as its attitude, humor, language, and emotions. You can also create a content voice that defines how you communicate your content persona, such as its rhythm, volume, pitch, and accent. By creating a consistent and authentic content persona and voice, you can build trust, loyalty, and recognition with your audience.

4 Use content formats and features that suit your goals and audience

Different content formats and features can have different effects on your audience and your goals. For example, video content can be more engaging, interactive, and persuasive than text content, while infographics can be more informative, visual, and shareable than text content. You can also use content features like headlines, images, quotes, and calls to action to capture attention, convey information, and inspire action. By using content formats and features that suit your goals and audience, you can create content that is more appealing, effective, and memorable.

5 Deliver your content in the right channels and platforms

The final step of content differentiation and positioning is to deliver your content in the right channels and platforms that reach your audience and support your objectives. You can use a variety of channels and platforms, such as websites, blogs, social media, email, podcasts, webinars, and ebooks, to distribute your content. However, you need to consider the suitability, accessibility, and performance of each channel and platform for your content and your audience. By delivering your content in the right channels and platforms, you can increase your visibility, reach, and impact.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?