How Early Stage Startups Can Create a Winning Content Strategy

A strong content strategy and plan can be an effective (and cost-effective) way to build awareness with potential investors, partners, and customers. Whether your startup uses a B2B, B2C, or a hybrid model, a customized, high quality content strategy can deliver results that both support your unique position in the marketplace and advance progress toward your milestones.

As covered in my earlier post, you will want to ensure that you have the fundamental resources in place when setting out to create content for your startup.

This post focuses on how startups with a B2B model can craft a content strategy – this can be done on your own, or in partnership with a marketing consulting firm.

First, I would define a short list of core themes that are of interest to existing and potential customers or partners. For example, generative AI is a popular theme that not only stands to be broadly adopted, but is so new to most business leaders that they are highly motivated to learn more about the technology and how it can be applied to their business.

Here are a few ideas on how to land on your own themes:

• Review popular news outlets in your field, industry association websites, and long-term industry growth reports
• Check out your competitors’ websites
• Listen to a few of the top podcasts in your field
• Review affinity groups or conduct hashtag searches on LinkedIn

Next, I would build out differentiated narratives for each of your themes. To do this, consider how your mission, technology platform, and products relate to these broader themes. With the generative AI example, are your products or services directly involved in the field? Is your startup using this technology in an original way in its operations? By writing your own narrative that describes how the work of your company connects to one of your identified core themes, you are far more likely to see interest and engagement from potential investors, partners, and customers, as well as journalists who write about your field.

Then, think back to the channels you used to define your core themes – how can you leverage social media channels, news outlets, or podcasts to get the word out? Further, how can you use your “owned” assets, like your startup's website and LinkedIn account, to deliver your content plan?

Finally, an integrated content plan made up of engaging assets based on your differentiated narratives can be created and deployed across the defined channels. For startups with a B2B model, tactics such as explainer videos, shareable infographics for company social media channels, and even talking points for company leaders to use during speaking engagements, are likely to deliver meaningful results. Often, this type of plan will be tied to achieving specific in-bound marketing goals, which will be the topic of a future post.

Following this straightforward approach will position your firm as a thought leader in your space, giving you a leg up on the competition.