The ‘Game of Thrones’ Guide to Creating a Ruthless Content Strategy

“Game of Thrones” might have ended in a fire-filled fury, but in the competitive world of content marketing, winter is always here.

And that means you don’t have the luxury of sipping wine out of a goblet whilst waiting for your posts to go viral. No, you’re out on the front lines, valiantly fighting for your content to be seen.

And that means you need a ruthless content strategy that’ll keep you one step ahead of the competition at all times.

How to Create a Ruthless Content Strategy in 3 Steps

Ready for the fight of your life? Use this “Game of Thrones” guide to creating a ruthless content strategy that resonates with your target audience and keeps them coming back for more year-round.

1. Be Unpredictable —  Like a White Walker

You never knew when the White Walkers would appear  on “Game of Thrones.” And that was part of their charm… right? If you want to ensure your target market doesn’t get bored or lose interest, make your content as unpredictable as a White Walker. Here’s how:

Mix Up Your Headlines

Always doing numbered lists? Try a ‘How to’ headline or a data-backed headline to pique reader interest. Or try getting a little controversial by challenging a popular idea or capitalizing on a trending topic with a themed post.

Ruthless content strategy tip: Beat out the competition by double-checking your headlines for length, emotional impact, and more using CoSchedule’s free analyzer. (You can also use this tool to analyze your email subject lines too.)

• Check out this post for more headline help: How to Write Knockout Headlines Every Time

Try Content Upgrades

A content upgrade or lead magnet can be anything you deem “bonus material” that is offered along with a blog post. For example, if it’s a post on 12 new sites to promote a blog, your upgrade could be an ebook that provides 12 additional ways to promote a blog or a spreadsheet that helps people keep track of their promotional efforts.

The important thing here is that the upgrade provides value to your reader  —  and complements the topic of the blog post.

Some ideas include:

• Templates
• Checklists
• Cheat sheets
• Ebooks
• In-depth how-to guides

Ruthless content strategy tip: Offer your content upgrade in exchange for your readers’ email addresses.

Use Interactive Content

Your readers expect quality content from you, but it doesn’t always have to come in the form of a 3,000-word blog post, right? Interactive content will shake things up for your reader — while still allowing you to create content that aligns with your readers’ interests.

Ruthless content strategy tip: Use a tool like Apester to create entertaining quizzes, surveys, and polls to keep readers engaged on your blog  —  and away from your competition.

You can also use interactive content for crowdsourcing. (E.g., “What topics would you like to see on our blog?” “What should we name our podcast?” and “What new features would you like to see on our website?”)

2. Have Foresight — Like Bran Stark

You’re no Three-Eyed Raven, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a little foresight when it comes to knowing what your readers want. In fact, foresight is essential if you want your content to attract and retain your target audience come rain or snow.

So if you want to become the Bran Stark of content marketing, you’ll want to master the following three elements…

Create Insightful Content

Insightful content will surprise your readers because it addresses their thoughts, questions, pain points, and concerns. Your goal should be to always make your readers say, “How the heck did they know?!” because that’s when you’ve really tapped into what they want and need from you.

Ruthless content strategy tip: Interactive content can help you gain insight into the topics your target audience would like to read.

You can do this by sending out surveys and posting polls on your blog. Once you have this data, map out a strategic plan that covers these topics from all angles.

The key here is to go deeper than the data provides.

• What related topics can you cover?
• What are the underlying issues?

Dig past the surface to make a more insightful connection with your readers.

Stay on Top of Trends

What are the current trends in content marketing? What are the upcoming trends? What are the hottest tools, plugins, apps, and software that content marketers are using?

Knowing the answer to these questions will ensure you’re armed with content-marketing weapons that’ll blow the competition away.

Ruthless content strategy tip: Listen to these small business podcasts and social media podcasts to stay in the loop on current and upcoming trends.

Luckily, podcasts are easy to fit into a busy routine  —  listen to them on your morning commute, on a coffee break, or even while you clean.

Use Analytics to Understand Your Audience

What type of content performs best with your audience? How long are readers staying on each page? What is your bounce rate? Are your readers converting? Are you using Google Console to check queries so you know what your readers are searching for?

Sheesh  —  that’s a lot of data to know  —  but Google Analytics can help you answer all of these questions (and more) so you can create insightful content for your audience.

Ruthless content strategy tip: Ahrefs offers a free site audit that will tell you why your site isn’t ranking well or help you identify reasons your site dropped in rankings. It points out broken links, spammy backlinks, errors, and much more.

3. Be Dauntless — Like Daenerys

Daenerys wouldn’t let anyone, or anything, stop her from getting what she wanted. And since we happen to be in a cutthroat age of content marketing, a dauntless approach just might help you win the battle too.

But if you don’t want readers screaming, “dracarys” about your content, it’s going to take some work…

Try Something New

How will you know what your target audience responds to if you don’t conduct tests? Maybe it’s an edgier headline, a controversial topic, or even a new promotional platform… but not being afraid to try something new should always be a part of your strategy.

Ruthless content strategy tip: Ephemeral content (content that lasts for a very short time) is popular right now, thanks to platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram. Whether it’s telling a story through a series of photos or a quick video, ephemeral content could be a strong addition to your content marketing efforts.

Explore Promotional Avenues

Readers aren’t handed to you on a silver platter. And what works one year won’t necessarily work the next. That’s why you need to have an arsenal of promotional avenues that help you get your content out there.

Ruthless content strategy tip: Promote your content using free social media sites like Pinterest, Instagram, Linkedin, and Facebook —  but mix in paid platforms too. These include Outbrain, Taboola, paid advertising on social media sites, and influencer marketing.

Monitor Your Keywords

What’s a surefire way to get tons of traffic to your site? Get in one of the top spots on Google. And carefully choosing the right keywords to target is how you do this  —  but you also need to monitor how the keywords are doing (on a regular basis) to keep your strongest-performing content at the top.

Ruthless content strategy tip: Yoast SEO and RankMath are fantastic plugins for WordPress that will alert you to optimization errors in your posts and help you rank higher. You can also use a tool like Semrush to get notifications when your keywords move up or down , but keep in mind you can only track 10 keywords without a paid account.

Ruthless and Ready for Content Marketing Success

Just like it takes an army to win the Iron Throne, it takes a battalion of tools, software, creativity, and intuition  —  not to mention blood, sweat, and tears  —  to win the content marketing war. To stay afloat, you’ll need to arm yourself with a ruther content strategy that has been meticulously mapped out and a ruthless-and-ready attitude.

So apply these tips to your strategy and watch as winter comes for your competitors.