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With strategy and personas to content success

Uniting the interests of the company and the target group: Two tools by Mirko Lange combined with data-based personas make content strategy successful. We show how.

The "FISH model

The basic idea of the "FISH model": content must fulfil certain tasks. A good content strategy is composed of four different types of content.

Each letter of FISH stands for a specific task that the content fulfils for the company. Therefore, all parts are important.

F = Follow content: Content that attracts attention and makes you want more. The goal is long-lasting customer loyalty. Particularly suitable for this: Storytelling series and strong images and/or videos. SEO plays a subordinate role with follow content, as this content is not explicitly searched for.

I
= Inbound content is exclusive content that offers the reader a high utility value: for example, studies and whitepapers. SEO is very important for inbound content because people search for solutions on the internet. Inbound content provides competent answers, explains contexts, builds trust with readers and generates leads. The goal: content against email address.

S = Search and Sales Content provides answers to actively asked questions - mainly from internet and search engine users. Keywords play an important role here, as does a good structure, characterised by meaningful subheadings and a red thread. The questioner must be able to quickly recognise that he will get the answer he is looking for here.

H = Highlight content generates attention. The content inspires, the target group shares the posts and increases the reach. The costs of producing highlight content and the associated seeding costs are usually quite high. But the content is often shared, generates great reach and then pays off.

The CONTENT RADAR

Which of the four types of content does your target group need? The Content Radar answers precisely this question. Mirko Lange's model categorises content according to the needs of the customer.

An axis divides emotional and functional content. Does the reader learn something from the content? Does he know about it and understand connections better? Or does the content arouse emotions in the reader, which has no functional value but hits emotionally?
The other axis distinguishes between superficial and profound content. This axis describes whether the content should be short - i.e. superficial. Or: extensive and long - i.e. profound.
Whereby the interest and the time that the reader takes are dependent on each other. This means: the more interested the reader is, the more time he or she will take for the content.
Altogether, this results in four areas of benefit:

  • Functional/foregrounded: News/information ("I know")
  • Functional/deep: Knowledge/enabling ("I have learned something")
  • Superficial/emotional: entertainment/fun ("It's fun for me")
  • Profound/emotional: relationship/meaning ("I got it"

For a clear content strategy, it is advisable to focus the content production on one of the areas without completely losing sight of the others. You should ask yourself for each of the benefit areas: do I want to be a leader, above average or just "me too"? These questions help to understand which content production goals you want to achieve with each area. And the needs of the users - which in turn provide us with data-driven personas - reveal which goals need to be set for whom.

  

data-driven personas

Empirical-data-driven personas represent a person of a target group. They include demographic data such as: Age, gender, place of residence, marital status, occupation and income. The interests, hobbies and leisure activities of the respondents are also reflected in the data-based persona. Crucial: data on reading and media use, buying behaviour, worries, needs, wants and values. They also tell us what kind of content is right for our own target group(s).

Text: Regina Grein

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