10 Questions Every Freelance Content Strategist Should Ask Their Clients

Understanding your client’s needs and goals is crucial in content marketing. It’s not a one-size-fits-all discipline; instead, it requires tailoring to the client’s unique objectives and audience.

‘Needs’ refer to the client’s immediate requirements or challenges that content marketing should address, like increasing brand awareness, boosting website traffic, improving search engine rankings, or driving conversions.

‘Goals’ are long-term aspirations aligned with the client’s overall business strategy, such as becoming a thought leader, expanding into new markets, or increasing customer share.

By comprehending these needs and goals, a content strategist can develop a targeted plan that addresses current challenges and aligns with long-term objectives. This approach ensures that every piece of content serves a specific purpose, contributing to the overall success of the client’s business.

This article equips freelance content strategists with essential questions to ask clients and helps individuals and businesses collaborate effectively with freelance writers. These questions facilitate a deep understanding of needs and goals, vital in creating effective content marketing strategies.

As freelancers, content strategists work with diverse clients, each with unique needs and goals. Having a comprehensive list of questions ensures crucial information isn’t missed when planning content strategies. This not only delivers better results but also enhances the strategist’s credibility and reputation in the market.

1. What are your overall business objectives?

As a freelance content strategist, the first and most important question to ask the client is about their business objectives. These objectives can vary, from increasing sales and expanding market share to enhancing customer satisfaction or launching new products or services.

Understanding the broader business goals is vital for aligning the content strategy for several reasons. Firstly, it ensures that all content produced is in line with these goals, whether it’s blog posts, social media updates, or email campaigns. This alignment guarantees that each piece of content contributes to achieving the broader business objectives.

Secondly, a clear understanding of the business objectives is crucial for accurately measuring the success of content marketing efforts. By knowing what the business aims to achieve, appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs) can be set for the content.

Thirdly, understanding the business objectives helps prioritize content initiatives, especially when resources are limited. For instance, if the objective is to attract a new target audience, the focus can be on creating content that appeals to this specific demographic.

Lastly, tying the content strategy to the business objectives allows the content strategist to effectively communicate the value of their work to the client. It is more compelling to demonstrate how a blog post contributed to a 10% increase in new customer sign-ups than simply stating it received 1000 views.

Understanding the client’s business objectives is essential for creating an effective and results-driven content strategy.

2. Who is your target audience?

Understanding your client’s target demographic is crucial when creating relevant and engaging content. The target demographic refers to the specific group of people that your client’s product or service is intended for. This can be determined by factors like age, gender, location, income level, education, occupation, interests, and more.

Here’s why this understanding is so important:

1. Creating Relevant Content: Tailoring your content to address the specific needs, interests, and pain points of your audience is key. For example, content aimed at tech-savvy millennials will differ significantly from content targeted at retired baby boomers. By crafting content that resonates with your target demographic, you increase its relevance and effectiveness.
2. Engaging the Audience: Understanding your target demographic helps you determine the best way to engage them. Different groups may prefer different types of content or have distinct online behaviors. For instance, younger audiences might engage more with infographics and videos on social media, while professional audiences might prefer in-depth white papers or case studies.
3. Boosting Conversions: The ultimate goal of any content strategy is to drive action. By knowing your client’s target demographic and what motivates them, you can craft compelling calls-to-action that encourage desired behaviors, such as signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or sharing content with others.
4. Optimizing SEO: Understanding your target demographic can also inform your SEO strategy. Researching the keywords and search terms your audience is likely to use allows you to incorporate them into your content and improve visibility in search engine results.

Understanding your client’s target demographic goes beyond simply knowing who they are; it involves understanding their needs, preferences, and behaviors. This knowledge empowers content strategists to create content that is not only relevant and engaging but also effective in driving action and achieving the client’s business objectives.

3. What is your unique selling proposition (USP)?

The Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is what sets a brand apart from its competitors. It represents the unique value that the brand offers to customers, something they cannot find elsewhere. This could be a distinctive product feature, exceptional customer service, or an innovative business model.

Understanding the client’s USP is crucial for creating compelling content for several reasons:

1. Highlighting Unique Value: By knowing the client’s USP, a content strategist can emphasize this unique value in all their content. This can be achieved through blog posts that showcase the product’s unique features, case studies that demonstrate superior customer service, or social media posts that highlight the innovative business model. Consistently highlighting the USP helps establish and reinforce the brand’s unique position in the market.
2. Creating a Distinct Voice: The client’s USP can also inform the tone and style of the content. If the USP is a fun and quirky product, the content can mirror this with a lighthearted and humorous tone. Conversely, if the USP is professional expertise, the content might adopt a more formal and authoritative tone. This helps create a distinct voice for the brand that sets it apart from competitors.
3. Engaging the Target Audience: Understanding the client’s USP helps engage the target audience more effectively. The USP is often closely linked to the needs and interests of the target demographic. By focusing on the USP, the content can directly address these needs and interests, making it more engaging and relevant for the audience.

Knowing the client’s USP is not just about understanding their uniqueness. It’s about leveraging this uniqueness to create compelling content that distinguishes their brand, engages the target audience, and ultimately drives action.

4. What are your key performance indicators (KPIs) for content success?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are measurable metrics that businesses use to track progress towards strategic objectives. In the context of content marketing, KPIs can include website traffic, social media engagement, email open rates, and conversion rates.

Understanding the client’s KPIs is crucial for measuring the effectiveness of your content for several reasons:

1. Aligning Content with Business Objectives: By knowing the client’s tracked KPIs, you can ensure your content contributes to these metrics. For instance, if increasing website traffic is a KPI, you can focus on creating SEO-optimized content that ranks high in search engine results, attracting more visitors.
2. Measuring Content Success: KPIs provide concrete and quantifiable measures of success. They help assess how well your content performs against the client’s objectives. Without KPIs, it would be challenging to determine content effectiveness.
3. Making Data-Driven Decisions: Monitoring the client’s KPIs offers valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t in your content strategy. This informs future content decisions, allowing you to optimize your strategy based on data, rather than guesswork.
4. Demonstrating Value to the Client: Understanding the client’s KPIs enables you to showcase the value of your work. By illustrating how your content contributes to the KPIs, you can make a compelling case for the return on investment (ROI) of your content efforts.

Understanding the client’s KPIs extends beyond measuring success; it involves aligning content with business objectives, making informed decisions, and demonstrating value. It’s an essential aspect of any effective content strategy.

5. Who are your main competitors?

Having a solid understanding of your client’s competition is vital when crafting an effective content strategy. It provides valuable insights into the strategies that are successful within the industry and highlights potential gaps that your client can capitalize on. Here’s how a comprehensive knowledge of the competition can inform different aspects of your content strategy:

1. SEO Strategy: Analyzing the competition allows you to gain valuable insights into their targeted keywords, on-page SEO structure, and backlink profile. This information can help you identify opportunities for your own SEO strategy. For example, you may discover less competitive keywords that your client can focus on or identify gaps in the competitor’s content that you can fill to gain an advantage in search engine rankings.
2. Content Positioning: Understanding the type of content that your competition produces can help inform your own content positioning. By analyzing their content, you can identify the topics they cover, the tone they use, and the preferred formats. This enables you to differentiate your client’s content. For instance, if all competitors are publishing technical blog posts, you can position your client’s content as more accessible and user-friendly.
3. Audience Engagement: Examining how the competition engages with their audience provides valuable insights for your own engagement strategies. By studying their use of social media, call-to-action techniques, and encouragement of user-generated content, you can tailor your approach to effectively engage your client’s target demographic.
4. Content Formats: Reviewing the competition allows you to identify the most popular and effective content formats within your client’s industry. If competitors are finding success with videos, webinars, or infographics, it suggests that these formats resonate well with the target audience.

Understanding the competition is an integral part of developing a successful content strategy. It enables you to learn from their successes, identify opportunities for differentiation, and make informed decisions regarding SEO strategy, content positioning, audience engagement, and content formats.

6. What content formats does your audience prefer?

Understanding the preferences of your audience is crucial for creating engaging and resonant content. It’s not just about what you say, but also how you say it. Different formats can appeal to different segments of your audience, and choosing the right one can significantly increase engagement. Here’s why tailoring content formats to audience preferences is so important:

1. Enhancing User Experience: People have different preferences for consuming content. Some enjoy reading long-form blog posts, while others prefer videos or podcasts. By offering content in the format your audience prefers, you improve their user experience, increasing the likelihood of engagement and return visits.
2. Increasing Accessibility: Different content formats make your content more accessible to a wider range of people. Videos work well for visual learners, while podcasts are ideal for those on the go. Diversifying your content formats helps you reach and engage with a broader audience.
3. Boosting Social Sharing: Certain content formats tend to be shared more on social media. Infographics and videos, for example, often receive more shares than text-based content. Creating content in these formats, if preferred by your audience, can help increase social sharing and expand your reach.
4. Improving SEO: Search engines like Google rank not only text-based content but also videos, images, and other types of content. By creating content in various formats, you can improve your visibility in search engine results, driving more traffic to your site.
5. Standing Out from the Competition: Tailoring your content formats to your audience’s preferences can help differentiate your brand from competitors. If your competitors are all creating blog posts, but your audience prefers videos, creating video content can help you stand out and capture more attention.

Tailoring content formats to audience preferences isn’t just a nice-to-have; it can significantly impact your engagement rates, reach, and ultimately, your bottom line. It’s about meeting your audience where they are and delivering content in the most enjoyable and accessible ways.

7. What platforms will we be using for content distribution?

The digital landscape is teeming with a variety of platforms, each possessing its own distinct characteristics, audience demographics, and content requirements. To ensure the effectiveness of a content strategy, it is crucial to comprehend these disparities and adapt approaches accordingly. Here’s a breakdown of how different platforms demand different content strategies:

1. Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter—each harbors a unique user base and content preferences. For example, Instagram thrives on visual content, emphasizing high-quality images and short videos. On the other hand, LinkedIn leans towards professionalism, favoring industry news, thought leadership articles, and career advice. Understanding these platform dynamics is vital in guiding content production.
2. Blogging Platforms: Medium, company blogs—these platforms cater to audiences seeking in-depth, long-form content. Educational and informative approaches prevail here, offering valuable insights to readers. Additionally, optimizing content for search engines is paramount to ensure discoverability.
3. Video Sharing Platforms: YouTube, Vimeo—the focus on these platforms revolves around engaging video content. This encompasses tutorials, webinars, product reviews, and behind-the-scenes footage. Visuals, storytelling, and a more informal, personal tone take center stage.
4. Email Marketing: Concise, personalized, and action-oriented content is a must for email newsletters or campaigns. The objective often entails compelling recipients to take specific actions, such as making a purchase or reading a blog post. This necessitates attention-grabbing headlines, clear call-to-actions (CTAs), and personalized segmentation.
5. Podcast Platforms: Spotify, Apple Podcasts—these platforms are designed for audio content. The conversational and intimate nature of podcasts makes them perfect for in-depth discussions, interviews, and storytelling. Engaging audio content that captivates listeners over extended periods is key.

Each platform possesses unique requirements and audience expectations. Understanding these distinctions is essential in crafting a multi-platform content strategy that effectively engages the target audience, regardless of their location. Tailoring content and style to specific platforms significantly enhances engagement, reach, and overall content success.

8. Do you have a content calendar or publishing schedule?

Consistency is a crucial element in successful content marketing. It has a significant impact on your brand’s reputation, audience engagement, and SEO performance. Let’s explore why consistency holds such importance:

1. Building Brand Reputation: Consistently producing content establishes your brand as a reliable source of information. Regularly delivering high-quality content demonstrates your commitment to providing value, enhancing your brand’s credibility and trustworthiness.
2. Audience Engagement: Regular content production keeps your audience engaged and interested. When they know they can expect new content at specific times, they are more likely to stay connected with your brand. On the other hand, sporadic content production can lead to decreased engagement as your audience may forget about your brand or turn to more consistent sources.
3. SEO Performance: Search engines favor websites that regularly update with fresh content. Consistent content production improves your SEO performance, resulting in higher rankings in search engine results and increased traffic to your site.
4. Establishing Authority: Consistently producing content on relevant topics helps establish your brand as an authority in your field. Over time, this can lead to increased recognition and respect from peers, customers, and industry leaders.
5. Maintaining Brand Voice and Identity: Consistency is not just about frequency; it also involves maintaining a consistent brand voice and identity across all content. This builds brand recognition and ensures that your audience has a clear understanding of who you are and what you stand for.
6. Customer Retention: Consistent communication through regular content distribution keeps your brand top-of-mind for customers, encouraging repeat business and fostering customer loyalty.

Consistency in content production and distribution plays a crucial role in a successful content strategy. It helps build and maintain your brand’s reputation, keeps your audience engaged, improves your SEO performance, and establishes your brand’s authority in your field. To ensure regular and consistent output, it is important to plan a content calendar and adhere to it.

9. What is your budget for content creation?

Budget constraints are a reality for many businesses, especially small businesses and startups. These financial limitations have a significant impact on content strategy in various ways:

1. Content Production: Limited budgets can affect the quantity and type of content produced. For instance, creating high-quality videos can be expensive due to the need for professional equipment and expertise. As a result, opting for more cost-effective content formats like blog posts or social media updates might be preferable.
2. Content Quality: While maintaining high-quality content is crucial, tight budgets may require a balance between quality and quantity. It might be more effective to produce fewer but higher-quality pieces rather than numerous lower-quality ones. Alternatively, investing in training your team to create better in-house content can be more cost-effective than outsourcing to expensive agencies.
3. Distribution Channels: Paid distribution channels such as sponsored social media posts or search engine ads can quickly deplete limited budgets. Therefore, focusing on organic reach through SEO, email marketing, or organic social media posts may be a more viable option.
4. Tools and Technology: Various tools are available to assist with content creation, distribution, and analysis. However, some of these tools can be costly. With a limited budget, it is important to prioritize essential tools or explore free or low-cost alternatives.
5. Content Promotion: Promoting content is crucial for reaching a wider audience. However, methods like paid advertising or influencer marketing can be expensive. Instead, relying on cost-effective strategies like collaborations, guest blogging, or leveraging existing networks can be more budget-friendly.
6. Measurement and Analysis: Analyzing content performance is key to refining strategies. However, advanced analytics tools can be costly. In this case, utilizing basic analytics provided by platforms like Google Analytics or social media sites can still provide valuable insights.

While budget constraints present challenges, they also foster creativity and resourcefulness. They force prioritization, encourage a focus on effective strategies, and inspire innovative approaches to producing and distributing high-quality content. It’s important to remember that success isn’t solely dependent on a large budget, but rather on how resources are utilized.

10. How will we handle feedback and revisions?

Effective communication is crucial in any business relationship, especially when it comes to content creation. Here’s why:

1. Understanding Client Expectations: Before diving into content creation, it’s vital to thoroughly grasp the client’s expectations. This includes their content goals, target audience, brand voice, and more. Clear communication ensures you have all the necessary information to deliver content that meets these expectations.
2. Feedback and Revisions: Even with a clear brief, there may be instances where content requires revisions. Whether it’s adjusting the tone or aligning with the client’s marketing strategy, open communication allows for constructive feedback, making it easier to improve the final product.
3. Avoiding Misunderstandings: Misunderstandings can waste time, effort, and resources. By maintaining clear communication, everyone involved can stay on the same page, reducing the risk of misunderstandings and ensuring a smoother process.
4. Building Trust: Clear and consistent communication builds trust. When clients know they can easily provide feedback or express concerns, and their input is valued and acted upon, they feel more confident in your services.
5. Efficiency: Open communication leads to a more efficient content creation process. Quick access to feedback allows for prompt revisions, speeding up the production timeline and ensuring deadlines are met.
6. Continuous Improvement: Regular feedback, both positive and constructive, is crucial for continuous improvement. It highlights strengths to build upon and areas that need enhancement, enabling you to refine your content creation process and deliver better results over time.

To ensure content meets client expectations, maintaining clear communication lines for feedback and revisions is essential. This fosters understanding, facilitates adjustments, prevents misunderstandings, builds trust, enhances efficiency, and promotes continuous improvement. Leveraging tools like email, project management software, video conferencing, and shared documents can help maintain open lines of communication.

Conclusion

Crafting an effective content strategy requires meticulous thought and planning. By conducting thorough research, understanding client needs and goals, setting clear expectations, and maintaining open communication channels for feedback and revisions, you can deliver high-quality content that meets or exceeds client expectations. Remember to regularly assess and refine your process for continuous improvement. With these best practices in place, you’ll set yourself up for success as a content creator.