Content Strategy: What to Make and for Whom

The creator who made everything — and built nothing

Fatima runs a coaching business for early-career professionals. She's been creating content for 18 months. In that time she's published:

• 47 blog posts (on topics ranging from salary negotiation to meal prep to productivity hacks to career pivots to confidence)
• 3 YouTube videos (she got nervous and stopped)
• 200+ tweets
• 60 Instagram posts
• 2 LinkedIn articles

Her traffic: 800 monthly visitors. Email list: 142 people. Revenue from content: $0.

She's not lazy. She's one of the most prolific creators her friends know. But she's confused. She made so much stuff. Why isn't it working?

The diagnosis: Fatima has content. She doesn't have a content strategy.

A strategy answers: who exactly am I talking to, what specific topic do I own, what format works best for my audience, and what action do I want each piece of content to drive? Without those answers, content is just noise.

The 4 questions every content strategy must answer

Fatima's answers were all wrong:

• Who: "professionals" — too broad. There are 500 million professionals.
• What: Everything interesting to her — no owned niche.
• Where: Every platform, inconsistently — no sustained presence anywhere.
• Why action: No lead capture, no clear next step — just hope.

The fix wasn't to create more content. It was to create less, more strategically.

Picking your niche: narrow to win

The instinct to stay broad ("I want to reach as many people as possible") is the most common and most expensive content strategy mistake.

Here's why narrow beats broad:

In a broad topic: You're competing with hundreds of established creators. HubSpot owns "marketing." Neil Patel owns "SEO." Getting discovered is nearly impossible without a massive existing audience.

In a narrow topic: You might be the only consistent, high-quality voice. You rank faster in search. Your audience refers you to others because you're "the person for [specific thing]."

The paradox: the narrower you go, the more people find you — because you're the definitive source on exactly what they're searching for.

Notice that specific doesn't mean small. "Strength training for women over 40 who've never lifted before" is still millions of people — but it's a group with a specific, common problem that you can speak to precisely.

The niching test: After picking your niche, ask: "Is there someone who is clearly the go-to source for this specific topic already?" If yes — go one level more specific. If no — you've found your opportunity.

Using AI for niche research: Prompt: "I want to create content about [broad topic]. Help me identify 10 specific sub-niches within this topic that have an underserved audience — people who have a specific problem but few high-quality content creators speaking to them directly."

The content pillar model

Once you have your niche, organise your content around pillars — the 3–5 core topics your audience cares most about, within your niche.

Example: Fatima's revised strategy

Niche: Career growth for first-generation professionals entering corporate environments

Pillars:

1. Navigating unwritten workplace rules — the things nobody tells you
2. Salary negotiation and self-advocacy — asking for what you deserve
3. Building relationships at work — networking without it feeling fake
4. Managing up — working effectively with your manager
5. Career strategy — how to plan a 2–5 year path intentionally

Every piece of content Fatima creates now belongs to one of these pillars. Her audience knows what to expect. Search engines understand what she's about. She can create 100 pieces of content across these five topics without ever running out of ideas.

Building pillar pages: For each pillar, create one comprehensive "pillar page" — a long-form definitive guide on the topic. Then create shorter "cluster content" — more specific posts that link back to the pillar. This structure signals to Google that you're the authoritative source, and it creates a clear journey for readers to go deeper.

The content audit: start with what already works

If you're building on an existing content base (even a small one), start with an audit before creating anything new.

The 3-column content audit:

Keep: High traffic + high relevance to your new strategy Improve: Decent traffic, old date or outdated information — update and re-publish Redirect: Low traffic, overlaps with stronger content — redirect URL to the better piece Delete: Low traffic, off-topic, low quality — remove (don't leave junk that confuses search engines about what your site is about)

Most content programmes find that 20% of their existing content drives 80% of their traffic. Improving and expanding those 20% pieces is usually the highest-leverage first action.

Using AI for content audits: Export your content list with traffic data and paste it into Claude: "Here is my content inventory with monthly traffic. My niche is [niche] and my audience is [persona]. Categorise each piece as: (1) Keep and promote, (2) Update and improve, (3) Redirect to a better piece, (4) Delete. Explain your reasoning for each recommendation."

The editorial calendar: from strategy to execution

A strategy without execution is just a document. The editorial calendar bridges strategy and execution — it's the plan for what you'll create, when, and for whom.

Minimum viable editorial calendar:

Notice every entry has: a pillar, a specific topic (not just a category), a format, and a specific CTA. The CTA column forces the question: after someone reads this, what is the one thing I want them to do? Without that column, content is published and then forgotten.

Competitor content analysis: finding the gap

Before creating original content, study what's already ranking and what's missing.

For any topic you want to write about:

1. Google the topic. Read the top 3–5 results.
2. Ask: what do all of them cover? (Don't repeat this — you won't outrank them on the same content)
3. Ask: what do none of them cover well? (This is your angle)
4. Ask: what question does the reader still have after reading all of them? (Answer this)

The goal is not to copy what ranks — it's to be better than what ranks by covering what they miss.

Using AI for competitor analysis: Prompt: "Here are the top-ranking articles for the search query '[your topic]': [paste titles or summaries]. What do they all cover? What gaps exist — what questions does someone searching for this topic have that none of these articles fully answer? What angle would make a new article significantly better than these existing ones?"

Back to Fatima

Six weeks after she mapped her niche, Fatima had her first coherent strategy: coaching for early-career professionals negotiating their first salary or promotion. Three content pillars. One format (written). One platform (LinkedIn). One post per weekday.

She stopped writing about meal prep. She stopped tweeting about everything. She deleted the YouTube channel she'd barely started.

Her traffic didn't triple. But for the first time in 18 months, every piece of content she made was pointing at the same person with the same problem. And six weeks in, someone found her through a post, signed up for her newsletter, and booked a coaching call.

One client from content. Her first. Because the strategy finally had a direction.

Key takeaways

• Content without strategy is noise. Volume doesn't compensate for lack of direction.
• Narrow beats broad. The more specific your niche, the faster you become the definitive source and the more precisely you attract the right audience.
• Content pillars organise everything. 3–5 recurring themes give structure to your content programme and signal to search engines what you're about.
• The editorial calendar turns strategy into action. Plan 4–8 weeks ahead; include a specific CTA in every planned piece.
• Study what already ranks, then be better. Find the gap competitors miss — that's your angle.