While creating great content is at the center of effective marketing, you also need to create a strategy for long-term, sustainable growth. Here are the steps:

Identify your mission statement and goals for your content strategy. Make sure to outline and document your plan and focus on SMART goals (specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-bound).
Create comprehensive buyer personas. When developed properly, this can increase your leads, conversions, and search rankings.
Identify your competitors, analyze their content and create strategies to beat them.
Audit your existing content and figure out what needs to be improved and what can be repurposed.
Build a content growth strategy roadmap to clearly plan where you are going.
Create a content calendar to make sure the strategy aligns with your team's plans.
Choose your content promotion channels; this can include social media, organic search, PPC, influencer marketing and more.
Plan your budget accordingly. Reserving 25% of your budget for content is a great place to start.