Content marketing is the backbone of SEO. Saying that, it is vital to create a content marketing plan to have a very strong presence. It is becoming more evident by entrepreneurs that it’s important to dedicate time to have a solid content marketing plan. Research shows that 70% of B2B marketers are creating more content than they did a year ago! Even though it takes dedication, innovation, and perseverance to have a successful content marketing plan, it is worth all the work.
I started writing this article with a very long checklist to create a notable content marketing strategy, but I’ve compiled the most important and resourceful steps for you to achieve it. Use these content marketing tips to have amazing results.
1. Identify Your Purpose
The foundation of any successful strategy is setting your goals. Before you begin, write down what you want to achieve from creating a content marketing plan. Perhaps it is to build awareness, increase retention rates, or generate more leads. Make sure you have set your priorities and have established reasonable organizational goals.
2. Create Your Personas
After setting goals, know who your audience is and get to know them. Personas are used to facilitate effective content creation.
Ask yourself:
- What social media platforms does your target audience use?
- What do they normally talk about?
- What do they need from me?
- What content will they find appealing?
To get these answers, you need to conduct research. Use social media to see what’s happening on other accounts, especially your competitors. You are most likely targeting the same demographic and therefore you need to create content that will set you apart from the others so that the customers will go to you. By conducting research, you will be able to stay up to date with trends and can evolve with time. Identify ways to develop better content to be unique by creating outstanding personas. This tip, out of all the other content marketing tips, is very vital as it is used as a base to have a successful presence online.
3. Get Started
It’s time to start creating content!
Will you be the one who will generate it? Or will you make room in your budget to hire someone?
If you are deciding to hire someone, you will want to figure out what else you will be spending your money on. Dedicate time to come to a conclusion on how much and where you will use the money. For example, lots of businesses have found it valuable to pay for promotion (ex: Facebook, Google, YouTube, etc.). When creating the content, remember to incorporate your brands voice and keep it consistent within all of your platforms.
Don’t forget to craft a distribution plan for viewers to access the information. Will it go out via newsletters? Blogs? Social Media? Or any other platforms? Do some research to find out where your demographic is spending their valuable time.
Almost there, keep reading to find out the rest of the content marketing tips!
4. Commit and Create a Schedule
A part of standing out and having a great content marketing strategy is content consistency and quality. I see many businesses who aren’t putting in 101% into their content strategy and it’s very visible by their low numbers. Creating content that comes out periodically and is valuable for viewers will get a good response.
By trial and error and simple research, figure out what times and dates work best for your demographic. Perhaps they are Moms with young children and are often up at night, or government workers who often go on their smartphones when commuting. Schedule your content to go out at a time when viewers are most likely to interact with.
5. Assess and Adjust
You will want to keep track of how your content marketing strategy is going and if it’s working as you had hoped. Track your progress by collecting data and analysing it throughout the initiation period.
Things to track:
- Time on page
- Conversation/Interaction
- Page rank
- Subscription/Followers
- Types of content and its success rate
Record all of it down and adjust whenever needed. You may start to see some patterns and come to the conclusion to follow or stick with one topic rather another or an array of topics. Visual learner or not, it’s advisable to create graphs and pie charts to see the data. Visual representations can be great motivators to get to a perfect result of 100 percent.
Thanks for reading! Please let me know how you liked these content marketing tips below in the comments. Interested in checking out my other articles? Click here
