📝 How to Develop a Content Marketing Strategy
Developing a content marketing strategy is an essential part of your brand's success. Without one, your chances of failure are more significant, and you risk having your efforts go to waste. Having a strategy will give you a better chance of success, but developing one will take some time, but in the end, it'll be worth it.
Steps to Develop Your Content Marketing Strategy
If you're a blogger or a digital marketer, you need a starting point. These steps will help guide you through the process to develop a comprehensive strategy to give your chances of success the boost they need.
Outline your brand's mission and goals. This is an excellent start so you can focus on what's important and know what you need to avoid. Your mission statement is an integral piece of your strategy. It would be best if you considered your target audience, the content you'll use in reaching them, and the benefit your audience will receive. Also, please think about what you'll get from it and set your business goals like improving revenue, making sales, getting traffic, audience perception, reducing costs, and social media engagement.
Set your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Your goals should be measurable and specific so you can achieve your goals. This means your KPIs should be established. They'll help you know if a goal has been achieved by giving you measurable milestones. These include how you'll reach your overall business goals like social media metrics, revenue, sales, SEO, traffic, and other digital marketing aspects.
Knowing your audience is essential to your success. You'll need to know who your audience is so you can give them the valued content they desire. This involves collecting the demographics of your visitors, social media followers, and email subscribers. Your web analytics will help you manage this data. Customer feedback is also crucial in this step. It'll let you know their feelings about your content, what their needs are, and how you're able to address their problems. You can also create a buyer persona so you can target your content.
Knowing where you're at in your current position is vital. Content is excellent, but you need to see if it helps you meet the goals you have set. Do an audit of your content. Log all the content pieces, asses if they've been helpful or not, and identify gaps. Compare your content with your competitors and look at how their content fits within the market.
Research the best channels for your content. As you develop your strategy, this will give you a better idea of where your audience hangs out. It will also let you know where you're a success. Focus on those areas and expand.
Plan on what kind of content you want to create and share with your audience. Your success will hang on publishing this content mainly on your website and repurposed to share on other sites like social networks. Blog posts are an excellent example of how they continue to deliver significant results.
Create your content and start sharing it on your chosen channels. A strong content marketing strategy takes a lot of work. Research what has been done as this will give you an idea of what to create and add new value. Once done, start working on yours and use a content calendar so you can plan on when to post and share across all your channels.
You got the content prepped; now it's time to distribute all these to your channels and market. This part will take some finesse, but it helps set a schedule to share it. Use email marketing as a distribution tool, and work with influencers to further spread the word.
Now it's time to measure your results. Remember those KPIs? Take a hard look at those to see if you're hitting or missing your target. Check Google Analytics to check your content's performance. Measure your social sharing with a social analytics tool, and look at Google Alerts to see if anyone has mentioned your content or brand.
Developing a content marketing strategy is a continual process that needs constant attention to make sure you're hitting your goals. As you develop this strategy, keep in mind that it will evolve like your brand as you grow your audience and business. Making the appropriate changes and keeping an eye on your KPIs and analytic tools will help you stay ahead of the game.