Content marketing is a powerful way to attract and engage your audience, build trust and authority, and generate leads and sales. But it can also be challenging to plan, create, and manage content marketing campaigns effectively. If you’re struggling with this, here are some tips to improve your approach.
Before you start creating content, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and who you want to reach. Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Your audience should be segmented into personas based on their needs, preferences, and behaviors. This will help you tailor your content to their interests, challenges, and pain points.
If you do not thoroughly understand your target audience(s), you will struggle to create content that resonates with them. Your goals should not be vague - for example: increase website traffic - but specific like "achieve a 20% increase in website traffic through a blog post series targeting our key demographic within the next quarter." Another way to define your audience is to delve into specifics like their interests, hobbies, proclivities, and ambitions. Nigerian millennials who live in Nigeria have markedly different interests from Nigerian millennials who live in the US or UK. No two audiences are the same.
Depending on your goals and audience, you need to select the most suitable content types and channels for your campaigns. Content types can include blogs, ebooks, videos, podcasts, infographics, case studies, webinars, and more. Channels can include your website, social media, email, search engines, and third-party platforms. You should also consider the content format, length, tone, and style that will resonate with your audience and match your brand voice.
To manage your content creation and distribution effectively, you need to have a content calendar and workflow. A content calendar is a tool that helps you plan, schedule, and organize your content activities. It should include the content topics, types, channels, deadlines, and responsible parties. A workflow is a process that helps you execute, monitor, and optimize your content activities. It should include the content stages, tasks, roles, tools, and metrics.
There are a plethora of tools out there that can facilitate content calendars and workflows but when you are just starting out, the simpler the better. Before you can really build a strategic content calendar that is mapped to business goals, take inventory of all the content you already have and tag it by topic, format (is it a blog, a case study, a data sheet?), the date it was created (is it still relevant; does it need to be updated?), where it lives (on your website, buried in the company's intranet, on someone's desktop?), who it's for, and any other distinguishing characteristics that are important for you to filter by. Identify trends, set some goals, and let this guide your quarterly content calendar.
Having a clear workflow in place always helps. For example, ideation, research, creation, review, publication, and distribution are important stages and each should be accompanied by specific tasks and objectives. Also, consider stages for feedback and revision in your workflow. This ensures that content is reviewed and refined before it goes live. The most important might be monitoring performance: Use metrics and analytics to track the performance of your content. This data should feed back into the workflow to inform future content creation. Also, make sure to regularly review and adjust your workflow based on feedback, performance data, and changing business needs. This helps in refining the process and improving efficiency over time.
Creating quality and relevant content is essential for your content marketing success. To ensure that your content is valuable, engaging, and informative for your audience, research your audience and topic thoroughly. Additionally, use keywords and SEO best practices to optimize your content for search engines. Additionally, use headings, subheadings, bullet points, images, and other elements to make your content easy to read and scan. Furthermore, consider using storytelling, examples, data, and emotions to make your content compelling and memorable. Finally, include clear and strong calls to action to guide your audience to the next step.
Leverage AI to develop content faster. It can easily help you create copy, blog posts, captions faster. You can also use AI for faster creative ideas which you can then optimise for your brand guidelines. The key is to give the right prompts which you will become better at, the more you do it.
Creating content is not enough. You also need to distribute and promote your content to reach and attract your target audience. You should use a mix of owned, earned, and paid channels to maximize your content exposure and impact. Owned channels are those that you control, such as your website, blog, and email. Earned channels are those that you earn, such as social media shares, mentions, reviews, and referrals. Paid channels are those that you pay for, such as ads, sponsored posts, and influencers.
The last step in improving your content marketing approach is to measure and analyze your results. You need to track and evaluate the performance of your content campaigns against your goals and metrics. You should use tools such as Google Analytics, social media analytics, email marketing analytics, and content marketing software to collect and analyze your data. You should also use insights and feedback from your audience and stakeholders to identify what works and what doesn’t, and to make adjustments and improvements accordingly.
Don't have to be everything for everyone on every social media platform :) 1) Select the meaningful platforms so that energy & resources can be spent on doing a stellar job there 2) Have a clear "why are we on this platform" strategy. On one, it could be awareness and reputation management, and on another it could be pure-play lead generation 3) Be agile. Responding to queries, complaints, suggestions quickly has more value than working on a customary season's greetings post (just an example)
Get inspired! Spending time into quality research of what other stakeholders are doing, what is key to your industry, maybe even more mainstream trends these are all helpful to start creating more engaging content.
1. Connais ton public cible : Il est essentiel de comprendre ton public cible pour créer du contenu qui lui parle. 2. Sois créatif et original : Pour te démarquer, essaie d'être créatif et original dans ton contenu. Trouve des angles uniques, utilise des histoires captivantes et propose des conseils pratiques. Utilise également des visuels attrayants pour attirer l'attention de ton public. 3. Utilise les bons canaux de distribution : Identifie les canaux de distribution qui sont les plus pertinents pour ton public cible. Que ce soit les réseaux sociaux, les blogs, les newsletters ou d'autres plateformes, choisis les canaux qui te permettront d'atteindre efficacement ton public.
1. Connais ton public cible : Il est essentiel de comprendre ton public cible pour créer du contenu qui lui parle. 2. Sois créatif et original : Pour te démarquer, essaie d'être créatif et original dans ton contenu. Trouve des angles uniques, utilise des histoires captivantes et propose des conseils pratiques. Utilise également des visuels attrayants pour attirer l'attention de ton public. 3. Utilise les bons canaux de distribution : Identifie les canaux de distribution qui sont les plus pertinents pour ton public cible. Que ce soit les réseaux sociaux, les blogs, les newsletters ou d'autres plateformes, choisis les canaux qui te permettront d'atteindre efficacement ton public.