6 of the Most Important Stages in the Content Marketing Process

Are you aware 63% of businesses exist which don't own a fixed content marketing strategy in a document form? Research of B2B content marketing strategy says on LinkedIn. The studies, done by MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute (CMI).

Do you know what Pam Didner says for content marketing? No? Below you can read:

"There's no shortcut in terms of deploying content marketing."

You get confused with the research, as mentioned earlier in the study of CMI and the statement of Pam Didner? Right? No problem, here you will get the idea of the content marketing process with its essential stages. 

You can read this blog until the end because after that you will be able to decide. 

So, let start with the first most crucial step in content marketing strategy:

Stage 1: Planning Content Strategy 

Who doesn't know that everything needs proper planning? Yes, the right plan leads to real success. You need to start with a smart strategy, but don't forget that the plan needs to be practical as well.

Before planning a content strategy, ensure to know the answer to these questions: 

1. Who's the target audience in your niche?
2. What is your audience expecting from you?
3. Who's your competitor in the market?

No worries, getting the solution of above-given problems is not as hard as you're thinking right now.

Knowing who your audience is an easy task, you will need to focus on the current customers of your products or services. 

And, yes, never forget to know the problems and feedback of your customers to understand their expectations from you.

Now, when you're ready with the above answers, then it's the right time to set the content apart from your competitors' work. Yes, it is essential to know what your competitor is doing or have already done. Wondering why? Because if they have already used your idea, then it means nothing to do it now. 

While planning a content strategy, make sure you have these three essential factors in your mind:

• Content should be engaging without making it dull, 
• It must be useful for the reader, 
• Last and the most crucial requirement is the content must be easy to understand. 

Stage 2: Create the Core of Your Content 

The core of the content is going to play an essential role in the whole set of your content marketing strategy. In this framework, you will need to involve many unique ideas, useful topics, creative themes to combine them into a whole plan.

To create a perfect core of the content, you should have a fixed goal to achieve from this content strategy. Are you dreaming about your purpose? You should because without goals, there's not excellent planning. 

You must have a goal for each project so that you can create the core of your content as per your established goals. You can use a SMART system to set your goals. 

By smart, I meant to be specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and timely. Yes, it is that simple. 

In a frame of the content marketing process, be specific with intensely focused on current Key Performance Indicator (KPIs). 

Be measurable as well, and you can use metrics to get quantifiable measuring and real numbers. 

You need to be actionable to establish your goals with appropriate steps. 

Once you get done with your list of goals, it's time to check whether you're real or not with goals.

As I have said earlier, that being practical and realistic is very important in the content marketing process. Don't know why? Here you go, you will use it in this real-world, not an imaginary one, so think accordingly. 

At last, calculate time as well because completing goals on appropriate time is a win-win situation. Be relevant with trending content because there's no benefit with the material in which no one will take an interest.

Stage 3: Research Keyword for Content

Now you will need to be in the shoe of your audience and think as an audience. 

Thinking what, I'm talking? I know you're wondering how it can help to create an effective content marketing strategy. But I'm talking right, you only need to try it once, and you will get the answer to your every question. 

Think like a customer, what will you search if you want to get the same product or service you're offering to your customers. Got it? No? Don't worry. I'm here to tell you. 

Just think if you know what your target audience is searching for, want to read, or buy, don't it will help you to create precisely that thing in your content? Ahh! Now you're happy as you got this idea. Did I guess it right?

Now, don't waste time and make a list of primary and advanced keywords that are around your brand and service. For example, if you're providing service of interior designing in India, you can opt keywords like 'Interior designing India' or 'Indian Interior designing.'   

Search keywords that are related to your niche. One-time research is well worth your time, so digging deep in this is necessary. 

Are you done with searching the keywords? Time to integrate them into your variant contents. Keywords help in generating organic traffic through Social Engine Optimization.

Stage 4: Develop your Content

After all this struggle works now, you need to work on developing your content that speaks in your brand voice. You should focus on producing content that reflects the personality of your brand. 

Are you wondering why a brand needs to create a personality? It is an essential aspect of content strategy because it helps your audience to recognize and differentiate your brand from your competitor. 

Create content by using all the information you have gathered in the above stages. Like what is the personas of your buyers, their needs, competitor's work, etc. 

You can create these kinds of contents:

• Blogs
• Infographics
• Visual content
• Ads
• Social Media Posts
• Promotions
• Articles
• Podcasts
• Webinars
• Whitepapers
• Email Content

Explain everything to your writer and designers who are going to write and create the content. Ask your editor to focus on each content; all are going to have an impact on the target audience. 

Create valuable content with a core asset that should be substantive enough to compliment your content strategy in each required way. 

Stage 5: Distributing and Publishing   

After transferring the raw content into a whole set of useful assets, distribute the content from social media posts to podcasts. It will help you to map your objectives into dramatically enhanced performance. 

Once done with the distribution, you are all set to publish each content on its relevant platform—for example, blog posts on the blog section and video contents and posts on social media. 

For your ease, you can create a calendar for your company's content management system. It will help you to know when you need to publish the content on variable platforms. 

However, every social media platform shows different times to reach the target audience, so publish accordingly.

Having a planned content marketing calendar will organize everything for your entire marketing team as well.  

Stage 6: Promotion and Analyze

In the stages mentioned above, done with research, create, design, and publish the content. So, now it's time to do the last but the most important thing, "Promotion."

Yes, it's imperative to promote your published content to reach your target audience quickly and early as well. Want to know how to improve your content?

Don't worry. It's effortless. You don't need to put any rocket science into this. Just use ad campaigns on different platforms. You can use it to create your custom campaigns.

Now, I want to tell you that ads need to be paid so that they can give you customers in the audience form. 

You can also use Press Releases to promote your content for outreach to your audience. 

Search Engine Land says that five types of PR and SEO are there to cooperate.  

Product Education, managing media outreach, keeping messaging consistent between content and PR, obtaining backlinks, and the last one is sharing content. 

After completing the promotion, don't forget to Analyze. Yes, Analyzing is essential too. You can use different types of "Analytics tools" such as Google Analytics, Kissmetrics, Raven tools, etc. 

Choosing a toolset for analysis depends on your choice, but make sure to check the size of your organization. Also, check how many people are going to use these analytic tools, and you may even know who's expert in which tool.

Don't know why analysis is essential? It is necessary because you will need to establish a reporting schedule at the end of every month.

Want to get why the reporting schedule is a part of the content marketing process? 

The answer to this question in one sentence:

"To know how many times you will need to follow these stages of the content marketing process."

Google has given a guide to cover everything from how to set up reporting automatically with the help of Google Analytics. You can read it if you're going to use Google Analytics. 

That's all, Folks!

It's time to wrap up this post. These are the six detailed stages that you will need to follow in a content marketing process. The content marketing process is improving with times to increase the success rate of content marketing campaigns.

So, this post was all about to get success in content marketing with the right strategy.   

Comment down, if you want to add any other stage to this post. Even if you have followed these steps to create your content, then please comment to share your experience and feedback.