Eight things to keep in mind before going through any content marketing strategy

A content strategy is a segment of your marketing plan that deals with the management of any media that you create and own – written or visual. Along with content curation, one needs to form a deliberate strategy and execute this plan in an efficient manner to attain the desired results.  

If you’re looking to drive more traffic to your website, spread awareness, and build a profitable online business, you need to start paying attention to your content marketing strategy. When you have an effective strategy in place, content marketing challenges won’t be as overwhelming – in fact, it will actually help you gain confidence in your work and take a critical step towards success.

Having a content strategy in hand opens a business up to a plethora of benefits, including higher domain authority, search engine rankings, and increased conversion potential. This form of marketing is undoubtedly a long process, and you need to be persistent enough to get the best results. Here are the five things that should be kept in mind before you draft a content marketing strategy.

1. Why do you want to do content marketing?

Before you decide to adapt content marketing for your business, the first thing you need to determine is why you even want to do content marketing in the first place. Your goals should be defined, as knowing what you want to achieve gives you a better direction and focus. Your goals can be anything – from better traffic to your website to more email subscriptions for your blog, there are no barrier to setting up your business goals.

2. Who is your audience?

Your customer should be the focal point of your content marketing strategy. It is critical to develop a broad and substantial understanding of who your customers are to gain access to their buyer’s journey. By producing content that is of value to your readers, you are more likely to gain their trust and initiate conversions. Even if you are an experienced marketer, make sure to revisit your audience parameters by conducting market research from time to time.

3. What type of content do you want to promote?

After figuring out the objectives, the next thing up for debate is the kind of material you need to create. You need to figure out the type of relevant and personalised content that can be consumed by the audience. Now, in the digital era, there are several social media platforms with a wealth of content, designed specifically to entertain and inform the audience. You can present content in the form of articles, blogs, memes, infographics, case studies, and e-books. However, before you start creating content, you should know the buyer persona for which content is being created. Knowing your customer will help you understand the way they think and the type of content they will like to read. You will sync your marketing message better with the content you create.

Try mixing and experimenting with different forms of content to see which style is producing the best results. If you have been crafting only blog posts till now, it might be a good idea to switch. For example, you can create an e-book that lists out all your previous work into one ultimate guidebook. This is a great way to offer the same information in a creative format – something that your readers will find efficient as well.

4. How will you promote the content?

Creating content is not enough – you need to make sure that your content reaches the maximum number of people as well. Promotion is as important as creating content. There are three primary mediums through which you can promote your content on various digital channels. Depending on the kind of strategy you follow, you need to choose one of these channels and make sure that your content reaches the maximum number of people. After all, without sufficient outreach, great content cannot explore its real potential.

There are three ways in which you can promote your content:

• Influencer Marketing: To put into simple words, influencer marketing is taking the endorsements of socially influential people and utilising it in a modern-day content-driven marketing strategy. When one collaborates with influencers, it leads to a 3-10 times increase in the conversion rate since they have a large and diverse follower list. You can approach these influencers easily, but keep in mind to perform thorough research and then provide them with a tailor-made strategy, along with your budget details.
• Social Media Snippets: Ideally, your content should include numerous snippets such as quotes, statistics, and images, among others. These snippets can be shared multiple times over a period across various social media platforms.
• Guest posting: Sharing your content as a guest post that has a massive number of readers will help increase the authority of your brand. Once can use channels like Reddit, Biz Sugar, and Business 2 Community to fulfil this purpose.

5. How can you stand out?

The digital space is overflowing with content that’s almost begging for views and engagement. So, when you enter this digital space with your content, how will you stand out? Simple – you need to be innovative and smart enough to outsmart this wealth of content on the internet. The best thing to do in this regard is to be honest with your audience. Create content that is useful to them and they will definitely engage with it.

6. What content ideas can you utilise?

If you wish to make your website more SEO-friendly and discover new content ideas, you can use HubSpot’s Website Grader to help you optimise and enhance each area. This tool effectively grades your marketing areas and provides its users with a detailed report on how they can improve and streamline their marketing efforts.

If you're having trouble sparking content ideas, ‘What To write’ is a tool that asks you questions to jumpstart your brain with diversified ideas. BuzzSumo is a similar tool that uses social media to determine if a particular form of content is popular and well-liked.

7. How will you build an email list?

“Content marketing is useless if you’re not getting it in front of the right people.” There’s a lot of truth in this seemingly simple quote. The most important part of content distribution is emailing, since it lets you directly communicate with your subscribers and find a place in their inbox.

An email service provider (ESP) is a helpful tool since it lets you build and maintain your subscribers' list. It also allows you to check reports on how your campaigns are performing. An ESP also ensures that your emails aren’t automatically rerouted to the spam folder. MailChimp and ConvertKit are a few options you can start with, especially if you have lower startup costs.

8. How will you measure the ROI?

Knowing the progress of your content marketing efforts is very necessary to track the direction of your lead. In the online space, following the results of the investment you made is important to understand how useful it is. A content piece is considered successful when it has generated a good number of views, clicks, and engagement. Now, with modern online tools available at the disposal of every marketer, measuring the success of a content piece is not that difficult. You can easily track how your marketing efforts are faring and constantly make improvements in your content marketing strategy.

Keep these things in mind before you go through any content marketing strategy to adopt it for your business or brand. These points, if executed well, will lay the foundation for a robust content marketing strategy and help in the attainment of better marketing results.

This article was first published on BBN Times.