Defining a Content Marketing Strategy

In order to be considered a strategy, your content marketing efforts need to have goals, objectives and mission, as well as show at least some degree of continuity. Still, these can’t be set on random nor can you choose a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, you need to take steps that will ensure that your content marketing strategy matches the needs of your own brand. You need to carefully choose platforms, find a voice and discover tools that will help you penetrate the market more efficiently. Finally, remember that your content marketing strategy gives your brand both personality and identity. With that in mind, you need to be extra careful before making any moves.

Set up a blog

The first thing you should do when devising a content marketing strategy is making a platform on which you’ll post your content day. People don’t actually have to access your content through your blog but it’s helpful that they have it as a starting point. Moreover, it’s much easier to imagine how a person who likes your content might look through some of your older posts if they can find it all in one place. This also helps you with the effort to revamp old content and make an intricate internal linking system. Either way, setting up a blog is the right way to go. Seeing as how a basic blog can be set up in 20 minutes, there’s really no excuse for you to avoid this crucial step.

Guest post

In order to pick up where we left off, we have to mention one thing, posting on your own blog is definitely not the only course of action you’ve got. You see, there are so many perks to guest posting. For instance, instead of having to build your own audience from the ground up, you get to exploit the privilege of someone else doing this for you. Second, if your post performs well, readers might feel inclined to do a brief search and find out what else you wrote in the past. Finally, you’ll be doing the blogger in question a favor, which is a perk on its own, seeing as how you can’t survive and thrive in the digital world without friends and allies.

Build an email list

Regardless of how active you are on your social media and how excellent your marketing skills are, keep in mind that an email list is more than necessary. Some people prefer to buy email lists but such a thing is both unnecessary and bad for your brand in the long run. A purchased email list is never as efficient as an organically grown one and all it will do is misguide you to believe you’re doing much better than you actually are. One of the things you can consider is actually growing your email list through outstanding content.

Monitor your progress

How can you tell if your content is performing as it should be? Sure, there should be some noticeable change in your sales, conversions and the size of your email list but keep in mind that this won’t come right away. Since most marketers nowadays are familiar with the principle of the customer lifestyle cycle, you should be aware that some of these results won’t come right away. Therefore, you need another method to determine whether or not your content is achieving all the goals you’ve set in front of it. One of the best ways to get there is through an elaborate media monitoring efforts.

Focus on shareability

Despite all your SEO efforts, the visibility of your content can only get you so far. In order to boost its reach, on the other hand, you might want to rely on other people sharing your content. On the one hand, there are people who believe that shareability of the post is random, while there are those who understand that there are strong reasons why people choose to share certain types of content. To answer this question, you need to understand that people most commonly share in order to define themselves to others (for the purpose of self-fulfillment) or in order to bring value to their friends and followers.

Include other writers

Finally, some people believe that they can produce enough content on their own to satisfy the needs of their growing market, yet, they often underestimate A. the amount of time necessary to create quality content and B. the needs of the market. Sometimes, publishing a single post every week will be enough, at other times it won’t. This is why you need to consider bringing other writers in on this project. Keep in mind, however, that you can’t allow just anyone to write for you. Also, remember that the quality of your content reflects the reliability of your entire brand. Therefore, you need to set some strict guidelines and adhere to them as much as possible.

Conclusion

Lastly, we need to mention that our failure to address goals and mission (something we hinted on in the introduction) wasn’t on accident. Unlike the above-listed six tips, this differs from one company to another, which is why adhering to someone else’s advice may be particularly misleading. Pulling this off requires you to really know your business inside out.