Before you get started creating content, it’s important to set out a strategy so you know what you’re aiming for and how you’ll get there. There are a number of factors to consider, such as the quality of your content, its relevance to your audience, your SEO rankings, your design and brand image. Check out my list of steps to take when coming up with your content marketing strategy.
Understand Your Reasons
When coming up with your content marketing strategy, the first thing you need to do is figure out what you’re hoping to get out of it. Once you know your goals and objectives, you can decide how is best to reach them.
Think about what you need to achieve and set clear targets based on that. You might be looking for high conversion rates, but success doesn’t necessarily have to mean sales. It could be that you’re looking to attract a high number of readers, or you want to direct a high percentage of visitors towards your retail site. Alternatively, your goal could be something that’s harder to measure in metrics, such as producing high-quality content or building on your brand identity.
Consider Your Audience
When you’re putting together your strategy, you need to think about who your content is for. It can help to create a reader persona that you can refer to when coming up with new ideas and reviewing your content.
Think about what your audience wants to hear about and use that to come up with a list of topics. You can then use simple tools such as Google AdWords to see what related terms people in your target category are looking at. Find questions that they want answered or gaps in the current information market.
You’ll also need to consider which platforms your audience check regularly, and what format is likely to make your content best received. Consider whether your audience is visually focused, or whether they’ll be likely to want long-form content.
Assess Your Risks
As well as thinking about what you want to happen with your content marketing, it’s important to consider what you’re investing – and what could go wrong. Even if you’re not paying outside sources for content, you’re investing your employee’s time (and salary), so it’s worth assessing what kind of return you can expect before diving in.
You should also think about the type of content you’re supplying and whether there are any risks associated with that. For example, if you’re providing advice on legal or tax issues, it’s much more important to ensure that you are accurate and within your remit than if your topic is, say, fashion.
Another important factor to consider is copyright. It’s worth watermarking any visuals you create to help identify them as yours, to avoid having your content stolen and republished elsewhere without your permission or recognition.
Focus On Your Long-Term Vision
While it makes sense to begin at the beginning, it’s also important to think long-term as well. When you create your content marketing strategy plan, block out your time into quarters instead of weeks or months. You’ll be able to improve your SEO rankings by creating consistent content, keep readers interested and make sure that you’re constantly improving on and adding to previous content.
Decide what your long-term goals are and set out clear steps for getting there. If you want to establish yourself as an expert in a particular area, think about the topics you’ll need to cover. If you want to guide readers through a complex idea, break it down so you can start off by covering the basics and work up to a more complete picture.
Of course, as your company grows your ideas will develop and change, so it’s important to regularly review your strategy. Don’t be afraid to reassess and change your goals according to information and feedback you gather along the way.
Create a Calendar
If you want a successful content marketing strategy, publishing regular content is essential – both for SEO purposes and to ensure that your readers stay engaged. You should aim to update your social channels at least once a day, and to post new blogs a minimum of twice a week.
Creating a calendar will allow you to both see when you next need to post and to keep a record of what you’ve posted in the past. Make sure to mark out any special events or public holidays that might be relevant for your audience, and plan for tailored content in advance. For example, if your focus audience are mostly parents, you could time a blog post on activities to do with your children around the beginning of the summer holidays. Similarly, if you’re a food retailer, you could create custom content for National Chocolate Day.
Explore Different Formats
Many marketers instantly think of blog posts when they talk about content marketing, but there are a number of different options available to you. You may find one particular style is best suited to your brand, but don’t be afraid to mix and match.
Different content will work in different styles. For statistics and other numerical data, infographics are a great way to display them. For topical news related to your field, you could send out an email newsletter. Consider options such as interviews with industry leaders, how-to guides, case studies and videos when thinking about how best to present your content.
Try out a few different styles and see what gets the best reaction. This could mean looking at analytics such as engagement rates, or it could be as simple as asking your audience what they’d like to see more of.
Pick Your Channels
It’s all very well producing high-quality content, but somebody has to be reading it. When creating your marketing plan, one of the most important factors to consider is which channels you’ll publish your content to.
While it’s important to stay consistent, different content might be suited to different channels. For example, you should ensure you post regularly enough on your blog that your readers follow it, but you might find that things like infographics or videos are best posted straight to your business’ Facebook page.
As a general rule of thumb, any content published on your social media channels should be short and easy to read. Visuals are particularly important – both to ensure you appear in your audience’s newsfeed and to attract their attention – so include pictures and videos where you can. Longer form content could be published on a blog with a link shared on your social platforms.
Think About Accessibility
There are a number of different options when it comes to sharing your content. You can decide to offer it out for free, you can reserve some or all of it for paying readers, or you can offer it as an incentive for members signed up to your company.
The option you choose will be determined by the targets in your content strategy. If you’re looking for immediate revenue, you may want to consider a paywall. However, if you’re thinking about long-term returns, it might be worth offering it as an incentive to your members. By encouraging visitors to sign up to your mailing list, you have the opportunity to market to them and potentially convert them into customers.
On the other hand, if your primary goal is to build trust in your brand or to establish your identity, you might choose to offer it for free. It can help you bring in loyal visitors and increase brand name recognition.
Find Ways to Encourage Sharing
To ensure you get maximum value out of your content, you want to make sure it’s seen by as many pairs of eyes as possible. As well as your own methods of promoting your content, you should utilise your audience as an extra resource. Part of your strategy should include coming up with shareable content – taking into consideration both style and topic.
Make sure that all your content is easy to share across as many platforms as possible. Include icons on your blog posts, and encourage sharing in the messaging attached to your social media posts. You should also make sure to watermark your images and infographics, so that they can be traced back to the source if they’re shared elsewhere.
Review Your Analytics
Once you’ve created your ideas and set your target goals, you need to figure out how you’ll assess whether the former meets the latter. Decide how you’ll measure success early on, and look into different methods of collecting analytics.
The measurements you decide on will be determined by your target goals. If you’re looking to turn visitors into customers, you might want to monitor the click-through rate (CTR) on your links. If you want to draw in a wide readership, you should keep an eye on the number of unique visits your content receives. If your primary goal is to drive sales, you could measure success by your conversion rate.
Think about how often you will review your analytics and who will need to see your results. You might want to share results company wide, or you might want to leave it with your marketing manager. As you go, you may want to adjust your strategy according to your numbers, or you may find that your initial goals were unrealistic. It’s important to be able to listen to your results and to react as needed.
Which areas do you think are most important? Tell me your top tips for creating a great content marketing strategy in the comments below.
Lina Wang is the CEO of Eight Shots & Director, Atlantis Ventures, a Singapore and Hong Kong based company that specializes in Ecommerce, Gaming and Venture Funding. She is popularly known among her circle as "The Poker Princess" and juggles her E-commerce, gaming business, marketing consultancy and family life with a passion for startups. Considered among the youngest entrepreneurs in her field, she also writes on her Digital Marketing and Social Media Blog and other publications.