Content marketing is all about strategy. Yes, it can be done on a piecemeal basis, and you may just hit the target. If you want to plough through the target and hit a thousand successes beyond, you need to strategize.
So what are the main components of content marketing that you need to think about when forming that strategy?
Strategic content marketing
1. The big stuff: Set some goals. Why are you doing this? Maybe it is to increase brand awareness, introduce a new product, or build engagement. Knowing your goals gives you something to measure against.
2. Your brand’s personality: Your branding is central to content marketing strategy. It will be at the heart of every piece of content you produce. This isn’t a one-hit-wonder in a ‘brand story’, but an ongoing commitment.
3. Your audience: Realistically, you aren’t selling your service or product to everyone. There will be some distinct audience types. Pin these down using real data and target your content accordingly.
4. Competitor analysis: Whatever your competitors do, you need to do it better. The same applies with content. Research what they do and then go a step beyond. It’s also your chance to show how you are different.
5. Keywords: Yes, they need to be clearly targeted as part of your content marketing strategy. You don’t want a scattergun approach here. Rather, highly target the keywords where you have some chance of making your mark.
6. Your purpose: Distinct from your goals, you need to work out the individual purpose of each piece of content. For example, your blog posts should have a different purpose to your brochures.
7. Schedules: The beauty of a content marketing strategy is that you can ensure a holistic approach. You can schedule different content publication dates to complement and reinforce each other. You’ll also ensure a consistent steady-stream that your audience comes to rely on.
8. Promote: You may feel that you’re shouting loudly and stomping your feet by repeated promotion of content. In reality, your audience is across a giant chasm struggling to hear through ear muffs. You need to promote, push, and continue to gain traction on each piece of content.
9. Measure: A vital part of your strategy is to work out how you will measure the success of your content marketing efforts. Fortunately, lots of tools exist to make this considerably easier. You don’t just want to be looking at numbers coming to your site, but where they are going, and what they are doing. Are they becoming actual customers? Are they coming back for more?
10. Keep doing it: A content strategy is not a stagnant thing. It never ends. It should be constantly renewed, reviewed and edited. As you get to know your audience more, it’ll perform better and better.
You can order the content you need to keep up with your content marketing strategy in our content shop.
Chris Brown is chief copywriter at The Content Ninja. With a focus on SEO strategy paired with powerful writing, The Content Ninja does content marketing differently.
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