You’ve heard it a hundred times “Content is king.”
Though we prefer the more gender-neutral term “All-powerful monarch,”
king is more catchy. You need content and you need it to be amazing. ‘Nuff said.
But what’s that content achieving without an overarching strategy to create and disseminate your message?
In addition to that fantastic content, you need the accompanying content marketing strategy to ensure that your efforts are successful.
You can look all over the internet and find long, extensive lists on what your content marketing strategy needs. We’re all about doing your research, so by all means, go forth and Google. But we’re also all about boiling things down to their simplest and most effective constituents.
Therefore… Here are 3 things to consider when developing your content marketing strategy.
- Your mission and your goals
Who is your target audience? What content and what platforms will you use to reach them? What problems are you solving for your target audience? These are the main questions that need to be addressed in your content strategy mission and goals. You can also focus on the more immediate and long-term goals of your business like growing awareness, supporting customers, becoming a thought leader, etc.
One of the biggest things to remember is that your mission and goals need to be customer-centric. You need to know your customers, understand them, walk a mile in their shoes and know all the data that you can find about them. Don’t even think about crafting you mission and goals without having a thorough understanding of your customers.
2. How do you measure success?
If you’re blasting out content without measuring its effects, you’re just having a one-way conversation. You need to know what’s hitting the target, what’s missing and why. Metrics will tell you how successful your strategy is and they’ll help you craft even better content for even better results. Set your key performance indicators (KPIs) to gain evaluative measurements on how your strategy is performing.
Google Analytics will be one of your best friends as you begin to measure data. This will tell you who’s reading what, when they’re reading, click rates and more. You can even incorporate Google Analytics into your social media metrics. You’ll see shares, engagements, conversions and the leads you’re receiving.
3. Create killer content and amplify it
What’s the point of a content strategy if you’re not going to back it up with amazing content? For this you need research on both your subject and your audience. Your content needs to speak to your customers and give them what they’re looking for. People can spot sales drivel and bubble gum content within the first few seconds. Don’t create any content that doesn’t give some useful benefit.
Once that great content is created you need to know where to place it to get the best results. Find out where your customers are. Think strategically and identify the channels and resources available to you to best amplify your content.
What else? One final tidbit, your strategy needs organization, so don’t even think about implementing anything without a content calendar.
And there you have it. Go forth and create great content!