Content marketing is a recognized medium, with Content Marketing Institute placing the share of
B2B companies using content marketing as an element of their marketing activities at 88%!
However, even though content marketing has become such an important part of marketing these days, more than 60% of those respondents would not rank their content program as mature, feeling that they are still in the early stages of building a competent content strategy.
So, if you’re just taking your first baby steps into the content world, you are not alone!
You may know you need to be doing some level of content marketing, but getting started with this channel can immediately seem overwhelming. Let’s outline some concrete steps to building a content strategy from the ground up.
1. Define your KPIs
KPI is a pretty buzzword-sounding acronym, but it can make a genuine impact on the success of your content campaigns. You need to outline the goals you want your content to reach. Take a moment and define what result you hope to gain by producing content - you should never be delivering content just for its sake.
Some examples of content KPIs might be:
- Increase brand awareness
- Website traffic
- Page interaction
- Lead conversion
- Improved reach within a particular market sector
Each of these goals will necessitate different content, built to appeal to a different audience!
Finding a way to define your KPIs will give you a framework to build on when launching a new content program.
2. Identify your audience
Understanding your customer is imperative to creating content that will speak to potential new business. It is much easier to convert a client you know needs your services, than targeting an audience that is too broad and won’t find the content useful enough to take the next step.
Developing a detailed description of your ideal client is going to give you a huge leg up.
While you’re describing your customer, make sure also to note some specific pain points that this ideal customer routinely struggles with. What are the issues the client is trying to resolve by using your service? These pain points are fantastic to have ready to go when you get to creating copy and posts to use in your content strategy.
3. Do some research
There are a few essential items to dig into before you can start creating targeted, lead converting content.
- Keyword Research: - Delving into Google’s Adwords Keyword Planner and Google Trends will both offer a good starting point to refine the most satisfactory and valuable keywords associated with your product or service. Utilizing these keywords in your content will help with SEO and even might give a few more ideas for content creation as well.
- Influencer Research: Do some homework on who else in your industry is publishing content, and note how they are distributing it and what they’re writing about. This exercise may take the form of a blog, contributed articles in outside publications, or even posting in LinkedIn or Facebook groups. See these as opportunities to learn and develop a more competitive strategy for your activities.
4. Create a Content Plan
The most difficult part of making your content successful is keeping it consistent. It is not easy to create new, engaging content over an extended period. So, before you start, make a plan for developing, publishing, and refreshing the content that is being created and distributed by your team.
The best way to address this problem directly is to
build a realistic editorial calendar. Schedule out the blog posts, whitepapers, and long form content you hope to build in the next several months and work with your team to communicate you expect that schedule to be implemented.
5. Build Content
Building content is the fun part! All of this planning and research will result in having a clear direction for your content and those who will be responsible for writing it. As you jump in, keep a few items in mind:
- You’ll need more than one type of content: You won’t only be writing blog posts, or only long-form content, or only contributed articles. Make sure you are covering all possible channels by generating several types of content.
- Editing: You may be an excellent writer, but those typos and grammatical errors will make you look completely unprofessional to a potential client. If you are unable to make these edits yourself, make sure you’re farming this out to either a professional copyeditor or a member of the team with some writing background.
- A note on long-form content: Long form content includes white papers, e-books, or in-depth articles. These can be incredibly powerful tools when used as a content offer, which gives the visitor access to a gated piece of content in exchange for more information about themselves. This is something that is simple to put in place, but that will help you build a lead database for future marketing communication with leads that have already been warmed up through their interaction with your content.
Conclusion
Creating a unique content marketing strategy from the ground up is not easy. But, there are a ton of tools and in-depth guides available to help ease you into the process and make your content launch a success. Use these resources and take action! For more information about creating an effective content strategy,
read this article.
Behind The Scene
Mel Devent is a passionate blogger who enjoys writing about all things digital marketing. She is currently working as a Marketing Associate at Blogger Sidekick, helping small businesses build authority brands with content marketing. In her spare time, she loves scuba diving, watching movies and catching up with friends.
Labels: Content Marketing, Online Marketing
