Simple Steps for Developing Your Content Marketing Strategy
Seth Godin famously said, “Content marketing is the only marketing left,” and for excellent reason.
Today’s buyers have no patience for overt advertising. They expect brands to give them content that informs, entertains, and benefits them, even if they don’t decide to buy. Content marketing achieves that better than any other advertising platform.
With Google Hummingbird making life difficult for advertisers who use black hat SEO techniques, a great content marketing strategy is also the easiest way to improve their search engine standing.
Quality is King
The general wisdom spouted by marketing moguls is “publish often, publish regularly,” but there’s far more to developing a successful campaign than consistency. If you write a blog post or article that 1,000 people want to read, your odds of achieving virality are far higher, so put your best into creating a resource that has true value to your audience. Achieve this by:
- Knowing your target market: Write a comprehensive description of your demographic. What does your market want to gain from your product? Which websites do they visit? Which search terms do they use most often? Do they spend more of their time on video-based content, blogs, or infographics? Which social networks do they use?
- Creating memorable content: How-to posts, lists, video clips, and articles that help customers to reach a focused conclusion are shared more often than other forms of content.
- Analyze your results: It’s pointless to put out content without assessing the success of your content marketing strategy, especially in the age of big data. Use social media listening tools, website analytics, and conversion statistics to chart out the success of your campaign. Make adjustments accordingly to improve your success.
Optimize
Your content marketing strategy is not complete until it’s optimized to catch the attention of Google. Research the most popular keywords related to your brand and decide if you’ll market to a local or international audience. Post regularly and update your most popular content.
Connect
Ultimately, a successful campaign hinges on how well you build genuine connections with your audience. Make sure your content marketing strategy outlines all the ways you can connect with your audience over the content you develop. Talk to the consumers who engage on Facebook and Instagram. Develop an outbound content marketing strategy via email. Keep the threads on your blog and articles moving. Participate with your audience, putting in extra effort with your customer influencers.
