Content marketing is a powerful tool to attract potential customers to your business. Content comes in all forms: text-based articles, videos, infographics, and other digital media. However, it’s hard to create quality content without guidance. If you are exploring the use of content marketing in your business, you need a content marketing strategy. Follow these tips to develop an effective strategy that drives results.
Develop a content calendar.
The first step when entering the field of content marketing is to create a calendar. This will help your efforts in several ways. First, a calendar helps you prepare content in advance. For example, if you want to share a graphic on social media next Monday, you can make sure you have the graphic on hand with an engaging caption. Your content calendar will help significantly once you start juggling social channels, your blog, guest posting, and email newsletters.
Editorial calendars can also help you scale your efforts. You might not be able to publish a post every day. However, you can set goals to create weekly and then twice-weekly blog posts as you become more comfortable.
If you are just starting out, create a chart with the topics you want to cover and when you plan to publish them. The chart maker from Lucidpress can help you make many chart types to visually represent a variety of data, including graphs, line charts, pie charts, and bar charts. When you can visualize your data, you can better detect the patterns and plan tasks to utilize them effectively.
Track your content efforts.
Oftentimes, coming up with content is the easy part. You know what content assets you have and when you want to share them. However, it’s important to make sure your marketing efforts are effective. Does your audience care about what you are sharing?
From the start of your marketing campaigns, track the analytics of the assets you publish. This way, you can set goals for growth and evaluate what images or articles your customers like. This can be as simple as using Google Analytics to track different metrics.
If you are ready for something more advanced, look into a content marketing platform. This will track your due dates, analytics, and lead generation efforts so you can watch your business grow. Utilizing content solutions from Welcome can help you capitalize and expand on your efforts.
Work with vendors to create content for you.
As you start to invest in more forms of content, look into experts who can drive the best results for your needs. For example, if your audience loves videos, now might be the right time to find a production company to create tutorials for you. You can move away from recording on your iPhone and use professional lighting and editing instead.
Working with different vendors can also help you scale your content efforts. Instead of writing one blog post per month, a content creator or agency can publish multiple posts per day. These efforts can help you reach your target audience with high-ranking articles and other digital content.
Create content that achieves multiple goals.
Oftentimes, business owners create content with the goal of boosting their search engine optimization (SEO). They want to rank high in Google results and drive people to their landing pages. However, the content is sometimes low-quality because its goal isn’t to help readers. The content’s goal is solely to boost rankings.
As you invest in a content strategy, develop content that serves multiple purposes. Focus on the quality of your content and how it can help readers. Make sure it has social elements. Then optimize for SEO. This will drive up your return on investment (ROI) because one asset will serve multiple purposes.
Almost any business, no matter how small, can tap into the power of content marketing. If you use social media for your brand or have a website, then you need content. Follow these tips to increase your visibility and connect with the right audience for your marketing goals.