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Content marketing is a core part of creating a successful online business.
It’s how you get your prospects get to know, like and trust you.
Frankly, without it, you’re not likely to succeed.
Successful online businesses, regardless of the niche, dedicate many hours to the creation and execution of an effective content marketing strategy.
This lesson is jam-packed with all the information you’ll need to develop a content marketing strategy that actually works.
What is a content marketing strategy?
The Content Marketing Institute defines a content marketing strategy as, “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
Ok, so that’s a lot to digest.
But… instead of talking like fancy jargon… let’s break this down a bit into simpler terms.
A useful content marketing strategy should include the following:
Who – Define your target audience?
What – What are your audience interests? Pain points?
How – How can you solve your audience’s problem and points?
Where – Where will you post content (blogs, social media, newsletter?)
When – When will you publish content?
A content marketing strategy is well thought out. It isn’t something you do on a whim.
The plan must also have a purpose; your approach must help you meet a predetermined target.
A content marketing strategy delivers valuable, relevant and consistent content. Content must follow a specific path and fulfill a particular purpose.
The quality must also be such that customers can learn from and engage with it.
Therefore, you must understand your audience; that’s the only way that they can be sure the content is relevant and adds value.
The content created in a content marketing strategy attracts and retains a clearly defined audience.
You won’t earn money instantly. It’ll probably take months of consistent posting before a customer finally decides to make a purchase.
A strategic content marketing plan ultimately leads to profitable customer action.
This supports the renowned Marketing Rule of 7 which states that a potential customer must hear or see an advertiser’s message at least 7 times before making a purchasing decision.
Increasing the consistency and quality of your posts, therefore, increases the chances that more people will purchase your product or service.
Why do you need a content marketing strategy?
The definition given for a content marketing strategy provides the framework for highlighting why you need a content marketing strategy.
Here are 3 important points that further support the argument.
- You’ll plan ahead.
- Set a clearly defined goal.
- Get more value out of your content
One of the most stressful aspects of content creation is not knowing what to post.
Solopreneurs who’re new to the digital marketing world often use a week-by-week approach to create and post content. This exhausting and unreliable strategy sometimes leads to inconsistent posting and an unengaged audience.
A better approach to the content marketing strategy is to plan content on a quarterly basis.
Each month in the quarter would have a theme which you can use to build content ideas. These ideas would form a content calendar and help you know:
- The type of content you’ll need
- Who to hire to create the content
- The necessary follow-up action after each content piece has been posted
All the content you create must have a purpose. The quarterly content marketing plan usually has a goal for the quarter and an ultimate goal for the end of each month. The content pieces then funnel towards achieving these goals.
For instance, let’s say that you own a financial consulting firm and want to get at least 60 people to sign up for your online financial literacy course for beginners.
This is a goal that you must accomplish by the end of March.
Therefore, the content you create from January to March must help you achieve that objective. Possible goals for January and February that could help you achieve this include:
January: Get at least 100 people to download the free 5 Ways to Improve Your Credit Score Toolkit. Include a link to the financial literacy course in the toolkit and offer a 10% discount on the course fee for those who download the toolkit.
February: Get at least 100 people to compete in a financial success challenge where they post videos explaining their financial goals and tag the consultancy firm’s Facebook page. People who post the top 10 best videos will receive a 10% discount on the course fee.
Types of Content
There are many forms of content and it’s a good idea to diversify.
However, there has been an increasing thrust towards the use of more video, animated and visual content.
It’s, therefore, no surprise that “51 percent of B2B marketers prioritize creating visual assets as part of their content marketing strategy” according to HubSpot.
The key is to engage with your audience.
You want to get your audience to engage and have a bit of fun with your content, interact with it. Rather than just read text on a page.
If you can get your fans to interact with your content, they will become loyal to your brand.
How To Find Content Ideas
Now that you understand the importance of a content marketing strategy, it’s time to delve into strategies for creating good content ideas.
It’s easy to identify the type of content you want to use each month but knowing what that content should be about can be challenging.
Here’re 5 of the best ways to identify content ideas.
- Keep abreast with trending stories.
- Use website analytics.
- Ask your audience.
- Learn from your competitors.
- Use a free research tool such as SEMrush
Popular search engine queries often relate to current affairs.
Follow popular, reputable news platforms to get the latest trending stories and think about how you can craft content relevant to your brand related to the issue.
Setup Google Alerts for your keywords. This way you’re notified by email on topics that are trending related to your keyword
You can also head over to Amazon Kindle eBooks, find books related to your topic. You can hover over the book, and check “what’s inside” and now you can check the table of contents for content ideas.
Find and listen to relevant podcasts on iTunes. This can be a great resource for content ideas.
Watch YouTube videos related to your niche. See how many views, likes and comments the video is getting. If it’s getting a lot of engagement, it’s probably a good topic.
What content has been the most popular on your website? Answering this question gives you a clue about topics that most interest your audience.
The best source for content ideas is the people who follow you.
Run a poll, tweet a question or send a survey. Your audience will appreciate that you’re trying to tailor your content to suit them.
Don’t be afraid of your competitors. Follow them. Learn from them. What type of content do they create consistently? Which of their posts tend to get the most interaction?
There are tools that you can use to identify trending topics and content. Some of the most popular include:
- BuzzSumo
- Social Crawlytics
- Topsy
- Ahrefs Content Explorer
- SEM Rush
Analyzing Your Content
A content marketing strategy isn’t complete unless you measure your results. Set a specific time each week or month to review your efforts.
Look at analytics for each piece of content including blog posts, social media posts, videos, email, any content that you have produced.
You must know what is working and what is not. This is often overlooked, and it’s a big mistake.
So, you must install Google Analytics on your site. This will give you lots of incredibly insightful data.
Conduct Tests
Next, you should conduct tests. An A/B test which you test two versions of something to see which one performs better. For example, you can send out the same email with two different subject lines to check which one is more effective.
You can also conduct A/B tests on social media, your website, and other tools.
After a few months of trial and error, you’ll have a reliable system for creating, analyzing, and revising content.
Tomorrow you will learn about how to promote your online business so you can propel your online business into a profitable venture.
Promotion is one of the most important topics. You don’t want to produce great content and have nothing but crickets.