Whether you are a beginner in content marketing or you have been using the same strategy for years, your strategy could always do with some improvement. The reason for this is that competition is going to rise. Over 70% of marketers say they plan to create more content in 2017 than they did in 2016.
The first step to getting ahead of the competition is to have a great plan in place. If you are having trouble with creating a plan to market your content, read this plan and use it if you like it.
Why it Matters
A solid plan assists businesses to plan for an affordable source of traffic. With good traffic to your evergreen content, you will have the flexibility to experiment with tactics that help you generate more revenue.
Here are the main steps of coming up with your strategy.
#1. Have Some Clear cut Goals
Your goals will allow you to understand the main aim of creating your content. If you want to enjoy success, you need to know the goals that you have. It will help you determine what works best for you.
#2. Do a Lot of Research
For your plan to be successful, you will need to understand your target audience. It is especially so if you are just starting out or you have never done content marketing before. With good knowledge of your audience, you are able to produce relevant content that they will want to view.
For an experienced marketer, your audience may have evolved over time. For instance, you may want to reach out to a new group or expand the current audience. By conducting research often, it helps you find ways on how to grow the audience.
#3. Audit Your Content
A common place to start is with blog posts. If you want to experiment with other types of content, consider which one will work for you. For example, if you have been doing blog posts on a weekly basis for over a year, you can distil all your posts into an ebook that serves as an ultimate guide. If you have been marketing different types of content, review the ones that have been underperforming and see what improvements can be made.
#4. Create a Content Management System
If you do not have a system that you can use to manage your content, you should create one. Some of the parts that your system should have include content creation, publication, and analysis.
Some of the tools on the web allow you to plan, produce, publish, and analyze your content from one pint. There are many content management systems in existence today. However, some of the most popular are CoSchedule, HubSpot, and WordPress.
#5. Hold Brainstorming Sessions for Content Ideas
After going through the previous steps, it is time for you to come up with ideas for your upcoming project. Some of the most popular tools used are:
- What To Write – The tool is one of the unique generators of content ideas on the web. It asks you questions, which are intended to help start the flow of your creative juices. After you are done answering the questions, it generates some ideas that you can use for your blog posts.
- Website Grade by HubSpot – The tool is a great way to see how far you have gotten with your marketing campaign. The tool grades everything from your social media marketing efforts to your blogging efforts. The tool analysis critical areas of your marketing and send you an in-depth report. With the tool, you can discover new ideas on how to optimize your organic SEO strategy.
- Buzzsumo – The tool allows you to learn about content ideas and new content. The tool utilizes shares on social media to determine the popularity of content that you intend to share.
- Feedly – It is a popular RSS feed, which allows you to keep track of the most popular topics in your industry and discover new ideas for content.
- Content Forest – At Content Forest, you will benefit from various tools such as Content Ideator and Keyword Kiwi. These tools are designed to help you view the most popular content that competition in your niche is using.
#6. Determine the Type of Content that you Will Create
There are numerous options out there for content creation. However, a few are quite popular. Here are a few with a short description.
- Blog posts – Blog posts need to be published often to attract traffic. The blog posts should provide visitors with important information that inclines them to share it on social media. A blog post should be between 1000 to 2000 words.
- Ebooks – Ebooks are mainly used a lead generation tool. Customers usually access them after they submit a contact form with all their information. Ebooks are usually quite long and are published less often than blog posts. An ebook is the next step of an inbound marketing campaign. Readers of blog posts are usually requested to submit a contact form if they want to read more information.
- Infographics – The organize data in a manner that is visually compelling for the reader.
- Videos – This highly engaging content medium can be shared across different platforms. The usually require a huge investment in time and resources.
#7. Managing and Publishing Content
One of the most effective ways to manage your content is to have an editorial calendar. It will assist you to publish content in a manner that is likely to create interest in the content. For instance, you can set your calendar so that you generate interesting content around the start of winter if you are trying to market content about skiing.
Creating valuable content and following proper marketing channels can add a lot of value to your business marketing strategies. Choose the right agency to get the best of the services.
