Content marketing is a golden opportunity gain credible, relevant engagement with readers.Ultimately, content marketing will create action.
Your strategy will ensure that you steer people towards the behaviour you require from them.
Our last blog looked at why you should consider content marketing for your business. This time, we look at the five key steps involved with bringing it to life and generating results.
Steps for Successful Content Marketing:
1. Who do you want to engage with?
Planning is crucial. Who is your target audience? What channels are they active within? (Take a look at our comments about the choice of social media channels, for example. Use the most relevant ones.)
2. What do you want your content marketing to achieve?
You need to set SMART objectives, (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time Bound). Your content marketing goals can involve:
- Engagement
- Website traffic
- Search engine positioning
- Brand awareness
- Sales (long term)
Remember you need to measure the impact of your content marketing activity. Note your baseline regarding connections, visits, engagement, (shares, comments, likes etc.) and website performance (Google Analytics is available to all). Changes can now be easily identified.
3. Resources
Who will be responsible for your content marketing? You need a consistent style as well as regular, relevant content, enhancing your branding and position within the market. Will you recruit or outsource, or find the time internally?
It’s also a great idea to have bank of information to draw upon.” There’s nothing worse than looking at a blank screen and feeling under pressure to create compelling content in a tight timescale” says Dawn Wills from Decisions Marketing. “Try bookmarking relevant web pages, creating a folder to keep emails that inspire you or even a note pad with ideas for topics.”
4. Go live!
With everything thought through and in place, it’s time to start publishing your content. Remember that content marketing is a long term marketing tool. To work, it needs to be:
Informative- Relevant
- Interesting
- Regular
- Engaging (remember to respond to readers’ reactions)
- VISIBLE (how will you make sure that people see your content?)
5. Success?
Keep an eye on responses to your content, linking this back to your goals and metrics (see point 2 above). Content marketing can be fun, yet time consuming. You need to know that it’s earning its keep whilst acknowledging that it’s predominantly a long term activity.
Lastly, think through the impact of success upon your resources. Are you ready for prompt follow up?
Want to know more? Contact us for an informal discussion. Let's get content marketing working for you.