11 Elements of a Winning Content Strategy
The traditional methods of marketing like radio, TV, billboards and print media require huge monetary investment. These try to seek people’s attention by interrupting them as they are busy in their tasks like watching their favorite programs on TV, reading news in a newspaper or going out for work. Due to this very reason, people are not responsive to advertisements presented in the traditional media. Consequently businesses are unable to garner the intended benefits even after investing in so much money and effort into their marketing campaigns. This has forced them to look for such mediums which require considerably less investment and are more rewarding.
Content marketing is such an enterprising platform that requires very less budgetary investment, but is far more beneficial. It can also be successfully employed by even businesses with modest means who can thus better compete with more resourceful and established businesses.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is about creating useful, engaging content on a consistent basis and disseminating it on various online marketing channels. Businesses employ this form of marketing for providing their audience with unique and relevant information. So people can know if a business has got something valuable which will be able to address their pain points. If they think solutions or products offered by a business would be able to change their life for the better, they will gladly respond.
But content put up by a business should be capable of impressing them. It should be able to earn their trust and credibility. It has to ensure that its content is not a sales copy, but is meaningful, rich and knowledgeable. Only then people will be willing to connect with a business and respond to its interests. Then they could be turned into prospective customers.
The way some of the small businesses have achieved significant amount of success with their contenting marketing efforts, has motivated other businesses to take to content marketing in a big way. But many of them have been unable to achieve that much success. This is primarily due to lack of thinking and planning on their part. They simply went ahead with their marketing campaigns randomly, made their presence felt on some channels and then ignored them altogether. This is not the way to go if a business wants its brand to get noticed and talked about. It needs to proceed in a systematic and step wise manner.
Businesses need to think deeply and brainstorm before going all out with their content creation and dissemination. They have to carve a content strategy first, draft plans accordingly and then get these executed properly. This is the right approach to adopt.
Creating the prudent content strategy is pretty important for attaining success in content marketing efforts. We need to consider these 11 important points for carving a robust strategy.
Deciding the objective of content strategy
A business ought to be clear about what would be the main objective of its content strategy; what it is trying to achieve with it. Once it has been decided, other associated goals and objectives can be easily set.
Identifying the right audience
A business has to identify its target audience. This will help it to focus on specific users, groups, professionals, companies and others. So it can engage them selectively by providing them with the useful content as per their needs. Generalizing its content marketing practices would not give it much return. A business needs to do adequate amount of research for identifying the buying behaviors, needs, interests, literacy level and other traits of the people it is targeting. It should collect relevant statistics, demographic patterns and other related data to get a clear picture of them. Thus it would be able to frame the right strategy and devise plans accordingly.
Studying successful marketing campaigns
A business should study those marketing campaigns which resulted in great successes for the involved businesses. It needs to look into such marketing endeavors both within its own industry as well as in other segments. By analyzing them minutely, it would be able to know what worked in the favor of the concerned businesses. Thus it can draw valuable conclusions from them and model its own own strategy, plans on their pattern. But it has to mold them as per its own brand.
Choosing the right channels at the right time
There are thousands of channels to choose from which can be used for a business’s promotion. A business needs to be active on as many channels as it is possible. But it has to use them tactically. It needs to determine which specific channel has to be actively used in place of others at a given time. But this does not mean ignoring other channels altogether. A business should post content on its website in a timely manner as well as approach other sites for posting guest posts and articles. It can also go with email marketing campaigns. Promoting articles on social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, etc. will improve user engagement and generate increased response.
Approaching influencers, experts and media
A content strategy should also emphasize on connecting with influencers, media professionals and other people who are an authority in their fields. A business needs to connect with established bloggers who have a huge fan following. It should comment on their posts as well as approach them for putting its guest posts on their sites. So more people will come to know about its own brand and may turn into potential customers if they are impressed with its content. By connecting with the established media personalities, a business stands to gain a lot as these can improve a business’s reach to an increased number of people and spread a word about it. So this is going to help a lot.
Closely working with other disciplines
A content cannot succeed on its own. Content creators and planners need to consult and share ideas with people from other disciplines like designers, user experience team, SEO department, marketers, public relations agents, stakeholders besides others. By gathering expert input from various disciplines, a comprehensive and holistic content strategy can be created which is capable of making an impact. So a business is going to likely succeed in its marketing endeavors.
Using the right tools for improved collaboration
Content marketing plans and projects devised by businesses have to be executed in a planned and smooth manner. But these can contain a huge number of content creation, submission, promotion and other related tasks. It becomes difficult to remember all such tasks, track and execute them as per schedule and plan. Also members within a team have to communicate fast and transparently. For attaining proper task management, improved team collaboration and enhanced management in projects, right tools need to be used. So team members would be able to execute their tasks quickly, systematically as well as improve their efficiency. Web based project management tools like ProofHub, Basecamp and Asana can be quite useful in this regard. These can be easily accessed from remote locations and from various devices like mobile, laptop, desktop or tablet. By using them, project managers are able to flexibly manage their projects and control their functioning. These tools enable proper tracking of progress achieved in content marketing projects as well as facilitate their timely and successful completion.
Good knowledge of SEO techniques
For gaining the most from its content marketing efforts, a business should be able to use various search engine optimization techniques in an effective manner. It should know various unethical practices in the SEO field and avoid them. Otherwise it can invite harsh response from Google which can blacklist a business and impose severe penalties on it.
A business should use an appropriate amount of keywords in its content, so people can easily search the content they need for enhancing their knowledge. This also helps in a business’s content getting exhibited in the search results which boosts its prospects. Its web developers should have good knowledge of metadata (a set of programming guidelines) and know how to use it properly, so search engines are able to find its content fast. They should use web standards like HTML5 while building a website, so the content in the site gets displayed consistently in all the browsers. This enables search engines to thoroughly crawl and index the site’s content. This is of great benefit to the users looking for a rich and meaningful content for fulfilling their specific needs.
Responsive web design
A lot more people today are using mobiles for accessing sites and for making purchases. A business needs to consider this fact for getting improved response from people. Its website should appear perfect and aesthetically pleasing on all the devices whether it is a mobile, laptop or desktop. It needs to have a clear and engaging website design. A business should put relevant and informative images in it for creating an impact on visitors. The site needs to load fast for a great viewing experience and for enabling improved user engagement. If it takes too much time to load, people would be forced to go to the competitors’ sites which will harm a business’s interests.
Maintaining the right quality of content
For attaining success in its content marketing campaigns, a business has to present content in an engaging and informative manner as per the audience, context, time and the chosen channel. It should be able to present a business’s voice consistently on all the chosen channels. The tone in a content should fit in nicely as per the given context in a channel. The content should be able to impart some value to the users. It should spur people to take a responsive action, so these can be turned into prospective customers.
Reviewing content market strategy
A content marketing strategy needs to be reviewed from time to time to see if it has been able to deliver as per the expectations. This would help a business to know which of its efforts were able to impress people and turn them into customers. It can also know what did not work in its favor. So a content strategy can be accordingly fine-tuned for getting better results. Various analytical tools like Google Analytics and data provided by them, can be used by a business to track its marketing campaigns and measure their effectiveness. This enables it to discern where it needs to focus at; like redesigning its website, work on the landing page, improve content’s quality as well as take various other measures. So it would be able to generate more benefits.
Businesses need to emphasize on the above stated points while drawing a content marketing strategy that delivers. So they would be able to rightly formulate various content marketing plans, projects and get them properly executed. This will enable them to better fulfill their marketing objectives.
Author Bio:
Upendra Rawat is a freelance writer who likes to blog about technology-related issues. Impressed with how technology is playing a keen role in changing life and work for the better, he feels the urge to share this with more and more people. So they can gain the most from the use of technology. He is a voracious reader devouring whatever interesting comes his way. Traveling, playing soccer and basketball, listening to music are the pastimes he likes to indulge in. Spending some serene moments in the lap of nature enthuses him the most.
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