Do I really need a content marketing strategy? What for?
As an online business, you cannot escape selling your content. Unlike a brick and mortar business that can pin up ads on street corners or on the local daily, your online business depends on how well you can use content to grab your target audience’s attention.
Content is definitely still king. But what’s good content if you can’t get your audience to see and make use of it?
The trick to making content work for your online business is to market your content right.
So how do you do this?
You know how you fully understand where you want your business to go and how to get there? The same lies in content marketing. You need a winning strategy.
A content marketing strategy is important because it tells you what content to create, when to create it, whom to create it for and how to distribute it.
Tips on Crafting Your Content Marketing Strategy
Here are 4 actionable tips on how to create the best content marketing strategy for you:
1. It’s All about Your Target Audience
You can have the best content ever but it will all be in vain if you don’t consider who you want to reach out to. You have to conduct a research on your audience to find out what information is important to them and how to get the information to them and on time. This information will help you aim the message you are sending out in a better-packaged manner.
Actionable Tip: Post a quick question on your Facebook page or groups where your audience hangs out inquiring about their areas of difficulty or the kind of related content that they find most useful. An email survey could also be helpful. Formulate blog topics from the answers collected.
2. Goals, Goals, Goals!
Just like any other plan, your content marketing strategy will require you to set and document the goals you aim to achieve. This way, your marketing messages will be tied to a particular goal instead of sending aimless messages out without anything that you hope to get from them.
The goals you set should be smart, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (S.M.A.R.T). They may include aiming to increase engagement on social media, increase the number of visitors to your online platforms or increase sales.
Actionable Tip: Write down all the things you want to achieve with your content. Then come up with good content centered around those goals. This could include engagement, building an email list, keeping your audience updated, selling a product etc.
3. Match Your Content to Your Audience
As you research on the interests of your target audience, you will find out what content your audience is looking out for. You’ll also realize that there are different types of content with different objectives. For instance, if you want to increase brand awareness, you might want to create content such as how-to tutorials, viral social media content or blog content from experts.
If you aim to drive more traffic to your website, you may want to create guest blog posts, product reviews, paid ads on social media or podcasts and interviews. Whichever type of content you chose, make sure it matches with your audience.
Actionable Tip: Segment your audience in terms of content needs and then match an objective to each segment. This will help you create useful content that can be used for different lead pages targeting a particular segment.
4. Content Promotion
Online business owners succeeding in content marketing agree that content promotion is a vital part of your content marketing strategy. You need to take into consideration how you will promote your content as well as how much you may be willing to pay for content promotion.
One popular method of content promotion is by using social media. Promotion by using social media can occur in any of the three or a combination of all of the following categories:
- Paid social media
- Owned social media
- Earned social media.
Earned social media happens when your content is shared, liked or mentioned by other people. Owned social media involves using the company’s social media platform to push your content. Paid social media is simply ads on social media.
Actionable Tip: Take a look at the social media platforms that you have and find out which platforms works for which type of content. If you have a budget for ads, then start advertising your best blog posts.
All of the above tips are important factors to consider when creating your content marketing strategy. Once done with your strategy, don’t forget to create original content and share it to the right audience using the right channels and at the right time. Additionally, you may have the best plan but failure to execute it will not give you the results you seek.
Stay tuned for next week’s post where I’ll show you how to create a content schedule to help your blog stay updated.
Share your thoughts on this article with us in the comment section below!
Hi there and thank you for stopping by! My name is Stella and I am the face behind the blog, a proud mum to @emileetaraji (I swear she writes the captions herself 😆 ) and a full-time copywriter and Digital Marketing expert who has been helping businesses execute successful digital marketing strategies for over a decade. Let’s keep in touch!
Good post on content marketing to get started. And I would also like to add, as we write about a lot about in our blog- don’t wait with building your email list! Goal setting is very important and are often forgotten, good call bringing that to your article.
Yes Jenny, a lot of times people want to hold back on creating content because the only people on their email list are them and their mom 🙂 I agree, you should get started immediately you have your goals figured out and then work on building a list because the email list will want to sign up to some content anyway. Thanks for reading and adding your thoughts!
Yes. Completely agree. The email list is the lifeblood of the website.
Will definitely be sharing this.
Thank you Joel!
Content is still king, a lot of people sleep on the power of writing or shall I say copy writing, I been learning so much, just a few rewording and rearrangement of text can really take your website to the next level.
You’re right Jay. Good copywriting is important to the success of an online business. Thanks for reading!
Good post with super helpful tips! Thank you it helped a lot 🙂
Glad to hear that Jodie!
I really need to set goals for my blog! 🙂
I remember we used S.M.A.R.T. at university! Great post, thank you!
Yes Marie. I learned S.M.A.R.T in uni too and amazing how it applies to an online business too!
This is good info, for sure. I am starting a business soon and need to pin this.
Hey Carol, good luck with your business. Glad to be of help.
Always about the content and finding your audience sharing on social medias that work best for you. Great tips. Set and reach goals, goals goals.
Yes Candy, can’t emphasise enough the importance of setting goals even for content. Thanks for reading!
I really need to follow this advice. I spend a lot of time creating content because that’s what I enjoy, but I don’t put enough time into marketing my content. It can be hard when you’re first starting, before things start to snowball.
Absolutely true Fiona. What’s the use of good content anyway if people don’t get to read it? Thanks for reading!
Content marking can be a daunting task for those who are not familiar. This is a great post for helping those who need a crash course.
Yes it is Chrystal. Thanks for reading!
Really a great post – it has me thinking about how to engage my audience more to help me understand how to help them. I have to use the same practices I employ at work to my blogging world – thanks for the reminder!
I agree with you. It’s important that we look at our blogs in the same way we do other areas of our businesses. Thank you for reading!
I love this. I am all about setting goals and creating a plan to get them done. It’s so important to know your audience and write to them not at the,
Yes Dia, it all starts with goals and understanding whom you’re trying to engage and why.
Solid tips all around! I used to say I just wrote my blog “for myself” but the truth is your content has to provide value to your readers to keep them coming back for more!
Very informative. It takes me a week to publish my own content. I always make sure I write it well in order to attract readers.
Me too Ana. Got to be sure it’s absolutely valuable to my readers.
Yup
Setting goals is super important — it gives you that urge and willpower because you have a line, sort of, to reach.
That helps a lot for me!
Hello Imaobong, yes it gets easier when you know what you want to achieve before you embark on the journey. Thanks for reading.
I always learning about strategies to improve. I totally agree : make sure to think about your goals and audience. It’s so important to know whom you’re worrying for.
Right on Carola! Thanks for reading.
Great strategies. A proper plan of action is needed.
Particularly the social media part.
Thank you Indrani!
Great read. I think it is very important to have a planned strategy and stick it. Achievements are a result of consistent planning and implementation.
Hello Laveena, yes you’re right. The more consistent you are the better your results will be.
These are some really useful tips. As a blogger I can totally use them!
Hello Veethee, happy to be of assistance!
Very helpful post. Thank you I enjoyed reading this. xx
Hello Anna! Thank you for stopping by.