Content is highly important and content marketing is a great way of reaching a broad and ever-growing population. It is one of the oldest and most effective methods of engaging with people.
Let’s lay the groundwork before we go into the details of coming up with a strategy related to content marketing. To begin, what exactly is content and what is it meant to accomplish?
Anything published which people can interact with is considered content. In the digital era, this involves writing blog entries, using social media sites, creating video material, making podcasts, designing presentations, and creating diagrams. Despite the expansion of the internet, content has existed for many years. In conventional publishing, brands and businesses develop advertisement material to be transmitted on TV stations and back major contests as part of their effort to make their work visible to the public.
The internet has made it very convenient to make and release content with a widespread smartphone, though for businesses and brands that are informed and well-planned, the purpose stays the same – to spread their message to as many people as possible in order to draw attention and expand their consumer base.
The content should reflect the publisher’s purpose, which should be articulated in the content marketing plan. Prior to releasing any material, you should be sure you have particular objectives, means of distribution, and a demographic in mind. This article discusses all these and more. In it, we’ll discuss:
- What is a content marketing strategy?
- How to create content marketing strategy
- How to use content marketing
- Useful content strategy tools
What is a content strategy?
A content marketing plan is a methodical plan for generating, releasing, and sustaining material that is applicable to your market audience in the form of instruction, amusement, or both to draw them in, entertain them, and offer value.
The optimum content plan brings all of your publications into harmony and alignment. This includes blogs, social media posts, and brand announcements. All marketing operations are impacted by content strategy and it directs marketing departments to align their actions with the objective they have in mind.
It is essential to remember that content strategy is not only about the content you produce. It is also how you publish, e.g.:
- Frequency: How often do you post?
- Channels: Where do you post?
- Tone: How do you talk about your subjects?
No matter if it was planned or not, your content marketing approach can influence how clients view and interact with your brand over time. It is essential to devise and compose a plan of action for your content to help your marketing personnel in successfully demonstrating the business, and reaching established objectives. A few things to include in your content strategy are:
- Editorial calendars
- Customer and market segments
- Multi-channel marketing plans
- Roles and responsibilities of the marketing team members
Right from the beginning, strive to put together a content marketing strategy that has a balanced ratio of content designed to boost sales, as well as content that is informative and helpful. It is advisable to adhere to the 80/20 principle when working- meaning 80% of content should be helpful and beneficial and 20% should be promotional.
How effective is content marketing?
Good and relevant content brings in returns in perpetuity. This could be achieved by obtaining new clients, referrals, followers, people who are loyal to the brand, and customers who come back.
Surveys have demonstrated that by the year 2022, 84% of businesses will be using an active content marketing approach and three-quarters of marketing departments think that content marketing is advantageous. Approximately 4 out of 5 businesses are utilizing content marketing to bring in high-value leads, and the content marketing sector is projected to increase by 15.73% in the next couple of years.
In simple words, content marketing works. It advertises your company to potential and current clients and boosts the likelihood that one of the first considerations would be your product.
This is how you can construct a team for content marketing that produces material of exceptional quality for your business.
Create a Content Marketing Strategy
According to Forbes magazine, approximately two-thirds of businesses do not have any kind of content plan. If your company has an existing one, you have an edge over other companies. Even though it is better to have a content strategy than not, having one that is not in accordance with your business objectives may be more detrimental than not having one at all.
Organizing a content marketing plan is not just about developing an editorial schedule. Figure out what you would like to achieve, such as obtaining more visitors, bringing in more customers, and making more profits, and incorporate them into your key performance indicators. Typically, this includes developing material that fits with the customer experience.
Once you have determined your goals, you can move on to more in-depth preparation, such as dividing your audience, selecting material, and creating additional materials from existing content. This guide provides a comprehensive overview on how to build a content marketing approach.
Establish a System for Management
Subsequently, you’ll need to figure out how to supervise everything. I suggest utilizing an online project management system to accomplish this. I use Trello, but it’s best to opt for a platform with an interface that satisfies your and your content production team’s preferences.
The project management boards utilized should be available to all members of your team. The boards you create should include the following:
- Onboarding guides: Your guides will have all the information a new staff member could need to get started. It will include things like website access information, editorial guidelines, etc.
- A work board: This is where you provide an overview of the content you are producing. It’s essentially a work breakdown.
The content management system that you construct should contain all necessary data and be easy to traverse.
List Writer Guidelines
There are a lot of essential parts to onboarding. It is of great importance for a content group that I would like to emphasize is the guidelines for authors.
It is perplexing to readers when the tone of a piece of writing differs from one article to the next. If you are planning to employ multiple writers to create content for your company, you should establish some regulations. These measures guarantee that your articles preserve their quality and maintain the same level of expression.
If your team consists of seasoned authors, you can collaborate with them to devise a style guide. They are also in a prime spot to record the steps taken in creating your content.
As your team expands, they should have the capacity to modify or add to your procedure documents and be capable of responding to questions asked by fresh recruits. By doing that, you can guarantee that the writing your team creates will stay at high standards, even if it’s produced by someone new to the group.
Hire Good Writers
Hiring a good writer is difficult. It is best to have authors on your staff who are capable of producing content for the highest ranked magazines in your specialty. Ideally, they should have the ability to consistently produce lengthy written pieces.
When recruiting writers, you can either opt to hire a permanent employee or a contractor. Once you have determined your budget and needs, it is time to create a job listing. I use one of the following two platforms to find staff:
- Gumtree for finding part-time staff
- Indeed for finding full-time staff
It’s essential to subject potential writers to a test. Request that they compose a composition in regards to a subject pertinent to your specialty using the editorial rules and techniques as of now set up. This will test their capacity to adhere to protocols and meet time limits. You will also have the opportunity to observe the type of material they can generate.
Hire a Skilled Editor
Moving on to the subject of recruiting additional personnel, you will have to locate an outstanding editor.
An excellent editor acts as a control hub for the whole process. Someone who is meticulous, adheres to due dates, and uses their time and resources judiciously is what is needed. They need to be someone with good interpersonal skills, as they will be working directly with your team and giving them feedback.
I prefer to hire for editorial positions from within the organization when I can because the best editors are also good writers. An editor with knowledge in copywriting can give advice on how to make articles crafted by writers on your team more efficient, instead of just pointing out issues. This helps build up the capacity of your team.
Tales of terror abound in the copywriting business of editors’ overwhelming pride stopping talented writers from staying in their positions. Prevent your organization from becoming just another tale.
Enable a Certain Level of Autonomy
A content marketing plan should have precise rules and regulations for writing, which should limit the need for someone to oversee and manage the creators of the content while they are on the job.
Self-determination is one of the main foundations of employee involvement. Autonomy is defined as:
You have the ability to craft your work environment to enable you to reach peak performance.
Remove the authority from your creators, and they begin feeling like lifeless automatons, without the ability to make decisions for themselves. This is among the most serious errors businesses can commit.
Here are some ways to enable autonomy within your team:
- Keep calm, even when they make mistakes. A team that fears its management is one that constantly under-performs.
- Hire people who choose to be autonomous. Give them the time and resources they need to do their jobs, then trust them to deliver.
- Provide clear guidelines and trust your team to follow them. Many people confuse the lack of guidance with autonomy. However, this results in employees who have to figure out their jobs by themselves, leading to stress and burnout.
- Stick to autonomy. If you hire naturally autonomous people, then choosing to tighten the leash later on risks losing your best staff.
Arrange Regular Meetings
Holding check-ins with workers and having team meetings are essential for keeping up with the objectives you have set. By having consistent follow-ups with your team, it will be simpler for them to understand your desires.
Furthermore, regular meetings ensure that employee activities are in line with managerial objectives, and assist in deterring any confusion between colleagues. It is recommended that regular meetings occur between your sales and marketing personnel in order to stay up-to-date on the content that needs to be generated, as well as to comprehend the progress being made.
Many assume that members of a content marketing team feel apprehensive around their editors or supervisors, but the opposite should be true. Having regular conferences scheduled will dissipate the strain and enable both sides to furnish truthful, favorable input.
The top reason for holding periodic check-ins is motivation. When your staff are aware that they will be seeing you in the next week or month, they anticipate having the ability to progress towards their immediate objectives. For those with a small team, having a check-in meeting on a weekly basis is a useful option. As your squad expands, having weekly conferences as a whole and then separately with each separate member of the team on a monthly basis is recommended.
Create a content strategy process
It’s finally time to create your content strategy process. Foolproof your content strategy process by following the five steps below:
Brainstorm and research your ideas
Make sure your thoughts correspond with your intended audience and can generate outcomes that coincide with your advertising objectives.
Create a content strategy roadmap
Formulate a definite plan for attaining your overall marketing objectives. Split the project into smaller parts and assign tasks to the marketing team and outside collaborators with definite deadlines that they are able to comprehend and stick to.
Finalize your resources
It is now the right moment to combine all the necessary tools to put your content marketing plan into action. This may consist of anything from timetables to framework for creating consistency and coherence across the whole plan. Make sure your staff are aware of where to find and keep promotional products for convenient joint work.
Set deadlines for publication
Once you are certain that you possess all the necessary components, including the materials required for managing your continual undertakings, start to allocate duties and due dates to each of the individual involved and their supporting teams. Be certain that you arrange your tasks such that each one advances the following.
An illustration of this could be writing a white paper to introduce a new item and subsequently authoring a few blog articles based off the white paper. You can create a video from each of your blog posts and then post it to social media to get more views.
Track the results
Once your marketing efforts start, it is important to monitor their success with the benchmarks and performance indicators you set up earlier. Software that helps you gather, organize, and share timed marketing reports is needed in order to keep the whole team in the loop.
THE PROBLEM: YOUR BUSINESS ISN’T GROWING AS FAST AS IT SHOULD!
Your sales have stagnated or decreased, and you cannot figure out why. Discover what is holding you back from achieving predictable sales growth in your business.
If you want to grow your business, you need a proven plan and framework. That is what you get with the 2X Your Sales Discovery Session.
Want to learn about a formula for Predictable Growth that will put your business on a 90-day path to 2X Your Sales?