The basis of your strategy comes from your brand identity, which should include clear guidance on personality, voice, and tone. A good content strategy will help you set your goals, determine priorities, and maximize efficiency. Here's What You Need to Know to Create One. A successful content marketing plan always starts with clearly stated goals.
This is a stage that many people skip, to their own detriment. Different types of marketing tactics work to achieve different goals, most of which are likely to correspond to a step in your sales funnel. Some of the most common goals are to create brand awareness, increase traffic, grow an email list, generate new leads, convert new customers, improve customer retention and increase sales. It's perfectly acceptable to have multiple objectives; however, you should keep in mind that not all content will work for all objectives.
Every tactic in your content strategy must be backed by research that justifies it. And putting in the effort here will save you a lot of headaches in the future. Research keywords and identify the phrases where you rank best and those that need more work. Be sure to note the intent, volume, and relevance of the search.
To evaluate a topic, determine how it will fit your organization's objectives. For example, if you're a camping supply company looking to educate consumers about your brand, a blog post about the top 5 mistakes when building campfires could attract curious web browsers. You already have your content goals, topics, and calendar set; now is the time to decide where you'll use it. By describing your distribution channels, you're identifying the best platform for each content.
Now is the time to evaluate it and see what works and, more importantly, what doesn't. It's time to dive into analytics. Google Analytics can be very useful during this step. Follow the steps listed here and you'll create a well-thought-out content strategy that will help you achieve your goals.
Like all business initiatives, you need a solid plan to ensure that you're creating the right types and frequency of content for your target audience. We asked 14 members of the Forbes Communications Council to share the most fundamental elements of a strong content strategy. Here's what they had to say. First, you must have goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound (i.e.,.
Without them, your strategy will have no objective and will be meandering and have little chance of success. Setting short- and long-term strategic objectives gives you and your team a common direction, purpose and mission. To properly communicate with your target audience, you must understand your brand identity. Identifying who you are as a company, what your organization does and what your values and mission are help create a unique identity.
From there, you can establish a consistent personality and tone of voice that will build trust in your target market. In a world where millions of companies are desperate to make their voice stand out, you need to create a brand story that sets you apart and that impacts your customers. How to Create an Authentic Brand Story that Really Improves Trust (Neil Patel). Statistics show that content marketing generates 300% more leads per dollar spent than paid search marketing (PPC).
Content marketing is also often 62% cheaper than outbound marketing methods. In addition, small businesses with blogs receive 126% more potential customer growth. Another top content marketing tip is to maintain a consistent content brand voice. This will help you create a brand in your content and build relationships with your target audience.
One of the ways to maintain a consistent content brand voice is to create a style guide. This way, you can ensure that your content maintains the same style across all media and platforms. For example, if your competitors are creating short-form blog posts, you can probably capture some of their traffic. Research has shown that long-form content, with an average of around 2000 words, accounts for a large portion of the search results on Google's first page.
Long-form content also attracts more backlinks and can increase conversion rates. This FREE e-book contains nearly 50 pages of ideas to help you gain a competitive advantage in your digital marketing using new trends and tips. Awareness-raising content, or front-line content, focuses on generating more visibility for your brand. These articles attract visitors to your site who are looking for topics that are no more than a degree separate from what you do as a company.
Thought leadership content positions you as an expert in your industry. Thought leadership content increases the trust that others have in you as an expert and the perceived value of each content on your site. While awareness-raising content increases your visibility, thought leadership content shows that you know what you're talking about. Some companies share sales content as a form of closed content on their site.
Closed content requires potential customers to share their name and email to access the resource. Sales content is unlikely to attract new visitors to your site. Search volumes are usually minimal for these types of topics. Instead, sales content helps convert those who are interested in your services to decide if you are the right solution for their needs.
Effective sales content consists of both rejecting potential customers and converting prospects into customers. One of our favorite types of sales content is comparative content. Another common type of sales content are success stories (or case studies). Culture Content focuses on showing the members of your company and the culture of your team.
A secondary benefit of pillar pages is that they provide a hub for linking thought leadership content that website visitors would otherwise miss on your website. This information helps you see what content ideas would suit you if you created content based on them. If you want to venture into different formats, you can perform a content audit to evaluate the best and lowest performing content. As your company grows, you may need to collaborate with multiple content teams to design an effective process.
It's full of information on how to transition from a content marketing strategy to a more holistic strategy for the entire company. All you need to do is enter the topics or general terms you'd like to write about, and this content idea generator does all the work for you. For example, if a pressing business goal is to develop brand authority, then you'll want to create educational and relevant content that demonstrates your industry experience as a brand. Once you've found the right talent for your content production, you should test your content creation process.
Instead, read on to discover the key steps to creating a powerful content marketing strategy in this step-by-step guide. In the next section, we'll discuss some of the most popular content formats marketers are creating, including some tools and templates to get you started. In addition, since 70% of marketers actively invest in content marketing, it's essential that you develop a good content strategy to compete in your industry. When it comes to content marketing, everything you do should be part of a broader strategy designed to achieve specific goals.
Updating old content is a powerful way to fix problems such as a high bounce rate, and it provides an opportunity to clean up outdated information or broken links. Content strategy is much more than having a content calendar or social media, it's about how well business content aligns with your business objectives and how effectively it does what it intends to do. . .
