4 Tips for Creating a Foolproof Content Marketing Strategy

Anyone can put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and write a bit of content to put onto their website. However, without a decent content marketing strategy you run the very real risk of your blog or article fading into oblivion without anyone actually taking the time to read it, which equals a disheartened writer and a waste of time.  

Here are four tips to creating a content marketing strategy that will actually help you achieve your content goals, and maybe even pick up some loyal followers along the way!

Decide what your objectives are

Why are you actually planning to produce content in the first place? What are you trying to accomplish?

Here are three common objectives you might wish to consider:

• Increase brand awareness
• Drive traffic to your website
• Increase signups

When considering objectives, it’s important to keep focused on your business goals – such as website traffic and sales. It’s also essential that you have a way to measure these goals, whether this be through monetary value or another numeric target. If you can’t think of a way to measure your objectives, it might be worth having a rethink.

Objectives are important, but don’t let them stiffle your creativity. If you have a great content idea, see if you can link it to your goals (we bet you can!), rather than the other way around.

Empathise with your target audience

You wouldn’t present an idea in front of a client without first doing some research about the company, so why produce content without researching your target audience?

Knowing your audience is a key part of developing a kickass content marketing strategy. This goes far beyond “I want to appeal to young people so I should share my content on social media”, although feel free to use that thought as a starting point!

We’ve all been there before – you spend hours and hours writing what you think is a pretty great piece of content, from which you expect to see a spike in customer engagement and website traffic, only for it to fall flat and go largely unnoticed.

Why has this happened? It could be because you’ve not formed a connection between your brand and your target audience. Audiences don’t engage with a piece of content that they don’t feel relates to them in some way, so it’s essential to do your homework. Who is your reader? What do they think is important? What stories do they want to hear? Learn to empathise with your audience and you’ll find the content you create for them has more impact.

Create a content execution plan

Once you’ve decided upon the type of content you’re going to create, it’s time to execute a plan on just how you’re going to turn this amazing idea into the finished product.

If you’re struggling to write copy that you’re happy with, our copywriting tips blog post should turn you into a wordsmith in no time.

Your content execution plan should consist of the following:

• The content schedule: what will your team be writing and when? This part of the plan should include who will be writing/creating each piece of content, as well as any deadlines.
• Full briefs: if you’re planning for anyone other than yourself to create the content, a full brief is essential for each task.
• The content creation process: make sure that everyone on the team is aware of the part they play within the content creation process. Assign tasks to people and be sure to provide feedback when necessary.

Promote, promote, promote!

Once your content has been created and proofed to a high standard, it’s time to get out there and promote it to the masses! There are lots of ways to promote content, and you should be promoting yours across a variety of channels to ensure you raise awareness and catch the eye of as many readers as possible.

Here are some ways you can promote your content:

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