Firstly, what is a content marketing strategy? To begin with I’ll explain what content marketing is. You want to attract a clearly defined audience to your website with the object of them taking a profitable action. To do this, you create and distribute valuable, relevant AND consistent content.
We’ve covered a lot of ground already here at That Helpful Chick, now it’s time to start looking ahead and get organized!
To be effective in content marketing, it is important to have a strategy, a documented content marketing strategy.
You can download a 16-page guide from The Content Marketing Institute to learn what questions to ask and how to develop your strategy.
Ask any blogger and they will tell you content is king. You can use all kinds of gimmicks to get people to your website but it is your content that is going to keep them there. Let’s look at a few tips which can help you improve your content marketing strategy.
#1 – Document a strategy
A written strategy will help you be more effective in content marketing, compared to only having a verbal strategy. Written documents can be referred to, modified and utilized. It’s much easier to follow through on a written strategy than just a spoken one. There is no template for a content marketing strategy, your document should contain at least your business goals, brand, target audience, distribution channels, and budget and resources.
#2 – Be a content giant
Research indicates that having a documented strategy results in more content getting published. Marketers from all company sizes are producing 70% more content than previous years.
Frequent publishing is for anyone who is interested in growing their content marketing efforts. Marketers are wising up to the benefits of content marketing.
They understand creating content is a first step in trying to connect with customers.
Sometimes it can be a challenge coming up with content and this is when good quality PLR content can help. Sharyn Sheldon is an expert and really delivers when it comes to content marketing. Y0u can find out more over on her website.
#3 – Become engaging
Make it a priority to be engaging to you readers. Again, here is where a documented strategy shows more useful than a verbal one.
It helps to define your audience, understand your audience needs, figure out what you can offer them and why they should care, as well as help you determine what kind of content to write and when and how you should deliver it. Utilize brainstorming and mind mapping techniques.
#4 – Social Media – Use it!
The most effective marketers use on average seven social media platforms. Surprisingly, LinkedIn is both the most popular platform (with 94% of marketers using it) and the most effective for content promotion, according to 63% of marketers.
LinkedIn publishing offers several key benefits for practically all businesses.
Even if you struggle to write about your core business topic, you may find you can break into topics that generally struggle to find an audience elsewhere on LinkedIn.
On LinkedIn, an article is featured on a particular channel. Followers of the channel are able to see it and engage with it, giving you the opportunity to be featured on the channel’s slider.
#5 – Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
What is it? Search marketing is the process of gaining traffic and visibility from search engines through both paid and unpaid efforts.
Search Marketing encompasses:
- SEO: Earning traffic through unpaid or free listings
- SEM: Buying traffic through paid search listings (including PPC)
Newer content discovery tools (such as Scoop.it, Feedly or Buffer Suggest) don’t appear to be utilized, despite the fact that those who use them say they are more effective than print, banner ads and even local advertising.
Google AdWords is by many measures the most popular paid search platform used by search marketers.
How Adwords Auctions work – from Google
New to SEO? Start with a quick and easy to understand video about search engine optimization. It covers the basics: