Content is the foundation of any marketing activity. Whether you’re aiming to boost your online sales or simply increase your brand awareness, having a Content Marketing Strategy will help you align your business goals with relevant and engaging content.
Why is it important to have a content strategy ?
Having a content strategy based on relevant and quality content is key to take your brand to the next level. See below some of the benefits:
- Brings you closer to your target audience/prospects/clients
- Supports your business goals
- Increases Brand Awareness
- Helps you decide upon the best multi channel strategy
- Increases organic traffic
How to build a Content Marketing Strategy?
1. Define your Goals
Why are you building a Content Marketing Plan? What’s your main purpose?
This is the starting point to define your direction and come up with different ideas that will make content creation a lot easier.
2. Define your Target
To make your content relevant to your audience, you might first want to know who they are.
Once you have clearly defined who you are targeting to, dig a little deeper into your audience interests, needs and what kind of information they are looking for and how you can help them with that. Find out what kind of content makes them engage the most, based on past experiences and benchmarking. Also be aware of new trends that can be really engaging in early stages.
3. Choose your Channels
Choose the right channels for the right audience. Define specific goals for each one them.
Bear in mind that each platform has its own goals and tone. Therefore, make sure that your goals are aligned and adjust your content accordingly.
4. Get the Team involved
Apart from taking a lot of creativity, creating a Content Plan it’s a very time-consuming job. Before you run out of ideas run a Brainstorming session and allow everyone to be part of this process, contributing with different and enriching perspectives.
There are some websites that can give you a push, providing you with great insights and ideas for content related to your business:
5. Build your Content Plan
Once you have collected all the information you need, start building your own Plan. Put together all the topics that can be relevant, according to your goals. List all your business activities throughout the year and create an annual calendar.
Start by filling it out and try to plan in advance. This will give you time to align your strategy and adjust your content. Although, be aware that the plan must be flexible, and you might need to tweak it from time to time.
Feel free to download my basic Content Marketing Planner template. Use it as a starting point and customize it according to your business needs.
6. Measure it!
Finally, once you create and apply your Content Plan, you must measure how it performs along the way.
This will give you valuable insights about how your audience responds to your content:
- Which content/formats/platforms perform better?
- Are the topics relevant?
- Who is engaging with it?
