Last Updated: 3 weeks ago by BrodNeil
It’s one thing to publish content, it’s another to do content marketing right.
You can only go so far with unplanned content marketing. If you want more social shares, backlinks, and sustainable site traffic, you need to up your content marketing game by investing time and effort in strategic content marketing.
What is strategic content marketing?
Content Marketing Institute describes a content marketing strategy as, “a unified, strategic road map focused exclusively on how your business will use content to attract, acquire, and engage its prospects and customers.”
In other words, strategic content marketing is all about carefully planning your whole content marketing process. It involves defining your audience, your brand, and your goal. In this manner, you can better decide where you should exert your efforts and resources, which will help you better prepare for the future direction of your business.
How is strategic content marketing done?
STEP 1: Choose your preferred business model
Before anything else, it is very important for you to design your company’s business model. A business model will help define every team member’s roles and responsibilities. In this way, it will be much easier for you to delegate tasks and properly use the resources you have around.
Important note: Every business model varies in different companies. Be sure to craft one that will best fit yours.
STEP 2: Identify your goal
One of the most crucial factors to consider in strategic content marketing is defining your purpose and goals. Your goals are what will significantly help you plan your activities better. When you find yourself out of content to write, your goals are your guiding light to help you get back on track and know what you must prioritize and what you must not.
When identifying your goals, you can contemplate these guide questions:
- What do I want to achieve?
- What do I want to solve?
- What do I have to offer?
- Do I want more sales?
- Do I want more engagements?
- Do I want sustainable traffic?
- How do I promote my brand?
- How fast do I want to grow?
- How often do I want to work?
- Are these goals measurable? Are they practical?
STEP 3: Define your market
Your market plays a vital role in your success. You will not get anywhere despite your efforts if you fail to reach the right people. See, your audience is the receiver of your content. Without your audience, you are bound for nowhere. By determining the people whom you want to reach, it will be a lot easier for you to interact with them in a manner that will surely pique their interests.
Consider the following questions:
- Who needs to hear from my company?
- Who do I want to reach?
- What do these people want?
- What don’t they want?
- How do I reach them?
STEP 4: Plan your content
In this step, you can brainstorm content ideas that will best capture your goals. When done, be sure to organize these ideas by creating an outline. Also, don’t forget to think about the content you want to put out. Do you want to stick to blogging or do you also want to do podcasts? Should you create videos? How about infographics? The possibilities are endless. To avoid feeling overwhelmed, always go back to steps 2 and 3.
STEP 5: Assess what works and what doesn’t
Strategic content marketing does not stop the moment you hit the post. Rather, it continues even after you’ve published the content. You need to check on your published posts from time to time. From there, you will know what your audience does and does not want to see.
Learn more about How to Measure Content Marketing Success 101
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How Infographics Can Boost Your Content Marketing Strategy
Infographics are visual presentations of any text or information. They appeal to many readers and can help boost your content marketing strategy.
How?
Infographics can make dull topics interesting; information can be made simpler and easier to understand; numbers and data can be easily visualized; and steps can be clearly illustrated. Imagine every reader going through your posts with ease.
There are many other reasons why it is helpful to incorporate infographics in your content marketing strategy.
You can learn more here: How infographics can boost your content marketing strategy.
