5 Steps to Conquer Content Marketing

Since the dawn of the internet, every single type of business regardless of size or service must have a content marketing strategy. Your audience and future audience requires a constant stream of content to be trickled into their minds. This concept sounds easy to accomplish, but the following notes can be a real eye-opener to the level of work involved.

The core concept of advertising is, being able to stand out from all of the clutter and daily noise that your audience views. You want your material to resonate with them and create a memorable experience. To achieve this movement, you need to understand the fundamentals and devise a content marketing strategy.

When you first think of your content marketing, what do you want your end game to be? Drive traffic to your website, increase brand exposure, generate leads, which will ultimately lead to growth. These end goals will range from a variety of strategies. It can be: increased e-mail subscribers, followers, ‘likes,’ sales, all of which are measurable. Identify the metric of your goal (like, retweet, favorite, subscriber), and set forth a reasonable number that you believe your content marketing strategy can attain. Your goals should also align with the goals of your overall business, to define the scalability of your goals. Once you have your goals in place, you need an actual strategy. Let’s go over five crucial steps to conquer content marketing.

Step 1.)

Understand your audience. Take a moment to visualize your quintessential audience, describe your ultimate buyer. What do they wear? Where do they shop? What is their age? Define the key demographics of your audience. Go for more in-depth and sample your key demographic. Figure out their buying process from initial thought to purchase point. Read reviews on what your audience says about your company, your competitors. Your consumers will be the building blocks for your content.

Step 2.)

Identify the content your consumer is already viewing. Does your audience tend to lean towards heavy social media usage, or are they more focused on e-mail newsletters? Do not be afraid to use a variety of mediums to publish your content. Successful companies will use multiple channels in tandem to distribute their material. Let’s go into a little more depth to the type of content your audience may be itching to get their hands on:

Social Media. Social media is great as it can be broken down into more segments, allowing you to key-in on more demographics. Some social media channels cover a wider variety of users (e.g., Facebook), where others can be far more specific (e.g., Snapchat). Many social media tools allow you to publish on multiple social channels and have detailed analytics.
Blogging. A blog can be used for many purposes. On the one hand, you can increase traffic by offering readers outstanding material. On the other, you can boost your Google ranking with proper keyword usage.
E-mail. Generating a subscriber base to your e-mails can be a lasting source of revenue. E-mails can offer a one on one interaction with your consumer, opposed to a blog which will have limited interaction.
Visual. The element of visuals is becoming a superior presence in the world of content marketing. Compared to years ago, your consumer already has less time to be drawn to your material. Therefore, you have less time to engage and deliver your message. The use of infographics and videos can be the ultimate tool for your strategy.
Podcasts. The beauty of the podcast is you can listen to it anytime, almost anywhere. I believe the podcast was a bit ahead of its time when it first hit the internet. For a short period, the podcast took a small hit in popularity. However, with the rise in multitasking, users are listening and working. Coupled with ease of publishing, podcasting adds great value to messages that may not fit in a shorter medium.
Step 3.)

Keywords. A while back we covered the basics of keyword research and how it is utterly imperative to do a proper search. Without getting into the details of how, and where, just understand what your audience is searching for when they are looking to buy. Pick a few keywords and focus your keyword strategy on those words. Hammer those keywords into each channel. Tailor your content to these keywords, go in-depth, read what other authors are publishing. Build and capture that organic traffic, which you will then convert into leads and sales.

Step 4.)

Create a content calendar. A strong emphasis on the word “steady,” which we used earlier, is essential to building your audience. Try and publish material on a timely and consistent basis. Your growing audience should know when to expect their next Youtube video, blog, newsletter. We have said this in previous blogs, one of the biggest peeves that your audience has is inconsistent posts. Nobody likes the account that posts on Twitter trying to cram 30 days worth of material into one day of posting. Plan in advance when you intend to publish your content.

Step 5.)

Measure. Are you capable of producing the material? Do you have the equipment, time, energy, workforce to accomplish these tasks? Measure your abilities. These items can be outsourced (Hint, hint, we do content marketing). Once your strategy has rolled out, give it some time to populate then begin measuring the data collected over that period. Do not be afraid to make small adjustments to the plan. What you should not do, is scrap your plan altogether. Your results will not be immediate, your content marketing strategy will take time build up momentum, but when it does, you are in for a real treat.

Derek Brusin

I am the one who likes cupcakes.

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