As a marketer, you need fantastic content to stay alive in the web. High quality content is what the public looks for, it’s what SEO builds on and it’s the mainstay of social media. But while content can sometimes hold it’s own (and in numerous ways it does as we’ve seen many blogs publishing good posts and the content certainly zooms off far and wide) the reality is, that at times, regardless of how good the content might be, it does need a little push forward to set things in motion before it can go viral.
Generally, you already need to have acquired a steady following before this happens automatically. Many online business people will agree, you can put together a great post and hope ’til the cows come home that someone comes along to send your content off to warp speed. Nothing goes viral, however, without it’s being pushed in the right direction. Be it because you have an established following and they push your content forward for you, or you get out there and create the positive motion yourself.
High quality does not always result to bringing in the money, so you need a content marketing plan that’s strategic to support your content and add it’s own strength to brand your business and persuade the selling part. No matter how you mix-up print, text, graphics, images, video or audio, the content has value only if your intended readers find it, read it, link to it, bookmark it, and best of all, accomplish the end result you planned for it: trigger someone towards recommending or buying your product or service.
Here’s a basic content marketing game plan you can build on:
1). Assemble a solid readership and prepare them for your call of action
a). What’s the problem, what’s the solution? This will involve outlining your site content’s purpose and exact message, subject matter coverage, voice and style presentation.
- What is your niche all about? Who are your buyers? What types of information do you need them to receive? How can you provide the information?
- How do you want to talk to your audience? How do you want to come across to them?
- How do you set yourself apart from your competition?
- Who will do the writing? Do you need a guest blogger to add a new perspective?
b). Design content that builds your brand and at the same time fulfills you readers’ needs and brings about great search results.
To pull off a balance between content and SEO:
- Set up your site so that it’s structurally easy for search engines to sort out and index.
- Your main concern for drafting content should always be readers first over SEO benefits. Always satisfy what they need first and they’ll quickly establish you as a great resource for information about your niche and will keep coming back for updates.
c). Present top-notch content consistently and post frequently.
Consistent high quality content and regularity in posting shows end users how serious you are about your business. If you’re asking your readers to come back, make sure you have something new for them everytime they do, otherwise, why should you expect people to keep coming back to a stagnant or stale site, or share content that’s outdated? Most suggest doing at least a weekly posting, but logically the more regular the posting then the more habitual it becomes for them to check on updates. Never bargain high quality content with quantity. If you must, go over your collection of content materials and reuse and remake it to come up with content that’s up to date.
2). Decide on a promotional/marketing strategy to push your content into circulation.
Now that the content plan is formed what strategy do you use to circulate it? How, where and what tools do you use to promote your content so that people can easily locate it and quickly act on it? Should your blog do all the marketing or do you need SEO techniques? Maybe a video or a podcast is a quicker medium to get your content noticed? Do you concentrate on just social media? Which would work effectively, a newsletter versus an E-book? Arrange your content strategy around your entire business marketing program. To begin with, combine any promotional efforts which fit your budget, time and manpower and then continually revise and renew your content marketing strategy as you see what’s working and what is not.
3). Measure effectiveness and adjust your strategy as needed
What is your desired end result from your content and how can you quantify it’s success? All of the content planning and strategizing is pointless unless you review your content marketing efforts against your preset outcome and make adjustments accordingly to what is working and what is not. Planning for your content marketing strategy should be continuous and nonstop as you will need to keep changing your content game plan to keep things creative and effective. Most content marketing strategies call for a minimum of six months before you get some sense of steady circulation. The key is to be flexible as you’re starting out and to repeatedly make changes as you continue to get a hold of customer insight.
