6 Steps to Starting a Content Marketing Plan
If you’re looking to get a leg up on your competition you have to invest your time into a content marketing strategy! Your content strategy is just one piece of your overall marketing plan and is pretty much any tangible media you create and own whether it is written, visual and downloadable.
Here are my six tips for creating a content marketing strategy:
1. What is your End Game?
What is your goal for creating a content marketing plan? Are you looking to become a thought leader in a particular area? Are you looking for new leads? Knowing your goals will help you determine the strategy you should take, but you need to define your goals before starting.
2. Who are your Peeps?
If you do not yet know your audience it would be beneficial to conduct an audit to define your audience. Once your audience is defined you can better create content for them that is relevant and valuable. Remember your goal should be to add value. I like the “hub and spoke” method.
If you have already defined your audience and are looking to grow your segment, revisit your audience and conduct research, I have no doubt you’ll find something you missed.
3. Content Audit
If you are just pushing out blog posts, how is your MySpace page going? Yep, I went there! You need to be doing more than just blogging! In addition to blog posts try producing other content pieces that you would want to ingest? Perhaps your blog has an ebook component. Or add easily digestible content like video or infographics or images. Perhaps an FAQ or a Q&A around a topic would be beneficial to your audience! Get creative, you’re a marketer!
It is important to review your content marketing pieces and the results these pieces created. What content was digested more than other pieces? Can you produce this content in different forms? Can you expand on this content? Understanding what your consumers are looking for gives you the opportunity to be a thought leader.
4. Ideas for Drop the Mic Content
I love a good brainstorming session but not all ideas are good ideas. Or, maybe you don’t know where to start. Think of your content like an advertisement, are you attracting or detracting? Are you providing value to your consumers or are you just offering up clickbait to a poorly written article? There are a lot of free tools out there to help you create killer content. Here are my top three resources;
Feedly: This RSS tool is a way to keep track of trendy topics in your industry and a way to find content ideas at the same time.
BuzzSumo: Allows you to discover popular content and content ideas. The company uses social media shares to determine if a piece of content is popular and well-liked and this will help you see which content ideas will do well.
HubSpot's Blog Idea Generated: Simply fill in the fields with terms that you’d like to write about, and HubSpot will come up with a week’s worth of relevant blog post titles in a matter of seconds!
5. Getting Your Content On
This is the part I love the most!! There is a variety of different forms of content you can create. Below are just a few of the most popular content formats marketers are creating and tools to help you get started. Pro tip – get creative and combine some of these tools!
- Blog posts – posts should provide valuable content that makes them want to share your creation
- Video – highly engaging content medium, but requires a bigger investment
- Ebooks – primarily used as a lead generation tool
- Podcast – only successful where it makes sense
- External Content – distribute your content on other sites such as LinkedIn, Reddit, and more
There are a plethora of different content types once you decide what your subject is. Here are a few of my personal favorites:
- Content Curation
- Opinion Posts (you can also use this for reputation management)
- Video and Vlog
- UGC
- Interviews
- Pinboards
- Guides
- Q&A sessions
You’re in marketing, test things out, you never know where it will go!
6. Get Your Ducks in a Row
Editorial Calendars will keep you on the right track for publishing a well-balanced and diverse content library. The next step is to create a social media content calendar so you can promote and manage your content on other sites. While much of your content will last for a long time it is important to not ignore timely topics, they can help you generate spikes in traffic and are imperative to be considered a Thought Leader.
Content Marketing goes a lot deeper then what has been mentioned above. In future blogs I will be discussing storytelling and visual assets and how this all plays a part in your marketing strategy. Stay tuned for more!