Producing high-quality content is invaluable when it comes to building trust and engagement with your audience. This content can drive consistently high-quality organic traffic to your website, boost your social media engagement, and convert prospects into purchasers.
Therefore developing a content marketing strategy for your website business is an absolute necessity. Content is King, right?
But it can be a daunting process for any website owner to start out and plan a content strategy. You have loads of ideas but forming those into a coherent plan is fundamental to your success.
Our latest blog will take you on a whistle-stop tour of the key steps you need to take to develop a content marketing strategy. Let’s go!
What types of content fit into a marketing strategy?
There are so many types of content that you could into a marketing strategy. Here are the top ones we would recommend considering at this planning stage:
- Blog posts – Blogs are fundamental to any SEO strategy. They should form the lynchpin of any content marketing strategy.
- eBooks – Use e-books for lead magnets. This will acquire email subscribers that you can nurture and develop into customers.
- Case studies – Everyone wants to learn, so developing case studies or demonstrational content will create an authoritative brand.
- Templates – You can create templates that act as FREE downloads or lead magnets. Perhaps it is a ‘DIY home workout programme’ or ‘Invoice” template. The choices are endless.
- Infographics – Infographics are a great way to share content in an engaging, visual manner.
- Videos – Video is perfect to drive engagement with your target audience. From ‘how-to’ to ‘product reviews’ or even ‘knowledge sharing’, the opportunities are limited by your imagination.
- Podcasts – Podcasts rose in popularity during the pandemic and show no sign of abating. It is an advanced strategy and takes a lot of work to get off the ground, but once it is established it can do wonders for your brand.
- Social media – Social media is both a content distribution platform and content generation platform. Consider how you can use social media to build engagement with your target audience.
It is tempting to run off and try to do everything on this list. If you have the resources, then, of course, go for it. But if it is just you responsible for content marketing then pick one or two and focus on doing a great job first. Quality over quantity every time!
Every content marketing strategy needs to be built around your target audience
We know that you have a great business idea and it is going to absolutely solve a problem for your target audience.
Your content marketing strategy, therefore, needs to be built solely around your target audience.
Firstly, this should go without saying, but outline who your target audience is. It is likely you have more than one type of potential customer, so you will need to create different pieces of content that appeal to those audience segments.
Secondly, consider which type of content and marketing channel would work for each customer segment. Do you need to be creating how-to guides alongside product reviews? Would infographics better explain informational content than a 3,000-blog article? Do you need to create more Instagram and Tik-Tok content than blogs for example?
Why would your target audience be interested in your content?
Once you have identified this approach, you can then boil it down to the WHY.
Your content needs to educate and inform your audience. It will need to identify the pain points they face and provide solutions.
That does not mean you need to sell, sell, sell, but educate. If you hold onto that core principle, then it becomes easier to identify the topic areas on which you should absolutely focus.
Researching topics for a content marketing strategy
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and ask yourself – what would I enter into Google to find a product or service like mine?
Write down a list of everything of which you can think. Then type search phrases into Google. Can you spot gaps in the content that you can fill? Are there pieces of content that you can do better? Are there particular questions that pop up in the search results that you can create additional blogs for?
Once you have done this research, you can use keyword search tools, like Google Keyword Research Tool, to identify which keywords you need to focus on first.
This all relates to the competition you will be going up against. You need to decide if it is worth your time creating new content targeting a keyword that is heavily competitive. But do not be put off by low traffic or search results either. Producing a quality piece of content that answers the user’s search query will bring in high-value traffic to your website. If you can focus on quality traffic rather than quantity, then your conversion rates will remain high.
What should I create and when?
By now, you will be faced with a daunting list of topic ideas. It is likely you will feel overwhelmed, so this is where your planning skills come to the fore.
First, consider the resources you have at your disposal. If all you can manage is one blog post a week, that is fine. Stick to that and the results will come. If you try to aim for 3 or 4, and consistently fall short, you will soon lose heart and eventually give up.
With these realistic expectations having been set, your content marketing plan needs to include:
- The topic or subject area.
- When it is being created.
- When it is being published.
- When and where it is being published.
- Who has responsibility for each task?
If it is just you, then it is fairly easy to manage. But if you have multiply involved, such as freelance social media or copywriters, you need to collaborate effectively to ensure every part of your team is doing what they need to be doing.
In conclusion – putting the content marketing strategy together.
It is crucial to create content that has an intrinsic value to your target audience. If you fail to meet this, then all your hard work and efforts will ultimately go to waste.
Therefore, it is important to always ask yourself WHY would my target audience be interested in this piece of content. This will help guide you through the process.
Sticking to the plan is fundamental for long-term success. A low-volume, high-quality content plan will deliver greater results than a high-volume, low-quality plan. There is nothing worse for your audience than consuming rubbish!
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