Why do you need a content strategy?
A content strategy is the blueprint that will guide you in your content organization. Whether you are posting for a blog, website or other media, having a content strategy will enable you to focus on the parts of content marketing that matter. You will have everything written down about how you plan to use your marketing ideas — from your goals, to your audience, your process, and your content itself.
What is the mission of your content?
Marketing activities for your content should always stay focused on your content and what goals you want to achieve by following that mission. Do you want to attract new visitors to your site? Create leads and generate sales? Improve customer support? It’s okay to have more than one goal; just make sure everything is measurable.
Each item you post as part of your content marketing strategy should be focused on the business or product you are trying to sell. This would look a little like tech articles about cyber security for an IT firm, healthcare blogs from a doctor’s office, legal information from a lawyer, and so on and so forth.
How are you going to scale it?
Get specific with your content plan. Consider which activities you would like to engage in to offer content marketing. For example, do you want to emphasize blog posts, email campaigns, newsletters, or something else? Once you’ve decided determine how often you would like to send your message out.
There are plenty of tools to help you plan the best way to schedule and post content. For instance, Co-Schedule is one tool that can help you map out a monthly calendar for blog topics, email campaigns, promotional activities along with integration to your social media.
Of course, it is also important to know how and where you will get the content from that is relevant and interesting to your readers
Creating a Persona and Tone For Your Content
Your content needs to reflect that you understand your readers. It is about knowing them, and answering their questions and solving their problems. The first step to this is by clearly identifying your audience.
This “persona” will guide you when setting the tone and language of your content. Consider whether your market is technical, professional, or whether you require a friendly and casual tone. Try using a tool called the Buyer’s Journey framework to help you sort this out.
If your company’s persona is evolving, your audience may have different needs over time. The information they are looking for will be influenced by which stage of the journey they are in. The steps your customers take during the purchase decision process vary depending on your product or company, but they generally fall into three distinct steps:
- Visitors – First, there is awareness, the point when your potential customer realizes that there may be a problem or opportunity.
- Interested customers – Next, your potential customer identifies and considers exactly what the problem or opportunity is.
- Customers – Finally, they have decided on what their solution will be — both in method and approach.
Aligning your content marketing strategy with other teams and business units
Sharing your marketing activities within your business is also an important part of the process. Don’t forget to share your content marketing strategy so that it can be aligned with other teams and departments. They will help you develop and market the content that produces the results you want.
When everyone has access to the content marketing strategy, they have the big picture of what you are trying to achieve. This is beneficial because it can make sure everyone is at the same place in the plan, and also minimize duplicate and unnecessary efforts.
Captivate your audience with the help of SEO and Social Media
Website referral traffic happens mostly via social media. Sharing your content is free marketing! If you have a company presence on these sites, you can draw in new customers, inform existing ones, and engage prospects. SEO is not just a singular conceptual tool to attract positive results on search engine, it has the potential to be one of the most important aspects of amazing content marketing.
SEO includes quick-loading pages for every available browsers, strategic keywords, inbound and outbound links, concise content, and of course maintaining a mobile-friendly site.
Testing your content marketing and improving it
If you want the best results, never stop testing your content. Become accustomed to measuring your results often and knowing what they are daily. This may take patience as you run through a testing campaign, but it’s well worth the effort. You will be able to refine and reframe your strategy to boost results. It may take a while, but once you are speaking through your content to potential customers in a language they can understand, all the hard work will seem worthwhile.
Need Some Help?
If you feel confused or overwhelmed, don’t be. Pronto has you covered. With over 1500+ WordPress websites under our belt, we can help you with all your WordPress needs and more. From Content all the way to integrating platforms.
Schedule a call with one of our Pronto Experts and learn how we can secure your website so you can focus on your business.
