Creating a robust content marketing plan.
Content marketing is a vital component of your digital marketing plan, therefore creating a good content strategy can really boost your website seo, visibility and traffic as well. Apart from that, in your customer's eye it can help stand out as an expert in your field too.
So what's a Good way to start your content plan?
Well, first of all lets understand what is a content strategy and different types of formats available?
Content strategy refers to the management of pretty much any tangible media that you create and own: written, visual, downloadable ... you name it. It is the piece of your marketing plan that continuously demonstrates who you are and the expertise you bring to your industry.
Type of content formats.
Types of content marketing?
Can be classified into below mentioned ways.
Blog Posts
Ebooks
Case Studies
Templates
Infographics
Videos
Podcasts
Social Media
Blog posts
If you haven't already noticed, you're currently perusing a blog post. Blog posts live on a website and should be published regularly in order to attract new visitors. Posts should provide valuable content for your audience that makes them inclined to share posts on social media and across other websites. We recommend that blog posts be between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length, but experiment to see if your audience prefers longer or shorter reads.
Ebooks Ebooks are lead-generation tools that potential customers can download after submitting a lead form with their contact information. They're typically longer, more in-depth, and published less frequently than blog posts, which are written to attract visitors to a website.
Ebooks are the next step in the inbound marketing process: After reading a blog post (such as this one), visitors might want more information. This is where calls-to-action (CTAs) come into play, directing people to a landing page where they can submit their contact information and download an ebook to learn more valuable information for their business. In turn, the business producing the ebook has a new lead for the sales team to contact.
Case Studies Case studies, also known as testimonials, are your opportunity to tell the story of a customer who succeeded in solving a problem by working with you. A case study is perhaps your most versatile type of content marketing because it can take many different forms -- some of which are on this list. That's right, case studies can take the form of a blog post, ebook, podcast ... even an infographic.
Your goal in a case study is to show the people who are considering your product that the proof is in the pudding. Before choosing a customer for a case study, you should determine which form the testimonial will take and the area of your business to which you're trying to drive value.
Templates Templates are a handy content format to try because they generate leads for you while providing tremendous value to your audience. When you provide your audience with template tools to save them time and help them succeed, they're more likely to keep engaging with your content in the future.
Infographics Infographics can organize and visualize data in a more compelling way than words alone. These are great content formats to use if you're trying to share a lot of data in a way that is clear and easy to understand.
If you're ready to get started, get our templates for creating beautiful infographics in less than an hour.
Podcasts Starting a podcast will help audiences find your brand if they don't have time or interest in reading content every day. The number of podcast listeners is growing -- in 2018, nearly one-third of the U.S. population has listened to a podcast in the last month. If you have interesting people to interview or conversations to host, consider podcasting as another content format to experiment with.
Social Media Once you've been regularly publishing content on your own site for a while, it might be time to start thinking about distributing your content on other sites. This could mean repurposing content into new formats and publishing them on your blog, creating original content specifically for external sites -- such as Medium -- or publishing website content on various social networks.
Getting started with your strategy.
Before getting started you need to ask 3 questions to yourself and be very clear of below mentioned points
1. Whom You're Creating Content For
Who's the target audience for this content? For how many audiences are you creating content? Just as your business might have more than one type of customer, your content strategy can cater to more than one type of reader or viewer.
Using a variety of content types and channels will help you deliver different content to each type of audience you have in mind and engage everyone your company does business with.
2. Value Part - The Problem it's Going to Solve for that Audience Ideally, your product or service solves a problem you know your audience has. By the same token, your content coaches and educates your audience through this problem as they begin to identify and address it.
A sound content strategy supports people on both sides of your product: those who are still figuring out what their main challenges are, and those who are already using your product to overcome these challenges. Your content reinforces the solution(s) you're offering and makes your customers more qualified users of your product.
3. The Channels Where It'll Be Published Just as you can create content in different formats, you'll also have different channels you can publish to. Channels can include owned properties, such as your website and blog; and social media properties, such as Facebook and Twitter. We'll talk more about social media content strategy in the step-by-step guide later in this article.
Creating a Content Marketing Strategy
1. Define your goal. What's your aim for developing a content marketing plan? Why do you want to produce content and create a content marketing plan? Know your goals before you begin planning, and you'll have an easier time determining what's best for your strategy.
2. Run a content audit. Most people start out with blog posts, but if you want to venture out and try producing other content pieces, consider which ones you want to make. For instance, if you've been doing weekly blog posts for the past year, creating an ebook that distills all your blog posts into one ultimate guide would be a one way to offer information in a different format. We'll go over several different types of content you can use further down on the list.
If you've been in business for a while, review your content marketing efforts and the results from it in the last year. Figure out what you can do differently in the upcoming year and set new goals to reach.
3. Choose a content management system.
Have a system in place where you can manage your content. A few vital parts of content management include content creation, content publication, and content analytics.
You can plan, produce, publish, and measure your results all in one place using softwares like HubSpot. Other content management system options include CoSchedule and WordPress
4. Brainstorm content ideas. Now, it's time to start coming up with ideas for your next content project. Here are some tools to get the wheels turning:
a) HubSpot's Website Grader HubSpot's Website Grader is a great tool to use when you want to see where you're at with your marketing. From your blogging efforts to your social media marketing, Website Grader grades vital areas of your marketing and sends you a detailed report to help you optimize and improve each area.
With this tool, you can figure out how to make your website more SEO-friendly and discover new content ideas.
b) BlogAbout Get your mind gears going with IMPACT's unique content idea generator, BlogAbout. This tool works a bit like Mad Libs, but instead of joke sentences, it shows you common headline formats with blanks where you can fill in the subject you have in mind.
This brainstorming technique helps you put general ideas in contexts that would be appealing to your target audience. Once you have a headline you like, BlogAbout lets you add it to your "Notebook" so you can save your best ideas.
c) HubSpot's Blog Ideas Generator Get blog post ideas for an entire year with HubSpot's Blog Ideas Generator. All you need to do is enter general topics or terms you'd like to write about, and this content idea generator does all the work for you.
d) Feedly This popular RSS feed is a wonderful way to keep track of trendy topics in your industry and find content ideas at the same time.
e) BuzzSumo Discover popular content and content ideas at BuzzSumo. This company offers a number of market research tools, one of which uses social media shares to determine if a piece of content is popular and well-liked. In turn, this information helps you see which content ideas would do well if you were to create content about them.
f) Blog Post Headline Analyzer CoSchedule's tool analyzes headlines and titles and provides feedback on length, word choice, grammar, and keyword search volume. If you have an idea in mind, run a few title options through the Headline Analyzer to see how you could make it stronger, and to move your idea further along in the brainstorming process.
Above all. always remember that content that you are writing is for the ultimate customer
So give more emphasis on customer's feelings, liking and disliking.
When everything else fails,
your content can win you over everything else.
