How To Implement a Content Marketing Strategy in 8 Easy Steps Image

How To Implement a Content Marketing Strategy in 8 Easy Steps

Choosing to implement a content marketing strategy is a great decision, but it’s one that comes with a significant amount of work to yield the results you desire. Use this 8-step guide to develop an effective content marketing strategy from the ground up.

Step 1: Define Your Path and GoalsHow To Implement a Content Marketing Strategy in 8 Easy Steps Image

All successful strategies seek to obtain some type of goal. If executed properly, content marketing can help businesses achieve any number of related goals such as:

  • Boosted website traffic
  • Increased lead generation
  • Wider brand recognition and awareness

Content marketing takes time, energy, and resources to function properly, meaning your goals need to be SMART — specific, measureable, attainable, realistic, and timely.

Step 2: Identify Your Audience

Your content needs to speak directly to an audience, not the masses. Dependent upon your industry, you may have several types of people you need to create content for. When this is the case, you need to create what is known as buyer personas. HubSpot defines buyer personas as”a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.”

Buyer personas define the intricate nuisances of your different audiences, such as:

  • demographics
  • personal interests
  • behaviors
  • shopping habits
  • online content preferences

Step 3: Craft Your Voice

Everyone, regardless of profession or industry, is creating and distributing some type of content. Your content must break through the noise by crafting an original and specific voice for your brand. Your brand voice needs to be consistent throughout your content marketing strategy, because your audience will notice any sudden sway in tone, positioning, or stance in your content.

Step 4: Determine Content Channels

Your content can be distributed amongst a variety of platforms, methods, and channels. Typical options include:

  • blogs
  • public relations
  • social media
  • email marketing
  • search engine optimization (SEO) marketing
  • pay-per click marketing

The channels you choose to distribute your content are directly correlated to the type of business you run, your audience, and your industry. One content channel may work for your business, while another may not. Take time to test various channels and determine which performs best in reaching your goal(s).

Step 5: Map Out Your Strategy

After you’ve determined your goals, audience, and brand voice and you have identified content distribution channels, you can begin to plan out the type of content you need to create.

To start, pick a topic. Your topic must resonate with your audience but also have a clear call to action, such as contacting your company. In addition to a topic, you must identify your ideal types of content, which might include:

  • blogs and articles
  • press releases
  • podcasts
  • videos
  • ebooks
  • whitepapers
  • presentations and webinars
  • infographics

Soon, you’ll begin to develop your own unique process for planning content. Since no two content strategies are alike, do not fret if your process for strategizing is different than someone else’s!

Quick tip: use editorial content calendars to schedule your content topics and types throughout your strategy.

Step 6: Implement of Your Strategy

Once you’ve determined what type of content needs to be created, published, and distributed, you need to schedule time to do the work. You may find that in-house resources are too slim to devote to content marketing. Content writing services are available if your in-house writing resources are scarce.

Step 7: Evaluate Progress

The beauty of content marketing is the ability to derive qualitative and quantitative data from your strategy. Qualitative data can include comments from readers and user-generated content, while quantitative data can include the number of conversions, social shares, or website visitors.

In order to have a functional and ever-growing content marketing strategy, you must evaluate your efforts. A content marketing strategy is never perfect; your content can always improve to benefit the consumer and the business.

Step 8: Adapt to Your Results

Content marketing thrives on adaptation based on previous results. Don’t be afraid to try new types of content, different approaches to distribution, or any other tactics you find; you never know the outcome until you try.

For more information on implementing this 8-step content marketing strategy guide into your business, contact ContentWriters.com today. Our writers are ready to get to work creating valuable content that will help you reach your content goals.

 

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