Content marketing is doing quite good with proven successful results for businesses worldwide. But, don’t you want to run back to the future?

On that note, quoting Henry Rollins:

“We are not going back to anything. We’re not going back to dial-up phones; we’re not going back to anything ancient … The old must give way to the new. The new must come in with intensity, with innovation, with great fury and speed.”’

With the frequency with which changes are rushing in to the industry, it is crucial to evolve our programs. And at the same time, it is equally important to keep the basics intact. So, if we are about to begin our speculations about the futuristic content marketing strategy, keep in mind to:

• Ignite conversations replacing the usual marketing speak.
• Revisit and re-work on the fundamentals of message creation and delivery.
• Shun too much use of new technology and trends; instead, stick to clear and personal communication.

However, irrespective of whether you are starting out with content marketing or you have been using the same approach for quite a while, it is advisable to revise your strategy plans for content marketing. After all, it is essential to keep your strategies innovative, updated, and effective.

What is Content Marketing Strategy?

Content strategy is all about managing the tangible media created and owned by the content creator. Any content that is in writing, or visual, or downloadable has to undergo the marketing plan that continuously demonstrates the expertise of the content and its goal towards the industry. It is the use of right strategy for your content marketing that affect the growth of your business. And needless to say, the strategy must have a well-planned purpose.

Key things to consider while developing content strategy:

While you are all set to develop certain strategies for content marketing in 2020, these are the few major points to consider:

1). Your target audience

It is important to keep in mind who you are creating your content for. And how big your target audience would be. It is normal for your content strategy to cater to more than one type of reader or viewer.

It is best to use a variety of content types and channels that could be easily used to reach out a wide range of audience engaging them perfectly to your particular business and industry.

2). The motive your content is aimed at

The reason why a business begins is basically to reach out to your target customers with a defined purpose. Your content informs and educates your audience with the said purpose in mind once they begin to identify and address it. No matter if the audience is still trying to figure out the main challenges, or if they are already using your products to overcome the purpose your business is aimed at.

The right content would help reinforce the solutions you are offering and makes your target customers more expert in using your intended business or products or services.

3). Why and how you do stand out

It is quite obvious for your competitors to come up with similar products or services as yours. In other words, your potential customers need to know what makes you stand out among your contemporary service providers. It is right where the use of right content strategy comes in. To prove your own importance in terms of business, you need to prove that you are worth reading, listening to, or known about.

4). Basic content formats

What strategy would you follow while creating a particular content for a particular client and a particular purpose – it entirely depends on using the right content form. It may be infographics, blogs, videos, and articles, and you need to zero-in to the pre-identified topics and format of the content relevant to your budget so that you can express the same in the best possible way.

5). The platform your content is aimed for publishing

Content can be created is different formats, and at the same time can be published on multiple platforms. There can be a number of channels like your own website, blogs, or social media platforms.

6). Content calendar and publication methods

It’s quite a daunting task to figure out the correct way to create and publish your content. Managing your creation and publication with the right content strategies prevent clutter from a topic standpoint.

Why is it important to create a Content Marketing Strategy?

It is common for all content marketing companies in Kolkata, Pune, Delhi, Mumbai or other cities in the country to come to a common conclusion that content marketing helps businesses to prepare and plan for reliable and cost-effective route to website traffic and new leads.

The trick is to create one blog post that is capable of getting a steady amount of organic traffic. All you need to do is to embed a link to an ebook or get a free tool that is aimed at generating leads for you over time.

Step by Step Creation of Content Marketing Strategy

Let us take a tour to walk through few simple steps on developing and executing a content marketing plan. These steps would help your business grow with effective results in time sooner than expected.

Here we go…

1. Set your goal and sort out a mission

Guess how to start with your content marketing strategy plan. Start by setting out a content marketing mission statement which briefs about focusing on important points while creating content. This practice would help your strategies to stay on track.

The content marketing mission statement outlines:

1. Your target audience.
2. Your content material to reach them.
3. The major benefits your prospective customer would get.

2. Look for KPIs to make specific goals

Your goals won’t be achievable until they are specific and measurable. For the same, you need to set key performance indicators (KPIs) while creating content strategies. The KPIs would help you create milestones and to keep on ticking them as and when you reach there. These milestones include what you plan to achieve in terms of revenue, sales, traffic, SEO, email marketing, social media metrics and several other aspects of digital marketing.

When you have figures and milestones fixed, you are certain to:

1. Reach a fixed revenue target within a pre-fixed time of a month, quarter, or year.
2. Get more signups for your lead magnet to signify your high-quality leads.
3. Target for a certain number of new email subscribers.
4. Expect an increase in site traffic to engage with your onsite content.
5. Improve the search ranking of your key pages.
6. Get multiple mentions, shares, and comments for your pillar content.
7. Get invited to be a part of certain key industry events.

3. Be specific while knowing your target readers

 To make your content marketing strategy work, you must know your audience well. Only then would you be able to create the right content to reach them. Now the question arises, how to know them in details…

1. Collect demographic data

This is how you start to research about your target readers – collect their demographic details. Reach out for your visitors, email subscribers, and social media followers. You need to gather information about the audience’s age, gender, education, income, and other relevant details to know their preference, need, and choice.

2. Get customer feedback

Another way to get insights into your target audience is to collect feedback from your current customers and collect data about:

• Their response about the content you are currently producing creating.
• Their most urgent needs.
• Your strategy to address their problems with your content.

These would help you get the right customer feedback to understand the priorities of your readers and subscribers. These would also guide you to decide the best places to reach your customers.

3. Create buyer personas

It is easier to create or flesh out buyer personas if you are sorted out with demographic data and customer feedback. Buyer personas get into the details of your ideal readers, so that you can customize your content better.

With the right dose of buyer personas in your list, you can have a better understanding of:

• The right kind of content your audience would like to respond.
• The right way to help them out.
• The right roadmap to make them pay attention to your content.

4. Assess where you stand

It is quite obvious that many businesses are already have content, either on your blog, or on social media platforms, podcasts, videos and several other channels. So, it is important to figure out whether or not the content is actually serving the purpose right.

And how to judge that? Carry out a content audit, by:

• Logging all content, including blog posts, guests posts, etc.
• Trying to calculate their success rate and usefulness.
• Identifying the gaps.
• Comparing the content with those of your competitors, and see what is making the differences where and how.

5. Find the best channels for content

While you are into the process of content marketing strategy, you will soon realize where your audience is actually placed, and where you already have a successful online presence. It is advisable to focus on what’s working and expand from there as and when required.

6. Decide on the types of content you need to create

Think and decide about the exact type of content you are supposed to create. Most effective content marketing strategies rely on having a central core of content published on your own site that can be further shared or repurposed on different channels. Ideally, your blog posts must be actionable, valuable, and shareable, and may include a range of article types.  

7. Identify and allocate resources

Once you are sorted of what your content type would be, who it is aimed for, and which channel or platform you are going to share it, it is important to make sure you are equally sorted about everything you need to deliver on your content marketing strategy. To focus on these, the following points must be kept in mind:

• Who is responsible for producing and maintaining content?
• What human, physical or digital tools and resources do you need to create the content?
• How will be the publishing workflow look like, including content scheduling?

8. Content calendar for scheduling the content

One of the most important steps of content strategy is to schedule a calendar so that you know when and how to get all your content scheduled. And how to do that? You may use Google Calendar – all you need to do is to put the due dates for each piece of content there. This goes well when you are not publishing too many content. But if there are loads of content to publish, or you have a big content team to manage, or a production workflow to zero in, you would need more features in your calendar.

9. Finally – into content creation

After all the prep work done till point 8, now you are at it – creation of content. Start with a blog, say, which begins with extensive research work so that you have a clear idea of what type of blog post you must create. Pick a title from the calendar and start working on it. While penning down your blog, you need to zero in to:

• What’s making noise in the industry.
• How to use your content to add value for your target readers.

This includes a lot of Google search, tallying several blogs and top contents related to your chosen topic. Furthermore, you will have to keep a watch to focus on how to improve it.

10. Distribute and market the content

Up next is the distribution and marketing part of content strategy. Unless this part is handled correctly, you won’t be able to get the result you are aiming for. And what is the right way to do justice to this part?

• Create a schedule for sharing your content on social media through a drip campaign using tools available online.
• Use email marketing to distribute your content to subscribers.
• Don’t forget to mention any influencers in your content to further spread the word.

11. Assess the success and measure the results

And the final stage of it – time to assess the final results to count your success rate. Go back to the KPIs set at the beginning of the content plan, and keep a track to watch the changes, improvements and whether or not you are hitting your targets.

Steps to do this include:

• Use Google Analytics to track your content’s performance.
• Measure social sharing activities using the right social analytics tools.
• Use conversion analytics dashboard to count on the success rate of your marketing campaigns.

With the right monitoring steps, you can regulate your progress, and at the same time you will be able to tweak your content marketing strategy from time to time as and when required.

So, there we go. We concluded on how any content marketing company Kolkata or Pune or Bangalore would guide you through your content management strategies. You are now all set to start off with the right strategies for content marketing from the very beginning till the wrap up.

You may get in touch with any social media marketing agency that provides SEO services and content marketing to guide you in the best possible way.