Content marketing drives business these days. So, companies with proper content marketing plans are in better shape to motivate, engage, and drive awareness of their brand than their counterparts who believe in random postings.
In fact, a properly fleshed out concrete marketing plan helps businesses set clear goals and outcomes.
Here we have put together five steps to streamline your content marketing plan for small business:
Step One: Have a Clear-cut Content Marketing Goal
I know, it’s not that easy to figure out the purpose of content marketing for your small business. But then, no matter what, it’s essential to nail down your goal to give shape to your content plan. Once, you have a clear cut idea about your purpose and intent, you will be able to sweat it out when it comes to achieving your goal.
Ask yourself: What are you exactly trying to achieve with your digital content marketing strategy?
# Do you want to be seen as an expert in the field? Do you want to attract more leads? Do you want to propel your position in search engine rankings? Should it be a brand building exercise?
Having a goal for your content marketing campaigns will help you form a tunnel vision around your content marketing objective and will enable you to drive your efforts in the same direction.
Step Two: Nail Down the Target Audience
This is equally important as the setting content marketing goals because your content has to resonate with your readers. If your target audience is tech-savvy working women with high purchasing power, but then, your content targets the general masses, then, needless to say, you will only witness minimal traffic on your website.
So, the point I am drawing home is, undertake market research to have a clearer picture of your target audience. Identifying your exact customer will help you talk to them in their language.
In short, if you want your hard work to reap handsome rewards, nail down your target audience. Period.
Step Three: Choose a Mix of Content
You should mix and match different types of content to sustain the interest of your readers. Using the same and similar kinds of content is a surefire way to kill readers’ attention.
For example, your content is invariably 2500+ words long, and you hardly play with infographics or videos, then your visitors will stop visiting your blog page because they know that your content will be the same old-fashioned, text-driven content with no exciting value addition of any sort.
So, add the following types of content in your content marketing plan:
- Ebooks
- While papers
- Webinars
- Podcasts
- Guides
- Checklists
- Research Papers
- Case studies
- Videos
- Interviews
- Industry news
- Infographics
When you mix and match a variety of content, every reader will find something of his type which will get automatically get them hooked to your site. Consult top content marketing brands for more info.
Step four. Schedule your Content
A plan counts for nothing if a schedule doesn’t back it. If you plan to post your content on different platforms such as Medium, Reddit, your website, and more, then you need to include all these platforms in your plan.
Further, you also need to find out about your audience, on all these platforms. If you are getting the same audience on all these platforms, then make sure that you post unique content on each of these platforms. If viewers are different, then you don’t have to invest so much of your time in creating unique content.
While preparing the schedule, you need to mention the type of content you will be providing and also the objective of your content. Check out this latest report by GoodFirms to know how businesses leverage content marketing to expand their business.
Step 5: Measure and Track with Commitment
Once your content is up and running, you will want to know about its performance as well.
Use link shorteners like bit.ly to track readers. It will also give you an idea about the articles that are doing well and the ones that aren’t.
Sure, you can even use Google analytics to get more in-depth data on what’s happening on your website. For instance, you can find out if people are finding your site via search engines or via social media.
Regardless of what your measure and track, changes in content tactics should be slow and steady. Don’t trust analysis in the first go and immediately introduce changes. Analysis can throw up surprises which can catch you off guard.
Wrap Up
Content Marketing is a crucial tool in your marketing armor provided you leverage it seriously. If you simple scribble something and put it out there thinking it will work on its own, nothing is gonna happen. On the other hand, if you map out a plan, experiment with different varieties of content and styles, accommodate changes as per analysis, then content marketing will surely start showing results in two or three months.
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