Can you believe it is the year 2019? In my third-grade world, I would have thought I would be writing this blog while riding in my flying car and asking my robot-dog to proofread it. While we aren’t exactly there yet, we have come leaps and bounds, and our world is now more connected than ever before. With that, we need to be one step ahead of the game when it comes to the content we are producing and putting online. It needs to be engaging, relevant and consistent. Well, as we all know, that’s a whole lot easier said than done.
Creating solid content takes time and work. And if you don’t keep your eye on things, it can be one of the tasks that gets pushed to the notorious “back-burner.” That’s why we want to help you out. Our team of content marketing experts here at Compass Media put together a list of four steps you can take to improving your 2018 content marketing strategy.
What is a Content Strategy?
First, let’s get this question out of the way, “What is a Content Strategy?” A content strategy is the piece of your marketing plan that refers to the management of any media you can create and own like a blog, social media, email marketing, etc.
You might already have a content strategy and just call it something else. Or you may enjoy the popular fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants method. That’s why we think these steps can help.
1. Do an Annual Content Review
Take a moment, sit down, and do a quick audit of where you are publishing your content and what type of interaction or engagement you are seeing. Ask yourself these questions:
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Where are you seeing the most engagement?
Are you seeing the most referral traffic to your website coming from Facebook? Is your newsletter generating spikes in click-throughs?
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What type of content is performing best on which platforms?
Is your Facebook audience responding better to video or infographics? Are the beauty images in your newsletter increasing clicks? Did your blogs with more graphics have more traffic? The goal is to understand that you don’t have to be everywhere. You need to be where it works and you see engagement.
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How frequent are you posting?
Did you have regularly scheduled content? Sometimes you need to find the balance between how much is too much and how much is too little when it comes to pushing out content. People may not want 12 emails in a week, but they might be OK with 12 tweets. See what frequency provided the best results.
2. Determine your Content Goals
Whether it is site engagement, bookings or general brand awareness, creating tangible goals will help you determine the best strategy for your content marketing plan.
For example, if you want to increase brand awareness, you may increase posting on your company blog because it generated the most clicks to your website last year. Or if you want to launch a new product you may look at paid social media to target a custom audience.
3. Define your Audience
Data, data, data. The more insights and analytics you can pull on your customer interests, demographics and behaviors, the better! This can help you create your own custom audience which will allow you to craft content that is relevant to people who are already interested in your organization.
There are multiple ways to gather this data, but our favorite is Google Analytics. There are a multitude of reports you can find here that can give you details on who is engaging with your site.
4. Create a Content Calendar
OK so by now you should have a pretty good idea of what worked last year, what you want to achieve this year, and who you want to reach. Now it’s time to get organized!
What is a content calendar? Besides your new best friend, this is one location where you create a timeline of everything you are publishing and where you can note your areas of focus, frequency, and posting dates.
Why should you do this?
- It will save you time. By planning all of your content out ahead of time you won’t have to brainstorm every week on what you should be writing about.
- Handle the expected. Picture, it. It is Christmas morning and you are opening presents and all of the sudden you realize you forgot to wish your followers a very Happy Holiday season. By scheduling content ahead of time, you can avoid these catastrophic disasters and free your time up to handle the unexpected.
- Build a content bank. By creating a content calendar, you’re committing yourself to creating multiple pieces of relevant content that you can re-utilize for years to come.
- Collaborate with your team. By having your content schedule in one place, team members can see what is coming up next on the pipeline without searching in multiple places.
We hope you found this information helpful. Remember we’re here to help. Contact us today if you would like to schedule a consultation to review your content marketing needs.
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