How to Implement a Successful Content Marketing Strategy for Your Business

A successful content marketing strategy is a must-have in your inbound marketing package. Content marketing is a proven strategy that helps you engage with your customers, grow your audience, and boost your sales. Your content matches your client’s unique needs and concerns. It shows why your services are the answers to their needs.

Creating content is fun, but it’s not always easy. Yes, there are many tools like Photoshop, Canva, YouTube, etc. that can help you create beautiful content even on a shoestring budget. But successful content isn’t just a pretty picture. Successful content is a result of strategy. Before you start creating, you want to make sure you have a plan in place.

We put together a list of steps to help you get started on your next content marketing strategy. Don’t worry about creating a perfect strategy your first-time round. Marketing trends change all the time and so will your strategy.

Set Your S.M.A.R.T Goals

A content marketing plan is a collaborative process. The best way to create optimized content is to work with other department heads on needs and goals. S.M.A.R.T goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

We recommend your team sets a S.M.A.R.T goal at the beginning of each goal. Don’t be afraid to start small. For example, perhaps you want to boost your social media following by 13 percent. Put that goal in place and then create the proper social media content that will help you achieve this goal. By the end of the month, you’ll be able to assess what is and isn’t working about your goal.

Know Your Audience

Content is all about audience. You could create a beautiful graphic with flowers and poetry, but this probably won’t do much for an audience that is more tech-oriented. One way to know your audience is to do a website and/or social media audit that pulls info on audience demographics. Based on what you find, you can focus your content on what’s trending, who likes it, etc.

Choose Your Content Channels

You must know where your content is going and why. Landing page copy may or may not apply to a Social Media Story (insert internal link to post on Social Media Stories) and vice versa. You’ll learn how to adapt your content to various channels once you have a better understanding of who’s spending time on those channels and for how long.

Create Content and Content Calendar

Once you’ve finalized your goals and know where your content is going, it’s time to create! We recommend that your business sets up a monthly content calendar to help keep you on track. Social Media Schedulers like Pardot and HootSuite are a great way to schedule your content ahead time so you can invest your energy into other projects.

Measure Results

As mentioned, all content is measurable. At the end of each month, look back at your original S.M.A.R.T Goal and see if that goal was achieved. If not, you can run audits on social media pages, email campaigns, etc. to see what hit the mark and what did not. If you did meet your goal, you can either build on that goal next month or focus on something else. No matter what you decide, great content will always succeed if you are dedicated and strategic.