Nathan Yerian
Do you have your prospect's attention? What about their trust? Trust is the new marketing currency. You need to develop a content marketing strategy that will get your target market's attention, and build trust before your competition.
Content marketing, like all marketing, starts with a strategy. Putting an effective plan in place will not only ensure that you are maximizing your time investment, but will also give you a benchmark to improve your content marketing strategy over time.
As we discussed in the previous post "What is Content Marketing?", maintaining an active blog is the best tool to begin incorporating a content marketing strategy.
6 Step Content Marketing Strategy for Your Company's Blog:
1. Create an editorial calendar
Every great publication has one. If you plan for your publication (blog) to be great, you need one too.
Determine how many posts you want to publish per week, or month.
Create a spreadsheet with 5 columns:
a) Date of Post (when it should be published)
b) Topic/Title
c) Details (to help you remember exactly what the post is about)
d) Resources (list any references you may want to use for your post)
e) Responsibility (assign ownership of the post).
This basic format will be enough to get you started, but feel free to alter/add to it as you get more comfortable with the process.
2. Build an editorial team
A blog does not have to be an individual effort. Building a editorial team will alleviate the pressure and time requirement necessary for an active blog.
An editorial team may also be more effective in brainstorming ideas for your blog. Each person on the team will have their own perspective of your market and topics that will engage your prospects. They will also have specialized expertise, and different writing styles. You never know what topic or style will engage your audience until you try it.
Your editorial team can consist of internal, or external resources. Internal team members have the advantage of an insider view of your company, clients, and industry. External team members such as professional copywriters, editors, or bloggers can bring expertise in writing and content formating. Using internal & external resources is a winning combination.
3. Optimize your content
If you are going to spend time developing your blog, you want to make sure that people that are looking for this type of content can find it. Optimizing your blog posts will increase the likelihood of being organically found on search engines.
Content marketing master Brian Clark (founder of Copyblogger) lays out an SEO game plan for your posts in "SEO Copywriting: The Five Essential Elements to Focus On". Following these rules in your posts will increase the SEO value of each post and maximize its benefit for you and your prospects.
4. Promote your content
Use your social media presence to get the word out about your valuable content. Your content needs to be valuable (see "What is Content Marketing?"). If it is, then sharing your blog posts with your connections in your social media realm should be well received and maybe even reposted to their connections.
5. Build backlinks to your content
Building backlinks to your content will increase your post's SEO (Search Engine Optimization) value. It will also give targeted groups of people a place to find more information (from an expert...you).
There are tons of online groups, forums, blogs, etc. that are having targeted discussions. Find the ones that pertain to the topic of your posts. IF applicable, leave a valuable/relevant comment and give a link to your post. DO NOT just blast your post out to every forum. If the readers there find no value in your post, it will only hurt your effort and will be a waste of your time.
6. Measure your results
When setting up your blog, you should attach an analytics software that can show how your posts are performing. There are many analytics software suites to choose from. On a basic level, Google Analytics is adequate and free.
Keep track of the posts that are attracting the most visitors, and the ones attracting the least visitors. This will give you an idea about where your audience is finding value and will give you an opportunity to create more targeted content.
Your analytics software should also show you where your website visitors are coming from. Use this information to gauge where you are getting the most traction and allocate your time to the most productive sources.
Using this basic content marketing strategy should be enough to get you started building trust within your market. Trust is the new currency. Get your prospect's trust by providing consistent value, or lose to your competition. The choice is yours.
Download our Inbound Marketing e-book and learn how content marketing can generate leads and close sales.
