It’s indispensable for a business of any sort to have impeccable and well-planned content strategy. A marketing plan thwarts to thrive when it’s not based upon pragmatism, thorough knowledge of audience/ buyer personas, familiarity with available resources and analytical capacities. A content is what that drives your overall strategy to the next-level. Truthfully, contents play a pivotal role in the optimization of the business as well. In fact, visionary entrepreneurs bank on textual and visual contents to outreach to the maximum number of the people and toil hard to solve their problems.
In reality, an audience looks for solutions to their problems instead of benefits. That’s why; a product or service which has complete solution of people’s problems has a competitive advantage over competitors. Traditional ways of marketing are becoming less and less effective at horse pace. Forward-thinking and innovative millennial marketers take advantage of the content marketing to boost the confidence of the audience on the products that they put forward. Content Marketing Institute (CMI) –A content marketing training organization based in Cleveland, Ohio, USA- It describes the content marketing lucidly:
“Content marketing is purely strategic marketing approach to create relevant, reliable and research-based contents to educate the audience about products and services and persuade them to take prompt actions”
In this post, I am going to share the 4 pillars of the successful content marketing. An enterprise armed with flawless content marketing strategy can evangelize the advantageousness of the product, brand or service that it’s offering to the audience. It is essential for a company to give special attention to the preparation of client-focused contents as they would entail following benefits not only to customers but also for a firm’s bottom line:
- Visible improvement in sales
- Ease of networking with loyal customers
- Cost-effective.
Pillar #1: Seek to Understand First, and then Be Understood
It’s an essential part of the successful content strategy. A company should be aware of the preferences, leanings, and dispositions of the clients prior to drafting content. A buyer persona is an incredible technique to gather information about the tastes and tendencies of the customers. So, before preparing content make sure you are fully aware of the types, problems, and attitudes of the audience. Conduct a Q&A session and brainstorm fully to get the complete understanding to turn leads into repeated customers. Following are the questions which would make it easier for you to conjure the end-results of creating and distributing client-focused contents:
- Who are my customers?
- Who are my current and potential customers?
- What values should I put into the contents to satisfy the
Better create buyer personas which have been discussed earlier. For instance, Mr. ABC who is 21 years old and studies in xyz high school is a favorite client. So, develop a content strategy by keeping the mental picture of the favorite client and problems which could hurdle the steady progress.
Pillar #2: It’s Time to Create Content
Start writing content before it gets too late or you run short of the ideas necessary to create the contents which could take the business of your enterprise to the next-level. Creating content isn’t a rocket science but it is an art and this art takes practice, passion, and professionalism. Instead of writing a piece of content at the drop of hat, make sure your available resources are in alignment with prerequisites which could ease up building of shareable and likable contents. Following are the things which you must undertake for the making of breathtaking blog posts, articles, press releases,and eBooks as an overall content marketing strategy:
- Create longer contents of 1000-3000 word length. It is true that lengthy contents are easily shareable and get lots of inbound links which could leverage SEO efforts.
- A text, slide, eBook or posts riddled with grammatical errors is the biggest turned off for the readers. Write carefully. In case, they can’t create stuff to reinforce your marketing plan, hire a content producer or essay writers to tell the story of your business on multiple-channels.
- Maintain content calendar and follow it religiously. Discipline and punctuality are the traits of the successful content marketers.
Pillar # 3: Promote Contentas Much as You Can
An un-marketed content is equally ineffective as uncreated one. Content marketing is the sum of two different words: Content + Marketing. With just well-written content, you can’t make much effect unless you aren’t marketing your contents across social media channels or elsewhere. In fact, an easily shareable content is most favorable for your marketing campaign; if your aim is to communicate the message of your brand successfully, then don’t leave any stone unturned in promoting it.
Social sharing is the easiest way to achieve search engine rankings, higher conversion rates, brand awareness and maximum inbounds links etc. These are the three best ways to promote contents online:
- Social Media Campaigns: Social media channels e.g. Twitter and Facebook are suitable for sharing blog posts and articles etc.
- Google Ad Words Campaigns: This strategy is helpful for retargeting abandoned visitors via e-Book and white papers.
- Email Marketing Campaigns: Email marketing is an effective tool when you want to share your new blog posts and eBooks to the clients who’re your email subscribers already. They are promoters and facilitate your promotion efforts.
Pillar # 4: Analyze and Measure your Progress
Creating and publishing content like crazy isn’t a solution at all. Writing blog posts, marketing them on social media and then never analyzing their effects is destructive for your marketing campaign. The more analytical you would be with your posts and contents, the better content you will be able to create for yourself and clients. Though, there are so many analytical tools to measure the effectiveness of your contents i.e. Google Ad Words, Scoop.it, Buffer and so much more. However, it’s indispensable for a content strategist to delve into the effectiveness of the contents.
Ask following questions about the success of content marketing strategy and it would be easier for you to analyze the usefulness of the posts or content you’ve developed for certain topic. For instance, you wrote a post titled ‘5 Ways to Get Affordable Assignment Help by Professional Service’. Measuring the page views, a number of times this post has been shared on social media and so much more will let give the room to improve your flaws and become better at content marketing.
Conclusion:
Understanding clients will make content strategists familiar with ins-and-outs of the products and services and it serves the real purpose of the responding well to the clients’ queries. Just planning and not creating enough content is also wastage of the time. Create quality contents for the clients and don’t forget to share on social media as it will assist in building brand reputation. In the end, keep analyzing the uniqueness of your contents to succeed at content marketing strategy.
Adison Alex is the seasonal content strategist and a full-time teacher. He loves to write about startup culture, innovation and entrepreneurship. He has written lots of articles and columns for prestigious websites and newspapers.