Everyone has heard of content marketing, and most know how crucial it is in order to build strong and long-lasting relationships with your target audience.
However, not many understand how to effectively execute a successful content marketing strategy that results in unwavering loyalty and a distinctive edge over your competitors.
That is why it is so important that you learn content marketing from a source that lives and breathes content and one that understands the art of storytelling.
In the below guide, you will discover not only how to learn content marketing but also how to use machine learning content marketing technology to revolutionise your content marketing strategy.
What is content marketing?
If you are still highly dependent on more traditional forms of marketing, you should be aware that these are becoming less and less effective each day. As a successful marketer, you need to be using the latest and most innovative marketing techniques that meet the needs of today’s highly demanding and time-poor consumer.
Content marketing is one of these techniques.
A content marketing strategy works on the premise that, instead of directly pitching your products or services, you are providing useful and relevant content to your customers, offering them effective solutions to their problems.
From utilising the best link building practices, understanding local SEO, to using guest blogging, there are so many crucial aspects to creating a solid content marketing campaign that we can help you with.
How to develop a content marketing strategy
Now that you understand the importance of content marketing for your business in 2020 and beyond, your next step is to start developing the right content marketing strategy for your brand.
1. Identify your goals
If you do not have a clear vision of what it is that you want to achieve from your content marketing strategy, then you will struggle to create an effective one.
Common goals include:
- Increased revenue
- More high-quality leads
- Driving more traffic to your site
- Gaining influence
- SEO success
- Reduced marketing costs
- Increased engagement on social media
2. Set KPI’s
Arguably the simplest way to keep track of your success and ensure that you are able to achieve your goals is to set KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators).
You should include all aspects of your content marketing strategy in your KPI’s including email marketing, social media marketing, and Google local optimisation.
3. Create buyer personas
Buyer personas (also known as customer avatars) describe your ideal customer and will help you to target your content in a more effective way.
The best customer avatar should include information on:
- Their goals & values
- Their challenges & pain points
- Their sources of information
- Their behavioural motivators
4. Assess your current content & identify gaps
If you are already producing content in one way or another, you should first assess how your current content is working for you. Determine if your content is being shared, if you are getting inbound links to your content, and what your search engine ranking is for the keywords associated with that piece of content.
With this completed, you will now be able to identify content gaps. These might include:
- Missing keywords
- Questions that your audience are asking that you are not answering
- Content that could be ranking higher
During this step, you should also utilise machine learning content marketing to help you analyse data, create insights and build a personalised strategy, which will result in increased customer engagement and make your content easier to find on SERPs.
5. Plan your content
Now comes the exciting part, planning your content. Consistency is key when it comes to content, and you will need to know exactly when you want to publish your content on each of the platforms that you want to use.
A content calendar is the simplest way to schedule your content and ensure that you do not disappoint your customers.
Ensuring that you have a constant flow of creative and relevant content ideas is also crucial when discovering how to learn content marketing.
Ways in which you can ensure your content remains fresh and exciting include:
- Check out your competitor’s content
- Follow industry news sites
- Use professional content writing services
- Use keyword research
6. Create your content
It may seem like it has taken a while to get here, as half the battle with a content marketing strategy is in the planning. However, you are now ready to actually create your content.
Although there are lots of different types of content that you can choose to create, you should never underestimate the power of the written word. Written content is still the most popular form of content, and when you add an image, the success of your piece will skyrocket.
You can also transform your written content into a video to maximise your reach and improve overall engagement.
7. Optimise your content
Even if SEO is not your main focus when creating content, you should still use a keyword optimisation tool such as Google Keyword Planner to determine which keywords will help to improve your ranking.
You should make sure that your content is free from spelling and grammatical errors, that it is “skimmable” and that you include any call to actions within the content and at the end of the piece.
8. Promote your content
There are so many different ways that you can successfully promote your content so that you can ensure all your hard work does not go to waste. These include:
- Guest blogging
- Utilising paid advertising
- Creating snippets for social media sharing
- Turning your content into a video
- Adding a link to your new content from your most popular archived content
- Using email marketing
- Publishing photo teasers on Instagram
- Sharing your content on your Tumblr feed
Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of why content marketing is so crucial, plus how you can create an effective and highly successful content marketing strategy.
However, if you feel like you need a little help with either content creation or content promotion, get in touch with our team here today.
Additional Related Articles
- https://www.clickintelligence.co.uk/why-clickbait-journalism-may-not-be-the-answer/
- https://www.clickintelligence.co.uk/inbound-marketing-and-why-you-should-be-using-it-for-your-business/
- https://www.clickintelligence.co.uk/penguin-has-updated-should-your-content-marketing-strategy-change/
- https://www.clickintelligence.co.uk/how-to-bring-your-content-marketing-to-life/
- https://www.clickintelligence.co.uk/content-marketing-trends-2019/
- https://www.clickintelligence.co.uk/5-reasons-why-your-content-marketing-strategy-is-failing/
- https://www.clickintelligence.co.uk/inbound-marketing-understanding-the-basics/
- https://www.clickintelligence.co.uk/inbound-marketing-vs-outbound-marketing/
