Content is the ‘Holy Grail’ of marketing. Any type of content marketing you are venturing at, be it through social media, or blogs or eBooks – you have to have a content marketing strategy. The content was, is, and will remain the king for any kind of marketing we do today. Without a great content that adds value, it is practically impossible to engage with your audience and create a buzz.
And as the Internet evolves, so changes the aspects and facets of content marketing. The strategy that you followed in the yesteryear might not click today. So you need to be constantly alert and stay abreast with the latest changes and the reorientations in the realm of content marketing.
While it may not be an official, documented strategy, you likely aren’t just producing content for content’s sake. Without great content, it is practically impossible to improve your reach online and engage with your audience. In this article, you’re going to learn ten simple-but-not-often-implemented ways in which you can optimize your content marketing campaign.
So how do you improve your content marketing strategy? Well, though it is not rocket science, improving your content marketing strategy does need certain calculated and meticulous efforts.
In today’s blog, we are going to focus on HOW is it done. That’s where we begin. Here are nine ways to make your content marketing strategy more intentional and more effective.
Let’s make that strategy even better.
1. Document your strategy.
To begin with, there should be a well-detailed strategy. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. It can just be a proof of your solid understanding of your content marketing goals and plans.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 53% of the most effective B2B content marketers have a documented strategy. However, it is really surprising that many have not also. Marketers who don’t document their strategy don’t have any idea what and why they are doing, and how it is going to drive value for their business campaign.
2. Meet With Your Team
A proper content marketing campaign needs a team of skilled people. It is never a one-man-show. Ensure that you meet with your team often and each of your team members is thorough and is on the same track with the purpose and future steps of the campaign. Most established and successful marketers ensure to meet with their team daily or weekly. If you seldom interact with your team, chances are there that important tasks might slip through the cracks.
3. Fill your content calendar with ideas
It’s definitely not an easy task to come up with interesting topics every day. But who can deny that fresh and interesting contents drive regular traffic? So what you can do is, keep track of the inspiring brands or content resources that give you quality content. Choose and pick the ideas that match with your priorities and start off with your own story.
4. Understand audience preferences
This happens to be one of the most pivotal points to remember. Ensure that you understand the preferences of your audience and create content according to that. And how you can do that? By simply analyzing the performance of your content across quantity and quality. Here quantity stands for the number of contents you publish. And quality stands for the average audience engagement per content. By these parameters, you could understand which content gets the most views and shares, and hence you can fine-tune your content marketing strategy.
5. Have A Goal For Each Campaign
Content marketing campaigns do have a certain goal. But what about the objective of your campaign? Every campaign must have a certain objective that contributes to the overall success of the campaign. It should be something you can measure in a specific time. Be realistic in your business goals. Measure and track your campaigns periodically.
6. Become more buyer-centric.
Make your content marketing strategy leaning more towards your buyers and target audience. Because understanding how your target audience and customers need to interact with you is the key. You need to track relevant metrics and have business goals. But just as you make your content more customer oriented, your marketing strategy should be made in the same way.
7. Use a consistent ROI calculation.
How do you know that your content marketing strategy is working? You may track the set goals and metrics of your content marketing strategy, but if you don’t have a provision to calculate and measure your marketing costs and revenues, you’ll never know if your efforts are worthwhile. Choose a steady calculation of your ROI and use it consistently.
8. Have A Marketing Plan
What’s the point if you don’t spread and distribute the content you create? Content marketing is not just about producing content; it is something beyond that. It is about having a plan to distribute it. Focus on the various distribution channels and how you can leverage them in the most optimum way.
9. Be Aware Of Google
No matter how many changes you make to your content marketing strategy, if you don’t pay heed to the changes Google makes every day, you are at a sheer loss. Keep a close watch on the latest changes and updates by Google and applying them to your strategy.
Because at the end of the day, if your content doesn’t conform to the standards of Google, it will affect your SEO rankings massively.
Of course, there is no one-size-fits-all template or formula for any marketing strategy to succeed. But yes, the nine tips and ideas we discussed till now are time-tested and proven to be effective. Hence applying these tips should help you to improve your content marketing campaign.
If you have any more tips or ideas to share, please feel free to share. We would love to include it in our next Blog post.