There are 5 key elements to effective content planning: 1) defining the purpose or "why" of the content, 2) understanding the target audience, 3) selecting appropriate platforms to share the content, 4) determining the types of content to be created, and 5) establishing budgets and investments for creating and distributing the content. Proper content planning is important for guiding a brand's messaging and allowing smart decisions, but should be a guide rather than a limitation.
A presentation illustrating the value of mobile and video marketing -- and how they can be leveraged for content marketing. This deck includes a case study on how we generated $4 million in revenue using this core method for an information product.
A presentation illustrating the value of mobile and video marketing -- and how they can be leveraged for content marketing. This deck includes a case study on how we generated $4 million in revenue using this core method for an information product.
Digital [un]Marketing: Recalibrating PerspectivesRey Baguio
Unmarketing digital is one effective approach for marketers and brands that are focused on making an impact to their customers and audience. This is done by being relevant and having an 'audience first' approach.
Developing a plan on how your brand or company will capture the attention from the right people is very crucial.
Having a great product or service will fail if it doesn't get the attention from the proper audience.
Core Web Vitals SEO Workshop - improve your performance [pdf]Peter Mead
Core Web Vitals to improve your website performance for better SEO results with CWV.
CWV Topics include:
- Understanding the latest Core Web Vitals including the significance of LCP, INP and CLS + their impact on SEO
- Optimisation techniques from our experts on how to improve your CWV on platforms like WordPress and WP Engine
- The impact of user experience and SEO
Digital [un]Marketing: Recalibrating PerspectivesRey Baguio
Unmarketing digital is one effective approach for marketers and brands that are focused on making an impact to their customers and audience. This is done by being relevant and having an 'audience first' approach.
Developing a plan on how your brand or company will capture the attention from the right people is very crucial.
Having a great product or service will fail if it doesn't get the attention from the proper audience.
Core Web Vitals SEO Workshop - improve your performance [pdf]Peter Mead
Core Web Vitals to improve your website performance for better SEO results with CWV.
CWV Topics include:
- Understanding the latest Core Web Vitals including the significance of LCP, INP and CLS + their impact on SEO
- Optimisation techniques from our experts on how to improve your CWV on platforms like WordPress and WP Engine
- The impact of user experience and SEO
AI-Powered Personalization: Principles, Use Cases, and Its Impact on CROVWO
In today’s era of AI, personalization is more than just a trend—it’s a fundamental strategy that unlocks numerous opportunities.
When done effectively, personalization builds trust, loyalty, and satisfaction among your users—key factors for business success. However, relying solely on AI capabilities isn’t enough. You need to anchor your approach in solid principles, understand your users’ context, and master the art of persuasion.
Join us as Sarjak Patel and Naitry Saggu from 3rd Eye Consulting unveil a transformative framework. This approach seamlessly integrates your unique context, consumer insights, and conversion goals, paving the way for unparalleled success in personalization.
SEO as the Backbone of Digital MarketingFelipe Bazon
In this talk Felipe Bazon will share how him and his team at Hedgehog Digital share our journey of making C-Levels alike, specially CMOS realize that SEO is the backbone of digital marketing by showing how SEO can contribute to brand awareness, reputation and authority and above all how to use SEO to create more robust global marketing strategies.
How to Run Landing Page Tests On and Off Paid Social PlatformsVWO
Join us for an exclusive webinar featuring Mariate, Alexandra and Nima where we will unveil a comprehensive blueprint for crafting a successful paid media strategy focused on landing page testing.With escalating costs in paid advertising, understanding how to maximize each visitor’s experience is crucial for retention and conversion.
This session will dive into the methodologies for executing and analyzing landing page tests within paid social channels, offering a blend of theoretical knowledge and practical insights.
The Pearmill team will guide you through the nuances of setting up and managing landing page experiments on paid social platforms. You will learn about the critical rules to follow, the structure of effective tests, optimal conversion duration and budget allocation.
The session will also cover data analysis techniques and criteria for graduating landing pages.
In the second part of the webinar, Pearmill will explore the use of A/B testing platforms. Discover common pitfalls to avoid in A/B testing and gain insights into analyzing A/B tests results effectively.
Monthly Social Media News Update May 2024Andy Lambert
TL;DR. These are the three themes that stood out to us over the course of last month.
1️⃣ Social media is becoming increasingly significant for brand discovery. Marketers are now understanding the impact of social and budgets are shifting accordingly.
2️⃣ Instagram’s new algorithm and latest guidance will help us maintain organic growth. Instagram continues to evolve, but Reels remains the most crucial tool for growth.
3️⃣ Collaboration will help us unlock growth. Who we work with will define how fast we grow. Meta continues to evolve their Creator Marketplace and now TikTok are beginning to push ‘collabs’ more too.
First Things First: Building and Effective Marketing Strategy
Too many companies (and marketers) jump straight into activation planning without formalizing a marketing strategy. It may seem tedious, but analyzing the mindset of your targeted audiences and identifying the messaging points most likely to resonate with them is time well spent. That process is also a great opportunity for marketers to collaborate with sales leaders and account managers on a galvanized go-to-market approach. I’ll walk you through the methods and tools we use with our clients to ensure campaign success.
Key Takeaways:
-Recognize the critical role of strategy in marketing
-Learn our approach for building an actionable, effective marketing strategy
-Receive templates and guides for developing a marketing strategy
The Secret to Engaging Modern Consumers: Journey Mapping and Personalization
In today's digital landscape, understanding the customer's journey and delivering personalized experiences are paramount. This masterclass delves into the art of consumer journey mapping, a powerful technique that visualizes the entire customer experience across touchpoints. Attendees will learn how to create detailed journey maps, identify pain points, and uncover opportunities for optimization. The presentation also explores personalization strategies that leverage data and technology to tailor content, products, and experiences to individual customers. From real-time personalization to predictive analytics, attendees will gain insights into cutting-edge approaches that drive engagement and loyalty.
Key Takeaways:
Current consumer landscape; Steps to mapping an effective consumer journey; Understanding the value of personalization; Integrating mapping and personalization for success; Brands that are getting It right!; Best Practices; Future Trends
It's another new era of digital and marketers are faced with making big bets on their digital strategy. If you are looking at modernizing your tech stack to support your digital evolution, there are a few can't miss (often overlooked) areas that should be part of every conversation. We'll cover setting your vision, avoiding siloes, adding a democratized approach to data strategy, localization, creating critical governance requirements and more. Attendees will walk away with actions they can take into initiatives they are running today and consider for the future.
5 big bets to drive growth in 2024 without one additional marketing dollar AND how to adapt to the biggest shifting eCommerce trend- AI.
1) Romance Your Customers - Retention
2) ‘Alternative’ Lead Gen - Advocacy
3) The Beautiful Basics - Conversion Rate Optimization
4) Land that Bottom Line - Profitability
5) Roll the Dice - New Business Models
Mastering Local SEO for Service Businesses in the AI Era is tailored specifically for local service providers like plumbers, dentists, and others seeking to dominate their local search landscape. This session delves into leveraging AI advancements to enhance your online visibility and search rankings through the Content Factory model, designed for creating high-impact, SEO-driven content. Discover the Dollar-a-Day advertising strategy, a cost-effective approach to boost your local SEO efforts and attract more customers with minimal investment. Gain practical insights on optimizing your online presence to meet the specific needs of local service seekers, ensuring your business not only appears but stands out in local searches. This concise, action-oriented workshop is your roadmap to navigating the complexities of digital marketing in the AI age, driving more leads, conversions, and ultimately, success for your local service business.
Key Takeaways:
Embrace AI for Local SEO: Learn to harness the power of AI technologies to optimize your website and content for local search. Understand the pivotal role AI plays in analyzing search trends and consumer behavior, enabling you to tailor your SEO strategies to meet the specific demands of your target local audience. Leverage the Content Factory Model: Discover the step-by-step process of creating SEO-optimized content at scale. This approach ensures a steady stream of high-quality content that engages local customers and boosts your search rankings. Get an action guide on implementing this model, complete with templates and scheduling strategies to maintain a consistent online presence. Maximize ROI with Dollar-a-Day Advertising: Dive into the cost-effective Dollar-a-Day advertising strategy that amplifies your visibility in local searches without breaking the bank. Learn how to strategically allocate your budget across platforms to target potential local customers effectively. The session includes an action guide on setting up, monitoring, and optimizing your ad campaigns to ensure maximum impact with minimal investment.
The session includes a brief history of the evolution of search before diving into the roles technology, content, and links play in developing a powerful SEO strategy in a world of Generative AI and social search. Discover how to optimize for TikTok searches, Google's Gemini, and Search Generative Experience while developing a powerful arsenal of tools and templates to help maximize the effectiveness of your SEO initiatives.
Key Takeaways:
Understand how search engines work
Be able to find out where your users search
Know what is required for each discipline of SEO
Feel confident creating an SEO Plan
Confidently measure SEO performance
Mastering Multi-Touchpoint Content Strategy: Navigate Fragmented User JourneysSearch Engine Journal
Digital platforms are constantly multiplying, and with that, user engagement is becoming more intricate and fragmented.
So how do you effectively navigate distributing and tailoring your content across these various touchpoints?
Watch this webinar as we dive into the evolving landscape of content strategy tailored for today's fragmented user journeys. Understanding how to deliver your content to your users is more crucial than ever, and we’ll provide actionable tips for navigating these intricate challenges.
You’ll learn:
- How today’s users engage with content across various channels and devices.
- The latest methodologies for identifying and addressing content gaps to keep your content strategy proactive and relevant.
- What digital shelf space is and how your content strategy needs to pivot.
With Wayne Cichanski, we’ll explore innovative strategies to map out and meet the diverse needs of your audience, ensuring every piece of content resonates and connects, regardless of where or how it is consumed.
When most people in the industry talk about online or digital reputation management, what they're really saying is Google search and PPC. And it's usually reactive, left dealing with the aftermath of negative information published somewhere online. That's outdated. It leaves executives, organizations and other high-profile individuals at a high risk of a digital reputation attack that spans channels and tactics. But the tools needed to safeguard against an attack are more cybersecurity-oriented than most marketing and communications professionals can manage. Business leaders Leaders grasp the importance; 83% of executives place reputation in their top five areas of risk, yet only 23% are confident in their ability to address it. To succeed in 2024 and beyond, you need to turn online reputation on its axis and think like an attacker.
Key Takeaways:
- New framework for examining and safeguarding an online reputation
- Tools and techniques to keep you a step ahead
- Practical examples that demonstrate when to act, how to act and how to recover
Digital marketing is the art and science of promoting products or services using digital channels to reach and engage with potential customers. It encompasses a wide range of online tactics and strategies aimed at increasing brand visibility, driving website traffic, generating leads, and ultimately, converting those leads into customers.
https://nidmindia.com/
Short video marketing has sweeped the nation and is the fastest way to build an online brand on social media in 2024. In this session you will learn:- What is short video marketing- Which platforms work best for your business- Content strategies that are on brand for your business- How to sell organically without paying for ads.
How to Use AI to Write a High-Quality Article that Ranksminatamang0021
In the world of content creation, many AI bloggers have drifted away from their original vision, resulting in low-quality articles that search engines overlook. Don't let that happen to you! Join us to discover how to leverage AI tools effectively to craft high-quality content that not only captures your audience's attention but also ranks well on search engines.
Disclaimer: Some of the prompts mentioned here are the examples of Matt Diggity. Please use it as reference and make your own custom prompts.
The importance of Content for your business or brand
Planning out your plan should only act as a guide and not as a limitation.
Planning will not assure success for your brand but lets you make clear and smart decisions.
The Roadmap
Laying the groundwork for a strong content marketing campaign or strategy is a lot like preparing for a roadtrip. You wouldn’t get into the car without filling the tank, packing some snacks, loading your iPod, and marking the route on your map. Similarly, you shouldn’t jump into a content campaign without building a solid plan. In order to build a relationship with your audience and create a community it is important to spend some time putting a solid plan into place. Behind every content marketing strategy should be a well-thought-out content roadmap.
What happens when you fail to put good content planning into action? Things quickly spiral out of control – as you wait for late content to arrive projects get held up and budgets are exhausted. As Gather Content’s e-book notes, this quickly leads to rushed (and poor quality) content, uncoordinated design decisions, and ultimately a bad overall experience for your readers.
To avoid losing your way or taking an unexpected detour, make sure you’ve got the right tools and know-how in place so you can begin planning your content marketing campaign. We’ve broken down the content planning process into simple steps so that you and your team are equipped to pull off a professional and high quality content marketing campaign.
Step 1: Choose a Destination
The first step of any road trip or content marketing campaign is to decide where you’re going. In other words, what do you want to accomplish? What are your goals? What is the end result? Are you looking to drive sales, create awareness, generate leads, develop a community, or promote yourself as a thought leader? You may fall under one or several of these options. If your list of goals gets long, try to establish one primary goal and list the secondary goals you will need to fulfill in order to achieve it. A great way to test the viability of your goals is to describe how they will benefit your brand or business.
Like any road trip you need to leave room for spontaneity. Your goals might change or evolve over the course of the campaign and in response to metrics that you collect along the way. QuickSprout’s handy guide to content planning reminds us that this stage sometimes feels like guesswork, and that’s okay – you need to test your ideas to see what works.
If you’re updating an existing content marketing campaign, this is a good place to conduct a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Use this step as an opportunity to redefine your goals based on your resources, budget, and lessons learned from your previous campaigns or strategies.
Once you’ve identified your goals, spend some time thinking about a realistic time frame. Don’t forget, building a relationship with your audience takes time and requires a significant time commitment. It’s also important to think about how you intend to measure these goals. Are you measuring your success in profits? Click-throughs? Downloads? Sign ups? These are known as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and shouldn’t be confused with vanity metrics. Vanity metrics can be misleading; for example, if your desired result is to drive sales, don’t try to measure progress towards this goal in page views.
Once you establish a solid set of objectives, a realistic time frame, and an accurate means of measurement, you’re ready to move onto the next step – your audience.Consider:
What is your goal? What is the desired outcome of this content marketing campaign?What is a realistic time frame to achieve these goals?How will you measure whether you’ve met your goals? Are these KPIs or vanity metrics?
Step 2: Find Your Travel Companion
Just like content curation, content planning only works if you can identify your target audience. You wouldn’t go on a roadtrip with a friend before finding out if they have a license and can read a map (or at least operate a GPS). Similarly, you shouldn’t start producing content without giving some thought to who you’d like on the receiving end.
According to Moz, you must “keep your reader as close to you as possible in every decision you make,” so its important to figure out and understand who this might be right from the get-go. What demographics would you like to attract? What topics interest them? What medium is most appealing to this niche? Knowing who your audience is, what they’re looking for, and where they can be found will help you target them effectively.
Moz suggests surveying your existing site visitors or customers in order to create ‘typical reader’ profiles. Building customer personas will help you get a better sense of who you’re speaking to and what they’re looking for. To develop a customer persona QuickSprout recommends paying close attention the demographics (age, location, gender, income, education, marital status, occupation) and psychographics (morals, attitudes, values, interests, hobbies, lifestyles) of your ideal audience member(s). Hubspot also has a very informative infographic that walks you through the process of building a buyer persona. You’ll likely want to create several personas in order to capture your entire audience.
Consider:
Who is your audience? What are they interested in? What are they looking for?What mediums and social channels do they gravitate to?Are there enough people in this group to meet your initial goals?
Step 3: Choose Your Mode of Transportation
Are you traveling in a luxury convertible, by motorcycle, or in a kitschy Volkswagen bus? Before you hit the road you’ll have to choose a mode of transportation. Likewise, before you create content you will need to consider not only what to create but how you’ll distribute it. Once you know your audience you can begin to think about how you can best target them. Different niches gravitate to different mediums; some groups seek and share information on Twitter, while others are drawn to blogs, YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram.
Knowing your audience and where they look for content will also help you to identify the gaps in the current content offerings. Identifying how other companies cater to a specific demographic can help you understand what sectors are being underserved and what information hasn’t been covered yet. There might be an opportunity to create a unique piece of content for your target demographics!
If you’re new to content marketing then start with the basics – tweeting, blog posts, Instagram posts. However, once you get a feel for what works and who you’re talking to, you can start getting creative. Branch out into webinars, workshops, tutorials, or newsletters. If you’re in need of some inspiration, Hubspot has created an infographic listing a number of content formats. Use these to brainstorm new ways to reach your various audience personas. The graphic includes everything from ebooks, FAQs, and whitepapers to podcasts, webinars, and online games.
Consider:
What social channels are your audience personas most active on?What kind of content are they looking for?Who is currently serving your audience? Via which channels? With what content?Are there any gaps in the current content that you can fill? Are there opportunities to cater to this demographic in a way that has never been done before?
Step 4: Make Some Snacks, Choose a Playlist, and Fill Up the Gas Tank
A road trip requires at least 3 different types of fuel – some gasoline for the car, some food for the driver, and some music to keep you going. Similarly, Hootsuite believes that a strong content marketing strategy should follow the Rule of Thirds. This rule suggests that ⅓ of your social content should promote your business and convert readers, ⅓ should share ideas and stories from thought leaders in the industry, and ⅓ should build a personal relationship with your audience and facilitate personal interactions.
Don’t underestimate how long it takes to create a good piece of content! Research, writing, editing, and publishing are all time intensive. If you want to be at the top of your game and produce high-quality content there’s no getting around this. Establish a team with clear roles (writer, editor, designer, publisher) so that each individual knows their position in the overall creation process. To help streamline this process consider creating a digital style guide before you get going to establish universal guidelines and make sure content creation is smooth and consistent. “Planning might seem too mechanical in nature to play a role in creativity,” explains Stephen Zorio, “but it’s essential, especially in the world of content creation.”
It’s not enough to publish great content. If you want to remain relevant in this fast-paced online environment you have to publish regularly. The key to a successful content plan is a realistic publication schedule. Decide how often you’ll publish content, and to which channels. You should also set up a similar schedule for content promotion – it is equally important to establish how and where you’ll get the word out about your new whitepaper, infographic, or blog post. To make decisions about frequency and promotion think about what will help fulfill your original goal and what is realistic for the size of your team.
Consider:
Am I following the Rule of Thirds?Does each team member have a clearly defined role?Have you established a style guide?What is a realistic content schedule? Do I have the resources to pull it off?
Step 5: Buy Insurance
The last thing you want on a road trip is for an accident or mechanical malfunction to bring all your planning and fun to a grinding halt. In order to make sure your content planning doesn’t meet a similar fate it might be worthwhile to invest in some insurance. This might be hiring the right people, outsourcing material so that you don’t fall behind schedule, creating an editorial calendar, or investing in software to help organize and streamline the content planning process.
There are a number of software platforms that can help marketers with the planning, execution, and measurement of a content campaign. Here at ScribbleLive we’re launching Projects, a tool for marketers and publishers who need to plan content strategies and measure performance across channels against their goals to prove business results. Projects allows marketers to plan content experiences, distribute them across channels, and promote material to drive audiences back to that material while simultaneously tracking conversions. Simply put, we’re helping marketers create a strong content plan and measure its success over time.
Consider:
Is this content plan realistic? How can I scale back or step it up?Do you have a content calendar in place to track the type of content, where it’s published, and with what frequency?Will purchasing software help you to manage and measure your content plan?
Remember to always revert back to your original goal to keep you focused. It’s great to make pit stops or short detours along the way, but ultimately the goal is to reach your destination!
Possible goals?
- drive sales, create awareness, generate leads, develop a community, promote oneself as thought leader
- set primary and secondary goals
Determine how viable your goals are by asking ‘how’ it will benefit your brand or business
Goals may change or evolve along the way to allow spontaneity or relevance
- this is always where you test your ideas to see if they work
- in updating your content marketing campaign, you may conduct SWOT(strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis
- redefine your goals based on your resources, budget, and lessons learned from your previous campaigns or strategies
How do you measure these goals?
- KPI’s vs. Vanity Metrics
- establish a solid set of objectives, a realistic time frame, and an accurate means of measurement
Consider:
What is your goal? What is the desired outcome of this content marketing campaign?
What is a realistic time frame to achieve these goals?
How will you measure whether you’ve met your goals? Are these KPIs or vanity metrics?
Possible goals?
- drive sales, create awareness, generate leads, develop a community, promote oneself as thought leader
- set primary and secondary goals
Determine how viable your goals are by asking ‘how’ it will benefit your brand or business
Goals may change or evolve along the way to allow spontaneity or relevance
- this is always where you test your ideas to see if they work
- in updating your content marketing campaign, you may conduct SWOT(strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis
- redefine your goals based on your resources, budget, and lessons learned from your previous campaigns or strategies
How do you measure these goals?
- KPI’s vs. Vanity Metrics
- establish a solid set of objectives, a realistic time frame, and an accurate means of measurement
Consider:
What is your goal? What is the desired outcome of this content marketing campaign?
What is a realistic time frame to achieve these goals?
How will you measure whether you’ve met your goals? Are these KPIs or vanity metrics?
Content Planning only works if you can identify your target audience
Be crazy over your target audience more than your product/service.
Content Planning only works if you can identify your target audience
Be crazy over your target audience more than your product/service.
Find that which makes you and your brand special.
Even if you are selling the same products or services to that of your competitors, you are unique in other ways.
“The Suki” mentality.
Customers will know if you really care for them or if you just care about making a sale.
Selling is not bad.
But before you give the ‘right hook’, give your audience some ‘jabs’ first so they will be receptive to your right hooks.
The Roadmap
Laying the groundwork for a strong content marketing campaign or strategy is a lot like preparing for a roadtrip. You wouldn’t get into the car without filling the tank, packing some snacks, loading your iPod, and marking the route on your map. Similarly, you shouldn’t jump into a content campaign without building a solid plan. In order to build a relationship with your audience and create a community it is important to spend some time putting a solid plan into place. Behind every content marketing strategy should be a well-thought-out content roadmap.
What happens when you fail to put good content planning into action? Things quickly spiral out of control – as you wait for late content to arrive projects get held up and budgets are exhausted. As Gather Content’s e-book notes, this quickly leads to rushed (and poor quality) content, uncoordinated design decisions, and ultimately a bad overall experience for your readers.
To avoid losing your way or taking an unexpected detour, make sure you’ve got the right tools and know-how in place so you can begin planning your content marketing campaign. We’ve broken down the content planning process into simple steps so that you and your team are equipped to pull off a professional and high quality content marketing campaign.
Step 1: Choose a Destination
The first step of any road trip or content marketing campaign is to decide where you’re going. In other words, what do you want to accomplish? What are your goals? What is the end result? Are you looking to drive sales, create awareness, generate leads, develop a community, or promote yourself as a thought leader? You may fall under one or several of these options. If your list of goals gets long, try to establish one primary goal and list the secondary goals you will need to fulfill in order to achieve it. A great way to test the viability of your goals is to describe how they will benefit your brand or business.
Like any road trip you need to leave room for spontaneity. Your goals might change or evolve over the course of the campaign and in response to metrics that you collect along the way. QuickSprout’s handy guide to content planning reminds us that this stage sometimes feels like guesswork, and that’s okay – you need to test your ideas to see what works.
If you’re updating an existing content marketing campaign, this is a good place to conduct a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Use this step as an opportunity to redefine your goals based on your resources, budget, and lessons learned from your previous campaigns or strategies.
Once you’ve identified your goals, spend some time thinking about a realistic time frame. Don’t forget, building a relationship with your audience takes time and requires a significant time commitment. It’s also important to think about how you intend to measure these goals. Are you measuring your success in profits? Click-throughs? Downloads? Sign ups? These are known as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and shouldn’t be confused with vanity metrics. Vanity metrics can be misleading; for example, if your desired result is to drive sales, don’t try to measure progress towards this goal in page views.
Once you establish a solid set of objectives, a realistic time frame, and an accurate means of measurement, you’re ready to move onto the next step – your audience.Consider:
What is your goal? What is the desired outcome of this content marketing campaign?What is a realistic time frame to achieve these goals?How will you measure whether you’ve met your goals? Are these KPIs or vanity metrics?
Step 2: Find Your Travel Companion
Just like content curation, content planning only works if you can identify your target audience. You wouldn’t go on a roadtrip with a friend before finding out if they have a license and can read a map (or at least operate a GPS). Similarly, you shouldn’t start producing content without giving some thought to who you’d like on the receiving end.
According to Moz, you must “keep your reader as close to you as possible in every decision you make,” so its important to figure out and understand who this might be right from the get-go. What demographics would you like to attract? What topics interest them? What medium is most appealing to this niche? Knowing who your audience is, what they’re looking for, and where they can be found will help you target them effectively.
Moz suggests surveying your existing site visitors or customers in order to create ‘typical reader’ profiles. Building customer personas will help you get a better sense of who you’re speaking to and what they’re looking for. To develop a customer persona QuickSprout recommends paying close attention the demographics (age, location, gender, income, education, marital status, occupation) and psychographics (morals, attitudes, values, interests, hobbies, lifestyles) of your ideal audience member(s). Hubspot also has a very informative infographic that walks you through the process of building a buyer persona. You’ll likely want to create several personas in order to capture your entire audience.
Consider:
Who is your audience? What are they interested in? What are they looking for?What mediums and social channels do they gravitate to?Are there enough people in this group to meet your initial goals?
Step 3: Choose Your Mode of Transportation
Are you traveling in a luxury convertible, by motorcycle, or in a kitschy Volkswagen bus? Before you hit the road you’ll have to choose a mode of transportation. Likewise, before you create content you will need to consider not only what to create but how you’ll distribute it. Once you know your audience you can begin to think about how you can best target them. Different niches gravitate to different mediums; some groups seek and share information on Twitter, while others are drawn to blogs, YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram.
Knowing your audience and where they look for content will also help you to identify the gaps in the current content offerings. Identifying how other companies cater to a specific demographic can help you understand what sectors are being underserved and what information hasn’t been covered yet. There might be an opportunity to create a unique piece of content for your target demographics!
If you’re new to content marketing then start with the basics – tweeting, blog posts, Instagram posts. However, once you get a feel for what works and who you’re talking to, you can start getting creative. Branch out into webinars, workshops, tutorials, or newsletters. If you’re in need of some inspiration, Hubspot has created an infographic listing a number of content formats. Use these to brainstorm new ways to reach your various audience personas. The graphic includes everything from ebooks, FAQs, and whitepapers to podcasts, webinars, and online games.
Consider:
What social channels are your audience personas most active on?What kind of content are they looking for?Who is currently serving your audience? Via which channels? With what content?Are there any gaps in the current content that you can fill? Are there opportunities to cater to this demographic in a way that has never been done before?
Step 4: Make Some Snacks, Choose a Playlist, and Fill Up the Gas Tank
A road trip requires at least 3 different types of fuel – some gasoline for the car, some food for the driver, and some music to keep you going. Similarly, Hootsuite believes that a strong content marketing strategy should follow the Rule of Thirds. This rule suggests that ⅓ of your social content should promote your business and convert readers, ⅓ should share ideas and stories from thought leaders in the industry, and ⅓ should build a personal relationship with your audience and facilitate personal interactions.
Don’t underestimate how long it takes to create a good piece of content! Research, writing, editing, and publishing are all time intensive. If you want to be at the top of your game and produce high-quality content there’s no getting around this. Establish a team with clear roles (writer, editor, designer, publisher) so that each individual knows their position in the overall creation process. To help streamline this process consider creating a digital style guide before you get going to establish universal guidelines and make sure content creation is smooth and consistent. “Planning might seem too mechanical in nature to play a role in creativity,” explains Stephen Zorio, “but it’s essential, especially in the world of content creation.”
It’s not enough to publish great content. If you want to remain relevant in this fast-paced online environment you have to publish regularly. The key to a successful content plan is a realistic publication schedule. Decide how often you’ll publish content, and to which channels. You should also set up a similar schedule for content promotion – it is equally important to establish how and where you’ll get the word out about your new whitepaper, infographic, or blog post. To make decisions about frequency and promotion think about what will help fulfill your original goal and what is realistic for the size of your team.
Consider:
Am I following the Rule of Thirds?Does each team member have a clearly defined role?Have you established a style guide?What is a realistic content schedule? Do I have the resources to pull it off?
Step 5: Buy Insurance
The last thing you want on a road trip is for an accident or mechanical malfunction to bring all your planning and fun to a grinding halt. In order to make sure your content planning doesn’t meet a similar fate it might be worthwhile to invest in some insurance. This might be hiring the right people, outsourcing material so that you don’t fall behind schedule, creating an editorial calendar, or investing in software to help organize and streamline the content planning process.
There are a number of software platforms that can help marketers with the planning, execution, and measurement of a content campaign. Here at ScribbleLive we’re launching Projects, a tool for marketers and publishers who need to plan content strategies and measure performance across channels against their goals to prove business results. Projects allows marketers to plan content experiences, distribute them across channels, and promote material to drive audiences back to that material while simultaneously tracking conversions. Simply put, we’re helping marketers create a strong content plan and measure its success over time.
Consider:
Is this content plan realistic? How can I scale back or step it up?Do you have a content calendar in place to track the type of content, where it’s published, and with what frequency?Will purchasing software help you to manage and measure your content plan?
Remember to always revert back to your original goal to keep you focused. It’s great to make pit stops or short detours along the way, but ultimately the goal is to reach your destination!