10 Steps To Build An Effective Content Marketing Strategy in 2019

Content Marketing is the step-by-step methodology by which you research, create and promote information of value in order to attract new prospects and retain loyal customers. It is one of the best ways to reach your audience and influence them, educate new users, increase revenue and build your brand. Below are 10 steps to build a content marketing strategy for 2019 that will help you accomplish the above goals.

1. Define Why:
One of the very first things you need to clarify before you begin to write any content is the purpose behind creating the content? Is it to increase the visibility of your brand by writing plenty of articles about your products or services? Is it to establish credibility by informing and instructing the target audience about topics of their concern? Or is it to get more subscribers, signups, conversions or sales? You need to clarify the goal of your content marketing endeavour right at the beginning. And then you weave the tactics around this central goal.

2. Understanding Your Audience:
You need to be clear about who is going to read your content and take action. It is the audience who is going to decide how you are going to write the content. So you need to empathize your audience, understand their situation and then address their problems. You need to directly talk to your audience to find out what their needs, fears, questions and anxieties are all about, and the kind of solutions they are looking for. And once you begin writing, you should be open to feedbacks, assessments and their reviews of your products and services. Thus, it is a cyclical process of writing and refining your content to reflect the changing needs of your audience.

3. Update your Content:
Re-evaluation should be a part and parcel of your content marketing strategy. The content you created built around keywords relevant to your business may need to be presented in a newer style and in a more engaging fashion for today’s audience. This could involve presentation in an entirely new format as well. Then there is content that you should write than can trigger a conversation on a popular topic related to your business. Plus you can also capitalize on events related to your industry and build content around it.

4. Write Content around Keywords:
Once have decided the topic for your content and the domain which you are going to address, you need to figure out the kind of questions your prospects are asking. In other words, you need to start thinking about the key-words and the key-phrases that are being most searched for by your target audience. There are plenty of keyword analysis tools that will tell you the most searched key-phrases in your domain. These are the questions that your prospective customers are asking. You should now write content around these key-phrases that will satisfy your prospects needs and your business goals.

5. Make great Blogs:
Blogs are one of the easiest ways to get your message out and also answer your customers concerns. Start with an outline, add the introduction and follow it up with the what, when, where and how of the topic. Your post should have a main thesis statement – contained in the headline – which will be backed by information, statistics and research. You can cite references and link out to studies to further add credibility to your post. Don’t forget to add an image to increase scroll through and click through rates.

6. Videos:
Research shows that videos give you the highest ROI and social media generates 12 times more shares than text and video combined. You can make awesome videos without a studio and lighting, just using your phone. Your videos should have a script, must be short, convey the message, and a story that hooks the user.

7. Podcast:
Today podcasts are one of the hottest forms of content that is being consumed. Given how busy people are today, they prefer content that can be consumed passively, while carrying out other tasks. Once again, pick up a topic in your domain and first create a good script for your talks how. You can even interview one of your satisfied customers and get them to talk about your product. This is likely to inspire greater trust and lead to more buying decisions.

8. Social Media:
Social Media should obviously be a part of your content marketing strategy and in today’s world it is impossible to separate content marketing from social media marketing. Social media content should be able to garner attention and induce people to share the content. Hence content designed for should be shareable and offer great value. Videos and still images do well than textual matter in and you have to keep this in mind when crafting your strategy across platforms.

9. Find the Best Content Channels:
It is important to figure out where your audience is online and offline and refactor content to reach them. If your audience is online, you need to identify the specific channels (based on demographics) which give the best ROI. Your audience may be responsive to certain types of content, but not to others. Using web-analytic tools you can get an insight into their behaviour and modify the content-type and also content-format to get the best results.

10. Know Your Position:
Now that you have accomplished everything, you need to monitor your current position, given all the content out there and the tactics you have deployed. You need to know how each content is performing with respect to others and how they are helping your business – the goals met, the business done, and customer satisfaction levels and other parameters. You need to audit your content category wise, assess their contribution and identify the gaps. You should also compare your competitor’s content with yours and verify how well they are performing.