Content marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) go together. You can be sure that high value content marketing ranks high in SEO and gives your SERP (search engine results page) a boost. This is enough reason for you to develop a well-thought-out content marketing plan, while being aware of mistakes that can hurt your marketing plan.
Heres how to advance your content marketing campaign with a solid content marketing plan:
1. Define your purpose – Ask yourself what you want to achieve in content marketing. Are you after generating leads, improving brand loyalty, or customer retention? Perhaps you want to increase your customers’ brand awareness, or establish a brand. Identify your need before you come up with your plan. As a start, you can work on two or three goals when you create your content marketing plan.
2. Set priorities – Before coming up with a content marketing plan, set your priorities. The Content Marketing Institute lists priorities with creating more engaging content considered by creators as a top priority. Other priorities listed are better understanding of what content is effective and what is not, finding better ways to repurpose content, creating visual content and better understanding of the audience. It’s best to list five priorities and tailor your plan in addressing each one.
3. Know your organizational goals – Your content marketing plan is a means of achieving the organizations goal, and not a separate business activity. It should, therefore, integrate and synchronize with the overall organizational goal. Most content marketers view lead generation as a top organizational goal. You may consider other goals, such as increasing sales, lead nurturing, brand awareness, customer engagement, customer loyalty and retention, and developing customer brand advocates. To help you align your content and achieve your organizational goals, come up with short-term content marketing goals.
4. Know your audience – Your content is useless if not tailored to your specific audience’s needs and preferences. Ask yourself what channels are often used by your clients, what their interests are, and what their needs are.
5. Choose your type of content – After getting to know your audience, determine your strengths. Knowing what youre good at can determine the type of content to use. Examples are webinars, infographics, custom illustrations, and interviews. You can come up with more content types based on your skills and knowledge. And whatever you choose for your content type, make it a point to come up with original and fresh content that stays relevant over time.
6. Research trends – Keep yourself abreast of changes in the marketing trend. To give you an idea of a marketing trend, Impact Branding and Design (2018) claims 71% of marketers prefer to use broad keywords to capture leads. In contrast, Demand Gen Report says 86% or consumers prefer interactive and visual content on demand. You’ll seldom go wrong if you keep yourself updated on the latest trends and changes by following the top content marketers.
7. Identify challenges – Youll inevitably encounter challenges in content marketing. The biggest challenge is in producing engaging content. Another common challenge is coming up with effective content. Identifying your biggest challenge will help you come up with the appropriate strategy.
8. Optimize your content for search – Internet users locate content on the Web by searching for words and phrases. Content, therefore, that’s keyword-optimized drives traffic to your site. Care, however, should be taken in the use of keywords in your content. Keyword usage is not just figuring out what keyword to use, but how it’s used in the content. For instance, keyword stuffing is ineffective in Google search.
9. Determine your budget – You can’t have a content marketing plan without a budget. Ask yourself how much you’re willing to spend for creating, marketing, and promoting your content. You could set your budget based on your priorities.
10. Map out your content – Among your target audience are different buyer personas. The problem is how to deliver the appropriate type of content to what you consider as the ideal type of people, and at what time. Consider also the buying cycle of your customers as you’ll need this data to map out your content correctly.