How to develop an effective content marketing strategy:- www.deekpay.com

In today's fast-paced and competitive online world, it is crucial for online businesses to come up with better and newer ways to attract more visitors to their websites, retain and convert those visitors, and improve their website page rankings. Content marketing is one of the tools that can help you achieve these goals. Not only is it a cost-effective marketing strategy, but it is also a very important branch of digital marketing. Look around and you will find it everywhere on social media, adverts, announcements, emails, blogs, search engines and more. It is the art of storytelling.

Why is it so important?

The points listed below are just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone can use content marketing to:

- Provide relevant information sought by clients

- Building a community of loyal prospects

- Improve SEO and thus Google rankings

- Increased brand visibility and awareness

- Positioning your organisation as an industry expert and leader

- Add brand value to your product or service

Developing a content marketing strategy

target setting

Start by clarifying what your purpose is in creating a content marketing plan. Ask yourself why you are creating it? Who is it for? What will be the return to your business? Also, understand what your customers are looking for? Answering these questions will make your marketing strategy stronger and more relevant. Once you're clear on what you actually want to achieve with your content, it becomes easier to measure success based on which metrics.

explore

A lot of research goes behind a strong content marketing plan. Understanding your target audience (TA) is crucial, as you will plan, create and market your strategy based on the TA you choose. However, your research should not be limited to this, but should also include:

- Target Audience: Based on the following categorisation, you can determine what and who you are looking for and how best to target them.

- Online marketplaces: What sites are your audience viewing? How long do they stay? What types of content are your competitors marketing to users? What are people consuming? What are they sharing? What's most popular online? Where are the gaps?

- Keyword Search : SEO is one of the most important parts of online content marketing. What are the most frequently used keywords in the market? Which of the keywords on the keyword list will best suit your business for maximum search engine optimisation?

Brainstorming: picking the best ideas

Once you're clear about your content marketing agenda and who you're selling to, it's time to come up with a series of fresh, creative ideas. Consider using online tools such as Feedly (a popular RSS feed for tracking popular trending topics and ideas), Buzzsumo (to discover hot ideas), headline generators, and more. Another way to identify specific ideas or topics is to follow a content funnel. This funnel consists of four stages:

- Discovery: In the first stage of the funnel, you are targeting people who are just starting to look for content related to a business concept or idea.

- Consider: at this stage, your audience is trying to understand the values of your content and other content.

- Intention: Here they have arrived at a decision. "I want and choose this" stage.

- Purchase: This is the completion stage. They finalise the action of buying the content.

Often, you may think or assume that your audience will like certain content, but the results these sites come up with reveal actual searches that may not exactly match your assumptions.

Select Content Type

There are many types of content you can create and include in your marketing strategy, listed below are the types and their channels.

Content Management System (CMS)

If you put a lot of effort into producing relevant content, then make sure you can maintain and manage it systematically. Create an editorial calendar that

- Dates: your timeline, what do you need to be done by when? (ideas, reports, information, etc.)

- Topic: decide on the topic you will be writing your blog post about. This can be decided based on keyword searches on search engines or current news. You can decide on a monthly, weekly or fortnightly topic to get things rolling.

- Campaign: Once the theme has been decided, delve deeper and finalise your campaign. What is the final message you wish to convey?

- What: Now is the time to unleash creativity! With a delivery date and a central idea or blueprint, it's much easier to get the creative juices flowing.

- Tags: add alternative tags for images and learn how to optimise them. Meta tags are not visible in search, but they are present in the code. These tags help Google crawlers understand their relevance, which helps your blog score and rank high.

- Preferred channels: once the content is ready, publish it on your own terms. Share it on your personal social media profiles or company profiles. The more you can increase its visibility, the more readers it will gain.

content creation

Now, after gathering all the information from the first 5 steps, the possibilities for creating unique content seem endless with a mix of blog posts, infographics, videos and more. This doesn't mean that the first attempt is final. You need to be open to receiving ideas, feedback and adjusting your strategy. Also, remember that any written content you create should effectively communicate to your audience.

After you have successfully created and are completely satisfied with your content, go ahead and publish and distribute it through the channels of your choice.

analysed

You need to know which content is working and which needs to be improved or discontinued. Also, check if you are achieving your goals? Is your message getting through to your audience in the way you want it to? And so on. Analysing and evaluating content and its impact on the market is a daily task.

It's very subjective and audience-sensitive, and what may be seen as evergreen content today may not be viewed that way in a few months. Flexibility and change are key. Keeping the above steps in mind, content marketing does take a lot of time, creative effort and organisation. But it's worth the effort because you can use it to your advantage and it doesn't come with a hefty price tag.