Content is a core component of any marketing strategy, however, it can become easy to fall into the same old patterns and churn out content that’s not really benefitting your business.
It’s important that you’re taking steps to regularly audit your content marketing strategy to ensure it’s regularly refreshed and working effectively to support your growing business with its key messages and objectives. These may change over time – and so should your strategy!
Here are 7 questions you can answer now to start refining and develop your content marketing strategy to ensure your content will help you to achieve success!
Who are your audience?
The most important question you need to be able to answer and continue answering is ‘who are our audience?’
You should be able to quickly summarise who your audience is. Who are you trying to reach and engage with your content? This is a key consideration that will shape the content you produce, the topics you address, the tone you use and how you share it.
What would you like your content to offer your audience?
This will play a big role in the type of content you produce. Once you understand who your audience is, you can begin to think about the type of content they will find interesting, engaging or beneficial. You could decide to offer educational information such as ‘how to’ guides and advice videos, or entertaining content such as humorous blog posts or photos. Decide on the key thing/s you are seeking to provide with your content.
How will you deliver your content?
Once you’ve decided on the ‘who’ and the ‘what’, it’s time to consider the ‘how’. How will your content be delivered? Is it through your website, a dedicated blog, email marketing, video, social media or a podcast? There are numerous options available but it’s a good idea to pick just a few and focus your efforts.
How will your content support both the audience and your objectives?
Although you might like to write about a certain topic or film a funny video for you website, it’s important that you consider how your content will achieve specific goals. It’s vital that your content will serve the needs of the company and the needs of the consumer. Your content should always be designed in a way that compliments your brand and drives the audience towards a specific goal. However, it’s important to note that engaging the audience for a specific action shouldn’t be done in a sales-led manner and definitely should not get in the way of the user’s experience and enjoyment of the content.
What is your tone?
Your copy, language, voice and style should be consistent. You could develop your own business ‘style guide’ that can be followed by all team members who create content. This can help you to develop your business voice, keep you on-brand, maintain a level of professionalism but also enable you to express your personality. Developing your own tone will help your audience to easily identify and recognise your content against competitors’.
What is the next step?
The consumer is on your webpage and they’ve enjoyed your content. What’s next? It’s important to consider where the content will drive the user. You don’t want to lose them as soon as they’re finished with the content. You should look to move the user into your sales funnel or at least keep their attention. This could be through encouraging them to subscribe to your e-newsletter, follow you on social media or complete a purchase. How will you include a call to action within your content? It’s important to address how each piece of content will do this in a non-invasive manner.
What do we already have?
The previous 6 tips will help you to ensure your content marketing is crafted for your business moving forward but it’s important to go back and look over what you may already have created and shared with the world. Does it need to be removed? Can it be repurposed? How can you update it? You can also take this time to look at the content that is missing on your site. Identify weaknesses that already exist so you can target your content needs and strategy moving forward.
These 7 tips are just some of the questions you can ask yourself to help evaluate the type of content you are producing and sharing as well as what you should be creating. Understanding what you’d like to achieve with your content will give you a clear strategy to keep moving forward with!