Creating great content is a laborious and complicated process. You want your content to provide value for the reader while also helping you meet your marketing goals.
If you’re assembling a content marketing strategy that will work for your brand, you don’t want to skip steps or leave things half-done. Let’s go over some of the most important areas and elements of content strategy that can help you find a repeatable content creation structure and supercharge your next growth marketing campaign.
It may be changing, but content marketing remains more relevant than ever before. It is one of the best ways to inform and educate audiences. It is also a great way to build brand awareness and establish authority through thought leadership. Even credibility, developed through a good SEO strategy, benefits from (and often hinges on) quality content.
If content marketers want to use this powerful marketing medium to reach a target audience, though, they have to think twice about their content marketing objectives. Past content marketing strategies are quickly becoming dated.
Things like advances with AI and Google SEO updates are shifting content marketing objectives. Many of the types of content marketing that a content marketer uses will remain the same. However, the way they’re used and how they fit into content strategy make a huge difference in whether a campaign features effective content marketing or not.
One way to maintain high-performing content is to remember the most important areas of content marketing so that you can address these every time you create an asset for your marketing efforts.
Let’s consider six of the most important content marketing objectives to focus on. These specifically pertain to content marketing and the content creation process.
If you’re fleshing out your content development plans, here are half a dozen key areas you want to have in mind as you prepare to generate a library of content marketing resources.
You may want to dive into the creation process, but make sure you have a rock-solid content marketing strategy in place first. This functions as your plan of action.
A good content strategy aligns your resources with your goals and ensures that everything you make has a purpose. You want this in place first so that you can use it as a roadmap to keep you on track as you go along.
Once you have your strategy in place, it’s time to make the actual content. Don’t treat this step lightly. You may have a personal vision for your content, but how does it fit into your larger strategy?
What is the purpose of each content type? If it’s written content like a blog post, what part of the funnel does it help? If it’s a social media post, does it reflect your industry authority? If it’s a podcast, is it brimming with unique educational insights? As you write, illustrate, and record valuable content, make sure each item has a clear purpose.
Most pieces of content will focus on a single distribution channel. A “how-to” article, for instance, will live on your company blog. However, that doesn’t mean you can only promote it in that space.
You can also distribute your content through various channels. From ads and social media to emails and newsletters, look for ways to push new blog posts in front of more faces. This gives it a better chance of seeing content marketing success right out of the gate.
You can also repurpose content across different customer-facing channels. Repurposing might feel a lot like distribution, and they are similar. But there is a key difference.
Repurposing existing content represents an extended creative cycle. In it, you repackage content in different formats (such as summarizing a blog idea or quote into a social post). This indirectly extends the lifespan and reach of each piece of content you create.
Once you’ve strategized, created, distributed, and repurposed your content, it’s time to analyze its impact. You can use tools like Google Analytics and native social media or newsletter analytics dashboards to see how well your content performs. Consider things like organic search engine traffic, link clicks, time spent on page, and other conversion metrics.
The goal here is two-fold. First, you want to see what content performs well. Second, you want to identify what content falls flat on its face.
Once you’ve analyzed your content, it’s time to optimize it. (Pro tip: this can take time. Search engine optimization, for instance, can take half a year to start generating organic traffic. Be patient!)
You can optimize both lagging and engaging content. For the latter, consider ways you can integrate CTAs and otherwise improve on content that is already buzzing. For the former, look for ways to update calls-to-action, links, format, keywords, technical SEO, and other factors to get things moving in the right direction.
The digital marketing world is a vast and intricate place. Content is just one part of that world, but it remains an essential one.
If you want your brand’s content to make a difference in your business goals, you may want to consider working with a content marketing agency. They can use the elements listed above to create a clear, repeatable, and successful content marketing strategy so that every piece of content is a comprehensive contributor to your larger marketing efforts.
