Who Needs Content?

You Do Silly.

Content should always have a purpose.  It should enforce or educate about your brand – and answer the needs of your customers, helping you to grow.

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience – and ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Great, so where do you begin?

You will need to create a content marketing strategy to develop your audience.  Figure out what you need to accomplish, who your target audience is, and what kind of content/topics will help inform, entertain and engage them in a meaningful way.

Develop your content plan.  How will you execute your strategy?  What tactics will you use?  You will need a marketing plan that specifically relates to content.  It should include key topic areas you will cover (keeping keywords in mind for SEO), what types of content you will create, timing, channel and specific calls to action you may want to include. Remember, quality, up-to-date content (that users want to read!) will be rewarded by search engines.

Content calendar.  AKA Keeping yourself accountable.  If you don’t plan and block out your execution, you are never going to do it.  Create a solid plan with content relevant to different times of year (involving your business, holidays, etc) and make sure you stick to it.  Commit to frequency, it is the only way your content will gain traction with followers.

Copywriting/posting.  Secrets of the trade (sssshhhh!) – you can stockpile your content and set it to post whenever you want!  Write your posts for the whole year if you like, then set up a Hootsuite account and set them to post whenever you like.  There is no reason to let yourself fall behind on content.  If you can’t seem to fit it in on a regular basis, set aside a day or two a month/quarter/year whatever works for you and jam it out.

Need help, have any questions?  Contact me!