For the longest time in the history of online marketing, the catch phrase “content is king” is being thrown around so much so that it has made most digital marketers confused about the whole process. They are no longer sure on what works and what does not.
Creating great engaging content is not enough although it does gives a sense of achievement that yes, we are doing something and that we are creating something. But is that enough? What about the whole process of getting that content out in the open? What you need is readers who not only read the content that your team has created, but also share it on social media sites leading to an explosion of traffic and conversion.
So the million dollar question here is that how do you achieve this rare feat? Simple – by simplifying the whole process of creating, posting, marketing, and sharing.
What you need is a simple content strategy that is replicable and repeatable. For that, you need to understand your business, audience and goals. Here are some questions that you need to ask yourself and your team members:
Why
This is the first question. The “why” part will answer your business objective which is critical to know and understand, this is the reason behind everything that you are doing and hence, it is vital that you clearly define this part. There are six business objectives to choose from: branding, community development, customer service, public relations, and lead generation.
Who
Fantastic content is content that essentially answers questions and solves problems. This is what the readers are looking for even though they may not know it. If you satisfy readers, you satisfy Google and other search engines. First you need to identify your audience, understand how deep you need to go and begin to understand their specific needs and wants. You need to understand both quantitative demographics as well as qualitative psychographics.
You need to understand the arena and the business you are working in.
What
This is the moment when you are ready to develop and deploy content that is relevant and important to your readers. You now understand what your business objective is (why) and your target audience (who) and you are in the position to make the best call.
This is how you develop a solid and long term strategic framework to work with. With time, you may have to tweak it every now and then based on the feedback you receive and the changes that take place in the industry, but this is a salient start.
From this point onwards, you can now move on to other integral questions such as when as in how often you need to do this, where as in you need to this on which social platforms and whether you have to do this internally or externally and how as in how are you going to measure success and outcomes.
These are all crucial questions that you need to ask yourself and then you have to answer them. Sit tight with your content development team (if it is just one person, that is fine too) and find answers to each and every one of these questions. This will get you started in the right direction. Otherwise you are simply wasting resources such as time and money which can set you back several weeks or even months and years if you are not careful enough.
Once you have a winning formula in place, then you can increase productivity.