Devising a content marketing strategy can feel overwhelming, but you’re going to need one if you plan to run an omnichannel experience to capitalize on the more than 4.7 billion Internet users in the world. Each one is a potential customer. You can reach them if you’re willing to be explosive and follow these innovative steps to building a content strategy that works!
1. Identify Your Audience
The first step in any digital marketing plan is to know whom you’d like to reach. This is just as true in content marketing like paid advertising. In fact, the relationship you have with your audience should be even more intimate.
That’s because you are speaking to specific pain points instead of keywords. You’re getting into the psyche of your audience and guiding them toward solutions to their problems.
One great way of identifying your audience is to look at what they’re searching for. Examine it through the frequently asked questions that come up when you run relevant keyword searches.
Look at popular products they’re buying on Amazon. Read reviews, specifically the two- and three-star reviews. These often indicate where a product was lacking, which points the way to opportunities that you can build content around.
2. Determine Content Methods
The whole thrust of content marketing is customer acquisition. You want to convert your audience into subscribers, customers, and evangelists for your brand.
To do that, you’ll need to know how these audience members most want to be reached. Is it through blog posts? Videos and podcasts?
You might try infographics, images, recipes, and fact sheets. Ideally, your content strategy will be a mix of everything, and you can easily create that content once you have one cornerstone piece that you can repurpose and draw from with regularity.
That said, there are certain things you’re going to be better at than others. Don’t fight it. Lean into it.
3. Create Assessments
Your call to action, or CTA, is a powerful device. It should accompany every piece of content you create. It’s your way of pulling your audience down the rabbit hole.
The only way that you’ll know whether your CTA is working is if you have some form of assessment in place. Assessments are basically measurements on whether your calls to action are working.
Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics, and virtually every content platform has a way that you can measure your results. The ultimate result is revenue, but all “conversions” are useful, whether they’re sales transactions or email signups.
Your assessments should make it easy to see if what you’re doing is working. They also should be given a workout. The way to do this is to test new pieces of content regularly to see what is working the best.
4. Find Your Voice
Your voice is more than just the social media channel that you choose to post the most on, though that will certainly have an influence. After all, social networks have their own unique ways of standing out. Instagram uses images, Facebook a mix of visuals and text, Twitter 140-280 characters, and TikTok 60-second-or shorter videos.
By all means, tailor your voice to whichever platforms you’re using. Don’t get it confused, though. Your voice is not your social media presence.
It’s the overall vibe of your content. It’s the wording, the inflection, the visual style. It’s the little idiosyncrasies that make your content feel as if it was created by you and not just some generic copywriter.
5. And Your Competitive Advantage
A quick word of advice before getting into the competitive advantage: always leave room in your marketing budget to be a customer of your competitors. It will help you understand what they’re doing right and what they’re leaving you opportunities to improve on what they’re doing or chart a new course.
Your competitive advantage is what makes you different from everyone else. In a world where it seems like originality is impossible, the one thing you can control is you. What makes you unique?
Is it how you treat your audience? Perhaps you’ve figured out a smarter way to do something that others aren’t talking about or a better pricing standard? Maybe it’s a mixture of all these things, but whatever it is, make sure that you identify it.
6. Sew It Into Your Content
Once you know your audience, your approach, platforms, and competitive advantage, it’s time to bake it into your content. Do yourself a favor.
Before you ever post anything, move down the checklist to ensure you’re not leaving anything out. Also, use this moment to evaluate how effectively you’re doing everything. This is the time to make tweaks and improvements and protect your reputation.
7. Dare to Be Different
Influencer marketing is an increasingly popular way to earn a living. Remarkably, it’s a billion-dollar industry that didn’t even exist 20 years ago. Now people can say, “I want to be an influencer,” and they can get started before they’re even out of high school.
Take the notorious Paul brothers, for instance. Logan and Jake Paul got their start playing pranks or stunts that won them millions of followers along the way. They got there daring to be different, a quality that would eventually lead them to the most bizarre boxing careers the world has ever known.
Love them or hate them, and there are plenty who do both, the Paul brothers have been successful by finding ways to stand out. Fortunately, you don’t have to become public enemy number one to emulate this.
8. Plan Your Calendar
You’ve got a lot going on by now. With any luck, you’re also planning to post on multiple social media channels and your website. This requires a written and organized plan.
The best way to do it is to make a content calendar, either by hand or computer. Know what you’ll be posting each day, but don’t be afraid to deviate if an opportunity presents itself.
It’s mainly there for you to have a blueprint you can follow instead of starting each day unsure of what to do. Above all, it will help you follow one of the most important steps of your content marketing strategy: publishing frequently!
Follow Your Content Marketing Strategy Faithfully
By now, you know what your explosive content marketing strategy should look like. It should have a thorough understanding of the audience, platforms, personal vision/expertise, and competitive advantage. It should be bold, organized, and visible every single day.
Once your strategy is a go, it’s time to ignite the fuse and reap the benefits. Need help getting started? Contact Pure Digital Marketing today to see how these strategies can work for you!
