It is no secret that Marketing is a crucial driver in every business… and one of the key elements of your marketing plan is your content. Content Marketing isn’t something that only the ‘big companies’ do anymore, it is an important part of your strategy regardless of your business size or budget. In fact, the smaller your business and the less marketing dollars you spend, the more important your content becomes.
So what exactly is Content Marketing?
According to the Content Marketing Institute, Content marketing is:
a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.
The key word here is valuable. In this day and age people get to choose what they want to watch, read, and listen to, and you need to make sure your content is engaging, and has value to them, to make people what to consume it.
Let’s face it, expertise wins business. If people see you as the expert if your field they are far more likely to engage with you. And this is where content marketing comes in… its about sharing your expertise freely and with as wide an audience as possible.
So, what are the 5 elements of a Content Marketing Plan?
1.Identify types of content
There are many types of content that you can share thoughout the year, that will be of interest to people and help harness and share the knowledge in your organization. It’s good to have a mix of different types, some examples being:
- Blogs about topics that your business is expert in (ie Finance / Latest Interior design trends for a designer / Plumbing problems / Latest recipes for a Butcher)
- Educational items that can be downloaded for free, such as E-Books and Checklists.
- Videos – these could be educational videos, behind the scenes of an event, client testimonials or showing off new products or your latest work
- Inspirational quotes and images (Aspirational and make people feel good)
- Case studies from your previous work or clients (proof of success)
2. Setup a Content Calendar
Once you have an idea of what types of content you want to share then map it out on an excel spreadsheet or content calendar. This will ensure you have a mix of topics across the months and your audience is getting consistent and valuable content from you, reinforcing your expertise in your field and growing your share of voice in the market.
3. Create great content – consistently.
Creating the actual content can be done in-house, or it can be outsourced, depending on your resources and capabilities. You may have someone in the business that can write your articles, or it is very common for business to have a copywriter do it for them.
You can Download our free guide here on how to create great content yourself:
4. Hosting your content
It’s always a good idea to host your content on your website as the home or hub. (for example, rather than hosting it on social media). Your website is your online store front, and it’s where all your content should live. If you are posting a lot of videos you may need to host the file separately on youtube or Vimeo, and then embed the video on your site, to prevent the videos slowing your site down too much.
5. Sharing your content
This is an important part of the plan! How are you going to share all this great content that you have created?
- EDM (Electronic Direct Mailout) – you should be sending your clients and database list regular EDM’s to keep them up to date, and these should include all your content.
- Social Media – Your potential customers are on social media so it makes sense that you should be too. Whether you use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or all of them, be sure to share your content on there regularly (as well as sharing others’ content as well)
- SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) – whether it is through optimizing your website with keywords and links, or paying google for adwords campaigns, you need people to be finding your website so they can read your content.
If you could use help with Planning your Marketing contact us at Action Centre below:
Comments are closed.
