Beginning your client's content marketing strategy can seem intimidating, but creating a successful content plan is actually pretty simple. A content strategy can, in fact, be one of the most straightforward ways to market your client's company. So, get to know their company, follow these steps, and you will be quickly on your way to generating traffic and leads for their website.
1. Establish your goals.
Typically, these are going to be something along the lines of:
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Increasing website traffic
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Generating more sales leads
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Branding (creating a brand identity)
2. Determine the audience and understand what they want.
Who are your client's customers and what do they want? If this isn't something you're entirely sure of offhand, conduct surveys and focus groups with the people that you are marketing to. What do they want to know from you? That is what you'll be gearing your content marketing towards.
3. Establish a brand identity.
Create company hashtags and use those in your social media content. Use your logo, colors, signature typeface, etc. in all of your visual content. Determine the voice that you want your content to have--uplifting, informative, comical, etc.
4. Utilize multiple platforms.
Create videos, podcasts, images, blog posts, and tweets. By utilizing each of these different media, you'll be sending your message out to more and more potential customers.
5. Create an editorial calendar.
An editorial calendar is what you will use to organize your content plan. Create a calendar for each media platform you will be using--YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.--and decide which days you will be posting to which platform(s). You will then work on creating your content for each platform.
For example, let's say you decide to post a video to YouTube every Tuesday, relevant blog posts and news articles to Facebook four times each week, and a daily image to Instagram detailing life at the company. You will create your content and then insert each item into the calendar ahead of time so you know what will be posted on what day.
6. Employ keywords and hashtags.
Determine which words and hashtags are the most searched by your target audience and use them in all of your social media and blog posts. This will help potential customers to find your content, eventually leading them back to your website, potentially leading to a new sale.
7. Monitor your results.
Your content plan is eventually going to change and adapt. Pay attention to which media perform better than others, then focus more on those. Some media may not be worth the investment you're making and you may decide to scrap those ventures. Maybe you'll bring on new media platforms. Content marketing is such an easy strategy to change and adapt and still gain good results from, so simply continue to monitor your client's revenue.
To learn more, check out our white paper, "What is a Digital Content Strategy? And Why You Need One."
