400 billion dollars is the cost of poor business writing, imagine! Content is important and today more than ever. Why? It is because the reader’s behavior is different than a couple of years ago. Today everything is online and a huge percentage of online traffic is through mobile devices. What does this mean? It means that the average human attention span has shrunk enormously. What can you do about it? It is simple, the first step is to have an online presence, if you do not have it yet then you should seriously consider having a digital transformation. The second step and most crucial one is to have a successful content marketing strategy. Yes, traditional marketing is becoming less and less effective.
What is content marketing? It is creating and sharing online materials, like social media posts and blogs, and videos, to attract and retain a clearly defined audience to drive profitable customer action.
Setting a content marketing strategy may seem simple and easy but on the contrary, it is critical, especially with so much competition online. You need to develop something unique to set yourself apart from your competitors, so if you are looking for long-term success, careful planning is necessary.
Many would ask, especially marketers if there is a documented strategy to help them with the process of setting their company’s content marketing strategy, but surprisingly in 2021, 57% of content marketers still say they do not have a documented content strategy.
What are the benefits of creating a content strategy? Having a documented content strategy can help you define exactly who you are and what you do. In other words, it clarifies your brand’s message. It also helps you build credibility and know exactly what to do and when to do it, to maintain consistency.
All the above leads us to the main purpose of our article, how to create a content marketing strategy for your own business in 2021? Below we will list 7 key steps you need to take into consideration while developing your strategy.
1-Determine your goals
The most important step is to answer the “why”, why are you doing content marketing? Is it to create leads? Build relationships? Improve your customers’ experiences? By clearly setting down what you aim to achieve at the beginning of the process, you will have a solid framework to build on.
2-Know your audience
Knowing your audience is as important as determining your goals because it will help you assess the types of content that will make your strategy succeed and deliver the best results. Think about demographics, including age groups, education, interests, and incomes.
3-Examine your competitors
It is a great idea to analyze your competitors’ content. Look at what they are doing, if you find areas where your competitors have content that’s lacking, you can fill in the gaps and provide better value to your target market.
4-Choose the type of content and distribution channels
Your Goal and audience will help you determine the type of content you will create and the channels you will distribute it on. Consider articles, blog content, videos, social media content, photography, or a combination of all.
Keep in mind that professional copywriting helps accelerate your business’s journey to success.
5-Establish a content calendar
This step is crucial for ensuring the consistency of your business messaging. Set out what content you want to release on what days.
6-Choose your team
It is action time. This is the point where you will turn your ideas into reality. You need to determine “who will do what” to improve the workflow of your content creation process.
7-Take SEO into consideration
It is very useful to create your content around specific keywords that are relevant to your audience, this will help you drive traffic to your website and higher your SEO ranking.
