Content marketing is used by many websites to generate more traffic, conversions, and profits to their business. However, the problem that may business and website owners have is not having a strong and solid content marketing strategy that delivers the results.The reason for this is generally because many don’t know where to begin to build a strong content marketing strategy. If you’re in this predicament, the following is a guide on the top tips on how you can create a powerful content marketing strategy that can drive the results you’re after. Let’s have a look now at the key areas that you should consider.

Know more about: What is Content Marketing and Free Tools

Best Practices To Create A Powerful Content Marketing Strategy

1. Work Out The Purpose or Goal Of Your Strategy

While some may believe that the goal or purpose of a content marketing strategy is to improve website traffic, this is only half of it. A content marketing strategy also interlinks with the sales, conversions, and brand awareness. Anything you write is classed as content, so you need to make sure the content has a goal or purpose to ensure you convince your readership to continue on with your business. To understand the goal you want to achieve you need to ask yourself a few questions.

• What are you looking to achieve? Build a readership, online presence, subscriptions, sales, leads, or sign ups?
• What’s the best way to use content to help you achieve this goal? Inform people, offer free things, deliver quality blogs etc.
• What channels are you able to use to promote your content? Video marketing, blogging, podcasts, social media etc.

By having a clear objective, you can then use this as the foundation to create your solid content marketing strategy.

2. Analyse Your Audience

One of the hardest parts of marketing is knowing your audience. To know your audience, you need to analyse them. To do this you will need to ask yourself these questions:

• Who are you looking to target with your content?
• What problems, questions, concerns are you solving for them?
• What can you offer them that your competitors can’t?
• What message do you want to convey to your audience?

When you’ve asked yourself these questions you can then work on segmenting your audience down for better targeting of your content strategy. For audience segmentation, you will need to work out each trait in the following categories.

The next thing you need to do is narrow down your audience further once the main categories are complete.

When you’ve narrowed your audience down you can then work on your content marketing strategy to target them better.

3. Create High Quality Content

In order for your content marketing strategy to thrive you need to create content that sits at a high standard. High quality content includes, but isn’t limited to:

• Content without spelling or grammar mistakes. It should read well.
• Content that’s informative, well written and is interesting.
• Content that’s answers questions posed by the reader.
• The use of a catchy title. For example, ‘Sell Your Home For More Now’ isn’t as intriguing as ‘Best Kept Secrets Of Selling Your Home For A Million Dollars’
• Visually appealing with the use of high quality, free to use images. Sites such as Shutterstock, iStock, and Pixabay are just some that’s available. Please note some sites require you to pay for the images.
• The use of proper white space to balance out the text. To do this simply add subheadings, paragraphing bullet points etc. so that the reader can have a break in their reading. Otherwise they will become fatigued if it’s a bulk piece of text.
• Content that’s original, unique, well researched and not duplicated from other websites on the internet.

High quality content is the key to creating a powerful marketing strategy. After all it’s the foundation of a solid content marketing strategy.

4. Be Consistent With Publishing

Being consistent in how you write and when you publish your content will determine whether or not your strategy will work. You can push awesome content, however if you don’t be consistent with the publishing, it will cause your readership to lose interest. Instead when it comes to publishing it’s a good idea to upload your posts:

• The same time each day.
• The same day each week.
• The same amount per week.

While you may want to upload one post each day, 5 or 7 days a week, it’s not necessary as your readers will become overwhelmed with content being thrown at them. Instead it’s a good idea to upload 1 to 2 blogs a week. This will give your readers something interesting to read, ponder, and help to build anticipation for your next weekly blog.

5. Back Up The Facts

When creating content, it’s also important that any facts be linked to the original source of information. Linking to credible sources allows your content to become more authentic and also helps to build your website’s credibility as an authority figure in your industry. Things that should be linked to credible sources include:

• Quotes from experts or references.
• Percentage figures; 70% of internet users…
• Studies mentioned in the article.
• Any other facts that require the need to show where they originated from.

Backing up the facts can help your content provide more value to your readership.

6. Create Content That’s Evergreen

Evergreen content is content that’s referred to as consistently searched and timeless. Examples of non-evergreen content include specific year special occasions such as Christmas 2015, Thanksgiving 2012, or content that is about a specific news event. Evergreen content is designed to be used years after it was written and still give value. Evergreen content can be seen in a number of different forms including:

• Tutorials
• How-To articles
• Lists of resources
• Definition lists

These types of article will live months to years beyond their creation, making them a great source for new generations to go back to.

7. Share Your Content, Then Re-Share

When creating content, you also need to get it out in the public so they know about it. One way to do this is to share your content on popular social media platforms. Another way is to get guest posting privileges and opportunities on other websites that are looking for new content. By sharing content with other websites that are interested, you have the ability to not only build brand awareness, but also help the prospective website to build their overall website rankings as well. Some special media platforms that you can share content on include:

• Facebook
• Google+
• Twitter
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• + so many more.

When sharing your content, don’t be afraid to re-share it at another time, a week or two later with readers that may have missed it the first time. Not all your readers are going to be from the same time zone.

Conclusion

When building a powerful content marketing strategy, it’s all about the time, effort and research that goes into it. It’s not an easy task but by pushing it as much as you can you’ll see the results in no time at all. So, are you ready to build a strong and powerful content marketing strategy?

Article is contributed by Aaron, co-founder of Studio 56.