Much the same way you wouldn’t throw together a television commercial without a strategy and budget, you should take the time to develop and then implement a content marketing strategy.
To learn more about the types of services we offer for content marketing strategy and implementation click here.
To view all of the McKeating Solutions services, click here.
Types of Content
The content in “content marketing” exists in various forms. Most frequently we identify with the written content that we most often see in blogs, articles, press releases, etc. But video and photos also play an active role in content marketing.
Whatever types of content you create, they should reflect your brand and respect the attention of your customers. All content should have a purpose. Often the purpose is educational, to inform or educate your potential customers about topics relevant to their lives and your products/services.
Let’s take tea for example. You won’t only talk about your tea. You might create content about how to store tea, how to best serve tea, tea rituals from around the world and the history of tea. None of this may directly sell your products, but they create a dialogue between you and your potential and current customers that benefits them based on their interests.
Other times, you might create content that motivates. Think of Marie Kondo. Few actually offer her services, but companies across the world, and a wide array of industries, are using her quotes, and the theme of tidying up to engage with their target audiences.
And some times, levity, content that entertains is a great way to further establish a relationship with and connect with your targets.
How do you know what content your customers want?
By getting to know your customers, researching them, their unique needs, and what drives them, you can start to identify the types of content they want to read. This is a multifaceted research phase that includes but is not limited to: customer surveys, focus groups, keyword research, competitor analysis, casual conversations with your current customers, etc.
After you’ve conducted this research, you can break the content topics into categories. It’s common for content marketing strategies to have 3, 5, even 7 categories of content that is meaningful to their customers.
How to form these categories:
Your categories will be based on the types of products and services you offer, your industry or market. If we take the tea example from earlier, you might have the following: Tea and Tea Pairings, Tea Rituals and Travel Destinations, the History of Tea, Customer Testimonials, and Health Benefits of Tea.
Once you establish these categories, you can start to draft a list of blog posts for each. By creating a list, you can plan a calendar of posts and begin drafting them ahead of their scheduled publication to save time and energy.
Posting Schedule – How often should you post?
Every content marketing strategy is a bit different. The recommended posting frequency or schedule is based on the needs of the clients, and the amount of time and resources available.
While some agencies might set a specific number of posts per week or month, McKeating Solutions works with our clients to determine the best frequency based on their categories, their needs, and their budget.
A commonly excepted minimum is one blog per month. Google likes to crawl websites monthly looking for updates and new content. Like an important visitor, you want to have something new to present them with when they do come crawling.
Writing the posts is a big part of your content marketing strategy. After all, it took a lot of planning, researching, and writing to get to this point. But another aspect of the strategy which should not be forgotten is disseminating the content.
Social media, email campaigns, and link building strategies are great ways to share the content organically with your target audience. Additionally, you can combine the push and the pull types of marketing by promoting your content across these social media platforms and in combination with the use of Google Adwords.
Hire McKeating Solutions to Create and Implement Your Content Marketing Strategy
If it sounds like creating a content marketing strategy is a lot of work, it most certainly can be. If you go it alone, there is a wealth of articles online that you can read and leverage – Or you can choose to hire McKeating Solutions