Successful online marketing is about more than creating a Facebook page or writing a business blog. Brands need to engage with the right customers online through an effective online content marketing strategy.
Content marketing incorporates all forms of content that directly or indirectly promote your business, brand, product, or service. If you’re just beginning your content marketing efforts, I can help you create a content marketing strategy, identify content that will keep your customers coming back, create that content, distribute it online, and measure the results, all while providing guidance throughout the process.
Content Marketing Analysis
A Content Marketing Strategy Analysis collects all the data about your industry, competitors, business, products, services, brand, consumers, budget, and goals. Once complete, you can objectively analyze where your business currently is and in which direction you want it to go. The data from this analysis will help you create your Content Marketing Strategic Plan.
1. Current Business Environment
Identify the current micro- and macro-environments of your industry and business.
2. Mission and Positioning Statements
Identify your brand’s purpose for existing and the significance it brings to consumers. Define your brand’s position in comparison to competitors.
3. Competitor Analysis
List your competitors, their products, their online destinations, and their competitive advantages and disadvantages. Describe what sets you apart from the competition.
4. Customer Analysis
Identify your consumer demographics and why each target market buys from you. Define where your audience spends time online. Identify what is most important to your customers when they select products like yours, and outline what you can deliver to customers that meets those wants and needs.
5. Budget and Resources
Outline how much money you have to spend over the next 12 months on content marketing efforts. Define the labor and time you have available to dedicate to content marketing on a daily basis.
6. Goals
Outline the top three things you want to achieve in the next 12 months.
Content Marketing Strategic Plan
Use the data from your Content Marketing Strategy Worksheet to complete the Content Marketing Strategy Template. This outline can help you put your plan into a clear and succinct form that you can use to develop precise procedures and tweak as necessary to ensure that the content marketing plan you create is accomplished optimally.
1. Executive Summary
Provide a synopsis of your content marketing strategy as a promotional initiative for the next 12 months.
2. Objectives
Identify particular goals for the next 12 months that you plan to achieve through content marketing. Your content marketing tactics should help you meet these precise goals.
3. Customer Hangouts
List the specific URLs for online platforms where your target audience spends time. These are the main destinations you’ll engage with this audience as part of your content marketing tactics.
4. Competition
List the specific URLs where your competitors publish content. You’ll need to observe these places to find opportunities that will lead to content marketing tactics.
5. Influencers
List the specific names and URLs for online influencers who have your target audience’s ear and whose radar screens you need to be on as part of your content marketing plan.
6. Content Forms
Define the types of content you intend to create as part of your content marketing plan — extensive, brief, or interactive. Determine how often you can commit to publishing each form of content.
7. Branded Destinations
Define where your core branded online destination will be and what other branded online destinations you’ll create as publishing points for your content marketing tactics.
8. Primary Messages and Value-Add
Define your primary brand messages and the value you bring to the online conversation through your content, which will be the foundation of your content for the next 12 months.
Useful Websites for Content Marketing
The following sites are beneficial for your content marketing efforts. The list is divided into sites for blogging and microblogging, social networking, social bookmarking, sharing audio, video and images.
Blogging and microblogging:
Social networking:
Social bookmarking:
- Digg
- Newsvine
- StumbleUpon
- Yahoo! Buzz
Audio and video:
Image:
