If you are new to the world of content marketing, it may all seem very overwhelming. However, with the right research and resources you can develop a very powerful content marketing strategy. This article goes down the 5 vital steps you need to execute on to create a content marketing strategy that works for your business.

Content Marketing Strategy Step 1: Set Goals

Goal setting dictates the direction your business goes in, whether that’s towards success or failure. Write down on paper exactly what you want to achieve. Then, create a specific action plan that should accompany your goals. Chunk your action plans into milestones and deadlines to keep up the pressure to progress. You’ll also get a dose of motivation every time you hit a milestone.

Content Marketing Strategy Step 2: Know your audience

Being knowledgeable on your target audience is one of the most important parts of a powerful content marketing strategy. Without data and research on your target audience, you are completely in the dark. As a result of knowing you target audience – their wants, needs and aspirations – you’ll be able to effectively tailor your content to them.

Content Marketing Strategy Step 3: Syndicate Your Content

There are a range of platforms you can use to market your content. Of course, you should have your own website, where you use SEO to boost search engines ranking – thus organic traffic. Furthermore, you should also look to create images, quotes and snippets from your content and upload them to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn. You may even want to publish your content on article directories to get extra links. However, this method has gradually becomes less effective over time.

Content Marketing Strategy Step 4: Create Valuable Content

This step is easily the most important step! Whether you are on your own or part of a team, content creation is going to take a vast majority of your time – even more so, valuable content. If your content does not provide a wealth of value to your audience, don’t bother. Quality is key!

Make sure your content is relevant, information that is in demand. Also, make your content more engaging by incorporating images and infographics to survive in a world of shrinking attention spans.

If you don’t have the time, or you hate writing, you can always outsource content creation to a freelancer. However, this can be a pricey thing to do for a start-up business, so it’s very likely best to master content creation yourself.

To learn more about why strong content is vital for content marketing success, check out our article on “Why Effective Writing Unlocks The Door To Content Marketing Success”

Content Marketing Strategy Step 5: Promote and market

Of course, you want people to actually see your content. Therefore, promoting your content is a very important task. This can be done in a huge variety of ways such as, SEO, sharing content on social media, posting on article directories, running ads, reaching out to people on social media etc. Remember to add in social media icons on your posts to encourage your audience to share your content to their followers.

To learn more about promoting your content and gaining traffic, check out the “Traffic Generation” section of our blogs with all of our blogs on marketing your content through social media and SEO.

These are the 5 vitals steps to having a powerful content marketing strategy. In order to succeed, it is imperative to have a well thought out plan of action, thus follow these valuable steps to prevent you from being left in the dark.

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Steps to a Powerful Content Marketing Strategy Summary:

• Write down what a specific goal on what you want to achieve. Then, create an action plan to achieve these goals with deadlines.
• Do plenty of research on your target demographic to tailor your content towards them.
• Create unique pieces of content for your site, social media accounts and even article directories.
• Produce valuable, relevant and well-thought out content that is tailored towards your audience.
• Use SEO, social media, article directories, networking and ads to promote your content and boost traffic.