If your company is like most, you don’t have a documented content strategy. And if you do have a strategy, you probably aren’t doing a good job of executing it. But with a few simple tweaks, you can get things moving in the right direction.
4 Steps to a Better Content Strategy
From the outside looking in, content marketing can seem like a hodgepodge of random articles, blog posts, and keywords. But you know better than most that “random” doesn’t cut it. If you want to see some actual results, you need a formal content strategy.
The good news is that it doesn’t take long to implement changes to an underperforming content strategy. In fact, with a few tweaks, you should be capable of making significant strides in just 30 days or less. Here are a few steps to help you achieve fast, yet a sustainable improvement.
1. Study Current Trends
Content marketing is an evolving field. While the foundational principles of what it takes to be successful hold true, the techniques, strategies, and best practices are always changing. According to HigherVisiblity, here are some of the current content marketing trends:
- Long-form posts (articles with 2,000-plus words) are 9-times more effective than short-form posts.
- 60 percent of marketers publish at least one piece of content per day.
- 63 percent of marketers use buyer personas to guide their content.
- 87 percent of marketers use social media for content delivery.
Only 10 percent of marketers currently use gamification in their strategies, despite the fact that it’s shown to increase engagement and average time spent on site.
You can’t develop a successful content strategy if you’re trying to swim up stream. Spend time studying the current trends so that you can amplify your results.
2. Create Four Pieces of Sticky, Evergreen Content
There’s a time and place for publishing a short, newsworthy piece of content, but you’ll generate much better results from sticky, evergreen content pieces that directly target your audience and continue to remain relevant for months or years at a time.
Over the next month, make it a priority to publish one evergreen piece of content per week. It should be 2,000-plus words in length, actionable, and relevant to your biggest buyer persona. Furthermore, make sure you give these posts a chance to flourish by making them visible.
“Many businesses fill their blogs with quality evergreen content only to see it get buried by the influx of new blog posts. You must make an effort to call out these evergreen posts so that they are immediately obvious to new visitors,” marketer Scott Tates writes. You can do this by featuring evergreen content in your sidebar, a “best of” section, or by pasting them into your social media profiles.
3. Ramp Up Social Engagement
Speaking of social media, you need to ramp up your social engagement.
Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Instagram are ideal for sharing content and stoking interest. But in order to get some real results out of them, you can’t just share post after post. Build credibility by interacting with your audience – asking questions, answering questions, liking, commenting, and following. All of these steps allow you to develop relationships that ultimately drive engagement with your own content.
4. Create a Free Offer
If you’re in the beginning stages of developing traction with your content strategy, one of the quickest ways to drum up attention and drive engagement is by creating some sort of free content offer. This could be an ebook, online course, or newsletter.
Stop Settling for Average
It’s easy to look at it as something you have to do, but break out of the mindset that content marketing is a time-consuming slog that yields minimal results. When done right, content marketing can yield tremendous benefits for your business – including increased sales, greater brand equity, and new opportunities.
Begin optimizing your strategy today and you’ll start to see results in a matter of weeks. Good luck!
