If you were to sit back and look at content marketing efforts from a bird’s eye view, you’ll notice that there is an awful lot that goes into a campaign. To be effective, experts tell you that you must understand your business, your audience, your available tools, your priority topics and so much more. My head is spinning and I’m only talking about content marketing — not actually creating a plan.
Chris Auman noted in his Content Amplification 8,000 word skyscraper piece, “With any ‘campaign’, planning is essential. Amplification starts light-years before ‘Publish’ during the planning stage. Just taking a little time in advance to block out some of the essentials will help you take your campaign a lot further.” There is an essential planning piece that is regularly overlooked and here lies the problem with content marketing. We have put our heads together and boiled down the skyscraper content article to offer you 5 tips for planning your content marketing campaign:
- Nail Down your Identity: You are completely unique to the internet world. The very first and most crucial step is understanding who you are and what you have to offer the wonderful World Wide Web. You need to nail down your identity before you move forward with content marketing.
- Nail Down your Victory: What is the point of doing your content marketing campaign and what will you count as a “win” for your efforts? Might it be to raise awareness or improve click-thru rates (CTR)? No matter what it is, be sure to have a measurable and reportable system in place. You need to nail down your victories before you move forward with content marketing.
- Nail Down your Audience: Now you know your voice and you know what you are measuring for it to be a win. Next question is, who are you trying to reach? With billions of potential eyes to be in front of daily thanks to the Internet, who is your ideal reader and where can you find them? You need to nail down your audience before you move forward with content marketing and this will help you with better answering Tip #4.
- Nail Down your Content: Research your topic and define your content type. You know who you are, what a win is, as well as who and where your audience is … now ask how will you reach them? Is it a lengthy ebook (Kindle, iBook, etc.), digital newsletters, email marketing, micro-blogging (Tumblr, Google+, etc.), or any number of other channels. Understanding your channel, what shape your content takes is completely up to you. Old Spice is winning the race with off-the-wall antics while Social Media Examiner shows themselves as experts in their in-depth annual reporting. You need to nail down your content
- Have Fun: Now that all of the planning is done, plan to think outside the box while you own and enjoy the content marketing process.
We know that we had to simplify the painstaking process of planning a content marketing campaign. Are there additional tips that you would add to this list?
Check out our Content Amplification Checklist. An easy to follow checklist that covers each step in the amplification process.
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