1. Content Strategy

2. Audience Mapping

3. Content Mix

4. Content and Marketing Integration

5. Content Marketing Team

6. Content Management System

7. Content Promotion

8. Content Analysis

With old and new businesses looking to explore new lead generation channels, the use of content marketing has seen a massive boom. More and more marketers prefer to promote their businesses through content marketing. This is due to its ability to set businesses apart from the competition. The emphasis on quality over quantity might make the job seem difficult.

However, those willing to exploit this flywheel marketing technology will bear fruits which will help target potential customers. The whole idea behind this concept is to create value for the prospective audiences. Content that’s consistent and conversational.

Think of content marketing as a shareable commodity that brings value to the customers. It is re-purposeful and eye-catching. If you are looking at creating a nurturing relationship and having the benefits of an automated marketing process, look no further. Content marketing is your best bet!

Let’s take a look at the basic elements of content marketing. Content marketing takes time and uses resources. There is a need for focused efforts to generate desired results. Content marketing has fixed timelines and measurable metrics. Get the basic elements of content marketing right for its success. Most content marketers constantly review and revise their content strategies.

Content Strategy

Always remember ‘content is king‘. Brand loyalists form a major group on the internet. They keep visiting their favorite pages regularly for fresh content. Most marketers will tell you that the internet is full of such great content, which gets consumed daily.

Your content could be anything that helps meet marketing goals through words. Think newsletters, emails, tweets, etc. What’s more important is how you use this content to keep the conversation going. Having a strong focus on the strategy during content development will help keep the engagement rate sharp.

Strategy worries itself with the development, user interface, management, re-purposing and archiving of content. The content strategy looks at using the online conversation as a great marketing opportunity. Would you like to discuss a live event? Maybe get a live video streaming to showcase to your audience. Got new member to the team? Get a newsletter informing all about it. The strategies here are guidelines for marketing tools like creation, curation, promotion, iteration to work their magic.

Audience Mapping

Now that we’ve covered the first step in understand content marketing, let’s look at a very important element. Online audiences vary in nature just like traditional marketing. Segmentation of online audiences plays a key role in understanding demographic factors such as age, gender, place, etc.

For your content to have the most impact, understanding which channel your audience uses and shares is crucial.

Are your viewers on Facebook or Instagram? Content that’s channel friendly or re-purposeful fits this guideline.

What are they viewing online? 

Who are their role models?

What is their preferred content type?

When are they most active?

What stories get shared the most?

Whom are they following?

Getting an in-depth understanding of your audience will help understand the results, helping your strategy and bringing focus to your content marketing campaign.

Content Mix

Content that isn’t consistent with your brand promise will do more harm than good. Your content marketing efforts and larger business marketing plan need to integrate. Your content mix needs the right balance between being informative and entertaining.

It lies somewhere in-between having an expert talk, brand focused conversational pages and opinion rants. With an array of content types to choose from like articles, blog posts, infographics, videos, cartoon drawings, animations, tutorials, podcasts and presentations one has many choices.

However, each of these has a specified purpose and value. Figuring a healthy mix of different content variations makes for an interesting web read. Try five content at the most till you get a hang of what works for your brand.

Content & Marketing Integration

Alignment of your content and marketing goals is very important for the success of the campaign.

Your content marketing efforts is an integrated of this into your larger business marketing plan. The best businesses surround consumers with branded experiences. The role of content changes as one goes through the discovery, consideration, conversion and retention stages of content marketing.

Integrated marketing plan includes both online and offline content marketing. It should act as a driver of conversations, sharing, and powerful word-of-mouth and brand loyalty to get great results.

Content Marketing Team

The cool thing about content marketing is it can help reach people at any stage. Getting a strong team to help build this interaction is important to sustain efforts. With most agencies, the usual team consist of a creative and a content department.

The creative teams mingle with the clients, pitch ideas, get new businesses on board and designs campaigns. The content guys get all the creative materials ready, handle changes to them, research and keep developing ideas for bigger and better campaigns.

Usual teams consist of strategists, writers, copy editors, project coordinators, idea creators, promoters, graphic designers, freelancers, etc. Some agencies also have community managers, content analysts, video creation  team, video editors, etc. Think of the types of content you are looking at before you hire. Pick teams based on whether it’s text, graphics (blog graphics and info-graphics), audio (podcasts) and video (screencasts and on-camera) so you can get the best from them.

Content Management System

You might have heard of WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, etc. These are the most commonly used Content Management Systems. Content Management Systems are the interfaces you use to draft, publish, and edit the content on your website.

Picking one can make or break your content marketing dream. It is important to understand the features and understand what features these systems offer. Each has their own benefits. They system helps cut coding stress for users. These systems are for non-technically minded people.

Since many organisations would have different departments, each of which needs to input into the website. A CMS makes for a perfect solution as they help to add people who need publishing permissions. This is a great tool to help assign tasks and check progress.

CMS are to help with site maintenance, by automating changes through the use of administrative dashboards. With this, you are in control of managing your content and can focus on more important needs.

Content Promotion

Let your content have a promotional strategy. The hard work put to develop content, find the right audience, hire the right guys is just the cone to your content ice-cream. Your content now needs to do the work. Most marketers forget this crucial step.

A major part of promotions is consistently developing a new audience base. Try getting killer quotes from influencers you think they might follow. Maybe have small, shareable snippets, ready to share on social platforms, to keep the conversation going. A nice way to promote content is to share the name of your expert source.

Don’t be shy to email your prospects or hit them with direct messages. Smarter marketers know how to re-purpose the same content by changing the format. Turn that content into a slide deck or video. And you now have a brand new engagement opportunity.

With marketers finding newer and more creative ways to promote content, by using social media, PR outreach, comment marketing, content promotion is no longer limited to just paid channels.

Content Analysis

As a smart content marketer, you will need to revise and check your content marketing efforts. The results you achieved from these focused efforts are against set benchmarks.

Were you able to get brand awareness to potential customers?

Was your content able to get engagement and buzz for the brand?

Did more people get to look at the positive aspects of the brand due to this effort?

Any new leads generated due to your emails and newsletters?

Did your content marketing activity help bring in sales?

Answers to each of these are available through metrics. Try understanding how people responded by looking at comments, votes, likes, social media pages, link shares, etc. Look at behavioral metrics like the number of page views, time spent per view, bounce rate, conversation rate to help build a stronger content focus. Understand who you are talking to and keep this process a constant.
In the end, remember to create value for your audience, just like you would with your brand.