6 Content Marketing Strategies for Beginners

I am sure you would have heard the term “Content Marketing Strategy”. This is indeed a buzzword of 2012, but what exactly is it? A content marketing strategy is a kind of marketing technique that allows you to create and distribute valuable and relevant content to attract users, with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

Creating valuable content and promoting it online is certainly an excellent way for businesses to establish their brand, advertise their products and services, establish dexterity and aid in Search Engine Optimization through link building. Nowadays, you can see numerous companies implementing content marketing strategies not only to build long term relationships with their customers but to generate more traffic to their websites or blogs as well.

Here are some actionable tips on how to build a solid foundation for your content marketing strategy.

• Nail down your specific marketing need: As a beginner, your first step should be to create incredible content that meets the needs and desires of your prospective target audience. Identifying your target demographic is the most important step in any content marketing strategy. You will end up delivering your content to the wrong audience and ultimately waste your time and efforts if you fail in this step. So ensure that you provide valuable content that piques the interest of those who receive it.

• Sharpen your key talking points: Your next step should be to identify and sharpen your key talking points. When it comes to writing, hundreds of things that you have experienced or heard of will come to your mind, but you can’t write about all of them. Your goal is to focus on the specific things that will grab the attention of your target audience.

• Publish authority content: If you publish your content on your website or blog, you will receive only limited exposure. Create global exposure by reaching different communities through different content portals. For this, you may have to research on the channels and formats that your customers prefer and accordingly decide on how and where to publish your content to extend your reach. There are many industry publications and blogs where you can publish your content in a variety of formats. Some of them are Biznik, IdeaMarketers, Evan Carmichael, Scribd, Hubpages, Slideshare, YouTube and Online PR Media.

• Create a content calendar: Creating a content calendar is one of the most important elements in any content marketing strategy. Your company might have plenty of content to publish based on real-time news and activities in your industry. Hence for an effective content marketing program you need a well-planned content calendar. A content calendar enables you to stay focused and adds structure to your content marketing efforts. It also helps you to save time and makes the content development process successful. With a content calendar, you can create a tentative outline of the days you have published content in a week. You can also keep track of the dates of publication, platforms, the social channels in which it will be distributed and so on.

• Diversify your content for global reach: It’s now the right time to start thinking of how to make use of existing content in an effective way, so that it receives global exposure. Fear not! A single piece of content can be made available in different formats which will be appreciated by different people across the globe. This multiplies the sharing possibilities for your content. You can diversify your content into videos, research guides, podcasts, blogs, slideshow presentations, webinars, infographics, eBooks, press releases and much more.

• Monitor, engage and gauge your performance: Finally, you have to monitor, engage and gauge your performance. Allow your users to speak and listen to them. Use opportunities to interact with them and get to know what they expect from you. Respond to their comments and try to get their feedback so that you can utilize it to enhance your efforts. Monitoring and measuring results is the only way to know what’s working and what needs tuning.

With these tips, you can start creating an efficient content marketing strategy for your business. Your content should not just grab the attention of your audience, but should encourage them to learn more about you and eventually, do business with you. Remember that you are a marketer and not a journalist.

Image Credit:zeldman