Quality content leads to exposure and sales, and without an effective content marketing plan in place, your business is missing out on big opportunities. Producing content alone is not enough to be effective. To reach your goals it is essential to weave all of your digital marketing practices and goals together and develop a cohesive plan.
Below is a comprehensive content marketing checklist that you can use to help improve the reach and value of your content marketing plan. Ensure that your team is aware and held accountable for their responsibilities to maximize the return on your resources and drive sales.
Defining The Audience
Understanding the unique audience segments for your brand helps identify how to communicate with them and build relationships. By speaking to personalized needs with optimal delivery, your brand can create valuable and effective content.
- Identify why people will buy your product/service
- Examine historical data to discover the current best performing audience segments
- Find where current customers are most engaged and what content is shared most frequently
- Recognize competitors and analyze engagement
- Pinpoint opportunities for new markets based on customer feedback and data
- Categorize audience personas based on online behaviors, needs and demographics
- Specialize content by the unique interests of audience segments
Choosing Content Mediums
Delivering your content is the most effective way to help increase visibility and engagement online. Form unique content for individual audiences to drive action from users.
- Analyze which channels show high engagement for different content mediums and subjects
- Develop unique content in different mediums for individual audience segments
- Establish your brand personality and voice to determine best content medium fit
- Ensure content plans align with overall marketing goals
Creating Valuable Written Content
Written content crosses all platforms including your website, social activity, and paid media. Consider your goals and audiences when drafting content and test across various channels to facilitate the best results.
- Offer education, entertainment, and calls to action
- Create a attention grabbing and concise headline
- Write an intro that entices users to read more
- Link to external sources to offer authority
- Link to internal sources to drive traffic
- Keep content readable with short paragraphs and direct writing
- Integrate target keywords into body copy, headline, URL, tags and descriptions
- Write in a voice consistent with your brand
- Include imagery that reflects your main points
- Review content for grammatical and spelling mistakes
Developing Effective Visual Content
Visual content is the most shared form of media today, so creating powerful imagery is key to increasing exposure online.
- Check you have rights to publish
- Optimize image size and quality
- Add alt tags to images
- Create descriptions and hashtags
Publishing And Promoting Content
Choosing where to publish and promote content will play a big role in the reach and value of your content marketing plan. Carefully consider different channels and promotion options to reach your goals.
- Publish content on your own site and on publisher sites to increase exposure
- Publish your content at the right time for the channel and audience
- Include social sharing icons on your site
- Promote content across various platforms with unique spin
- Encourage team members to share through internal networks
- Collect user information to grow database
Conclusion
Developing a cohesive content marketing plan in line with your goals will help expand the reach of your brand and improve the relationships with your target audience segments. By creating strong communication outlets with valuable content, your brand can drive sales and develop authority within your industry as a thought leader.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Putting Strategy to Work: Comprehensive Content Marketing Checklist
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