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We're hearing a lot of buzz about content marketing these days. The concept is that businesses should engage their prospects by consistently creating and publishing interesting and valuable content. Companies embracing content marketing are finding that it truly is a powerful way to build meaningful relationships with their consumers. The trend isn't slowing down anytime soon. According to research finding from the 2013 B2C Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trendsreport from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, 55% of B2C marketers are planning to increase their content marketing spend over the next 12 months. Their research clearly shows that marketers are confident about the value of content marketing, citing that 9 out of 10 B2B marketers are using content marketing tactics to grow their businesses.
Creating a successful content marketing program can be challenging, but using the below checklist can help you create a killer content marketing program:
1) Establish Your Business Goals
You'll need to do this so you can understand how content marketing will fulfill those needs. It's also important to ask yourself if various business objectives that you have require different kinds of content.
2) Understand The Target Audience You're Going After
Do you know who your target audience is? Is it your investors, influencers or the general public? When working through this step, it may be helpful to create marketing personas for each group to ensure you truly understand their needs and how to talk to them. Understanding your target audience is key, as that will serve as the foundation for your content marketing platform. This way you know that you are creating content that interests and engages your audience.
3) Avoid the Hard Sell
This isn't about you! Your prospects want to know what's in it for them! When creating your content make sure you clearly outline the benefits and value you're going to offer your target audience.
4) Create High-Quality Content
This is the most important part of your checklist. The overarching goal with any content marketing plan should be to create high-quality content that will get you noticed, shared, remembered or acted upon. When developing your content make sure that it is relevant, informative and focuses on a problem that your readers care about. It should also be formatted in such a way that engages, holds attention and is entertaining. The more original and compelling your content is the easier it will be for your prospects to find you.
5) Create an Editorial Calendar
Constantly creating new and engaging content can be a difficult task, but creating an editorial calendar can help to organize and streamline the process.
6) Have a Unique Brand Voice
Don't simply slap your logo on your content and call it a day. Have a unique POV that helps to differentiate your information from other content providers and reflects why prospects should turn to you, instead of your competition.
7) Use CTAs to Guide Your Readers to the Next Step
Don't just assume your readers will know what to do after they look at your content! For every post or content asset you create, you must include a contextually relevant call-to-action to guide your customer to what you'd like them to do next.
8) Expand Your Audience By Getting Help with Content
It's always good to give readers a new and fresh experience. Having an expert in your field guest blog for your will help to put you in front of a larger audience, or even a new audience. Just remember to always link back the quality content on your site.
9) Provide a Variety of Media Formats
Don't limit yourself to just words on a screen. Include videos, photos, audience, e-books, white papers, etc to help capture your readers' attention.
10) Sharing Via Social Media
Your content needs a platform where it can be promoted besides your own domain. Utilize Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, etc to share your content to create additional buzz for your posts and expand engagement opportunities.
By developing a killer content marketing program that provides valuable and informative content, you'll help your business build relationships and earn higher rankings in search results which will help you to get found and get more leads.
Have you used content marketing to grow your business? Have any tips to share?
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