In order for content marketing strategies to be successful, you need to start by building documented content marketing strategies. That strategy is the foundation of a consistent workflow and details the tactics, milestones, KPIs, metrics and more to help you reach your goals. Despite the need for a documented strategy, there’s a surprising number of marketers who fail to create one.
Fewer marketers have a documented content marketing strategy than last year (32% vs 35%).Lee Odden
It’s hard to develop a consistent workflow and generate effective content when there are no real content marketing strategies behind it.
Streamline Content Marketing Strategies with a Consistent Workflow
It might not seem like it’s possible to create an assembly line for content when every piece of content is unique. You may not be able to automate it or run it on autopilot, but with a carefully planned and consistent workflow, you can streamline your content marketing strategies.
Here are the core elements you want to focus on to build out your content marketing strategies:
Start with Research for Planning Broader Content Marketing Strategies
Before writing a single piece of content or plugging away at random topics, you need to run through a discovery phase. This research allows you to review the content that your audience is already interested in along with the content you already have to see what can be leveraged.
The main focus of this research is to discover what your readers prefer:
- The type of content they like
- The most relevant topics
- The format of content (video, blog, audio, etc.)
- Where they go for the content
By doing an audit, including competitors, you create the direction and foundation for your strategy going forward.
Content Marketing Strategies Revolve Around Your Audience
If you want the content to flow, and generate results, you have to give your audience what they want. Your research should turn up the pain points and biggest concerns, while also feed you intel on the topics they’re most interested in.
Use that research to create content with the right voice, tone, and message to align with your audience. Support that content with multimedia, graphics and other visual elements as part of the workflow. When planning your strategy and content plan, make sure that each phase of developing content leaves enough time to focus on quality – not quantity.
Content developed for your audience should always be 10x content – designed for delivering maximum value that’s 10x better than what your competitors are creating.
Bring Others Into Your Workflow and Strategy
Content doesn’t do well in a vacuum. And while you certainly want to give the perception that you’re an authority in your industry, you can’t do that if you only provide your perspective.
To beef up the value of your content, and boost your own brand authority, make sure you develop a consistent workflow for content that includes influencers and other experts. You can achieve this through a number of ways:
- Gather quotes from experts
- Ask influencers to weigh in on topics and collect answers
- Link out to influencer content in every piece you publish
- Connect with influencers directly and ask them to share content
- Co-author content, like eBooks, with influencers in your industry
- Interview subject matter experts to get unique perspectives
Make sure that influencers become a consistent part of your content marketing strategies.
Take the Time to Review Content
It might add steps to a consistent workflow, but you absolutely need a review and revision stage of your content plan. Never edit your own work. Instead, turn to professionals who can proof your content and provide professional editing.
Even more, if you’ve made great contacts with influencers, try to include one or two in your workflow to be part of the editing and review process. This ensures the highest level value being delivered to your audience whenever you finally hit publish.
Publish, Execute, and Promote
A consistent workflow doesn’t just call for content to be published. Your content marketing strategy should detail when content gets published, the channels you’ll use for publishing, and how often that content gets pushed.
In addition to publishing, the workflow should also detail how that content gets promoted:
- How often is content shared on social channels
- Which social channels are utilized
- Are any paid platforms used for promotion?
- How influencers are tagged and contacted when mentioned in content
- If content is duplicated in any way for publication on other platforms, like LinkedIn Pulse
- Are UTM parameters or campaigns tracked in analytics?
- Who is in charge of promotion, and following up on campaign metrics?
Promotion shouldn’t be a small-scale event or passive thought once your content goes live. It should be a significant part of a consistent workflow, often taking as much – if not more – time than you spent creating your content in the first place.
Follow up and Measure
Never assume that your content is delivering the desired results. If you don’t have documented content marketing strategies, then you likely don’t have details on the KPIs and content marketing metrics to watch. An important component of any consistent workflow is evaluating the effectiveness of your content marketing strategies.
It’s not just as simple as checking traffic on content. Depending on your goals, your metrics could vary dramatically. Part of your workflow could include:
- Measuring social reach
- Measuring sentiment
- Measuring engagement in social
- Measuring engagement directly within the content
- Tallying feedback on surveys and direct questions
The purpose of measuring content is to single out the most effective campaigns and content you’ve created. Like any other kind of marketing, you don’t want to keep pumping resources into ineffective campaigns.
If the metrics show certain topics or types of content to be ineffective, you revise your strategy to eliminate those.
From your metrics, take the best content you have and begin repurposing it. This is almost like starting the cycle over again, except you’re not producing content from scratch. The most effective content is turned into a different format and republished in different channels to maximize its reach and impact on your audience.
For example, take a blog post resonating with your audience and repurpose it into
- A podcast
- A SlideShare
- An eBook (multiple posts combined)
- An in-depth guide (lengthier blog post using the skyscraper method)
- In infographic
Once the repurposed content goes live, follow the same consistent content marketing strategies and workflows you’ve established for promoting content.
Get the Right Tools
Supporting your content marketing strategies means having the right tools to produce, distribute, and promote your content. There’s no shortage of platforms and services to choose from, and without creating an exhaustive list here are a few that you should keep in mind to make your job a little easier.
- Project management or to-do trackers (Asana, Basecamp, Trello)
- Process automation tools (Tallyfy)
- Content management platforms (WordPress)
- Distribution and scheduling (Buffer, Slideshare, Yoast, )
- Content curation tools (Quuu, Inbound.org, Alltop)
- Metrics and reporting (Kissmetrics, Google Analytics)
- Marketing automation platforms (HubSpot)
- Social management and promotion (Hootsuite)
- Relationship building and distribution tools (Mailchimp, Constant Contact)
- Track what’s trending (Reddit)
Auto-document and track workflows with other people in real-time