You would be surprised to know that the recent facts and figures on web content says that 7.5 million blog posts are published on a daily basis. Yes, those staggering numbers are a biting reality. So, what could you possibly do to stand out in this over saturated market, and delivery content that holds long term value?
Many marketers are aware of the adage- “Not more content, smarter content”, but finding them around it has been a tricky business. The importance of this has been consistently overlooked. A well planned and executed content strategy can always turn the tables in your favour.
Puring massive amounts of content is now a redundant game plan with dejected results. Read on to discover the strategy behind effective and sustainable content being unfolded, step by step.
Content Strategy
It’s only prudent to elucidate and define what exactly we are going to talk about. Content strategy is often defined as the usage of content to cater to the needs of the user and meet the goals of the business. It outlines the most efficient and workable methods to provide information that helps improve the conversion rates by offering the right content to the right objectives, pushing forward the clear goals outlined.
The three main segments of the content strategy are-
– Discovery- Focuses on gathering information before the execution of the content.
– Execution- With the accumulated information, editorial calendars are made and amplified
– Analysis- Evaluation and modification of the original plan to enhance it
Content Strategy and Versatility
With every medium that holds some audience, you have the scope to create content. From the broad-based industries to niche domains, each product/service has its takers and so is the opportunity to craft content that uplifts the business goals. The whole concept revolves around reaching out to the right audience with quality information.
1. Discovery
In the absence of a proper Goal, content is simply mindless noise. So, the touchstone of developing valid and potent content is to mould it towards an aim. Defining the sequence of communication and maneuvering it towards a set agenda adds value to it. The most common targets that are set for content include-
– Sales Acceleration
Directed at persuading the user about the quality and reputation of the brand that you are writing for and the impeccable products and services offered. More so, convincing your reader to acknowledge that your product or service is best suited for their needs, drives regular readers into sales conversions.
– Lead Generation
There are multiple roads of content that lead-to-lead generation. These could be through eBooks, guides, newsletters, white papers, templates and exclusive event updates. This lays the brick line to form the wall, beyond which all the user generated content is stored and accumulated. Different types of formats could prove to be vital for different industries and audience types. You have a large play field to tap and try various formats to know what works for you.
– Brand Awareness
Educating your audience about the product or service you aim to sell, or supplying information on the current scenarios and the inseparable utility it offers helps build awareness about your brand. Furthermore, more than just selling, adding content that speaks of your values as a business and your distinctiveness in the sea of ever-expanding competitors, is vital. Motivate your customer to believe in you more than others.
– Thought Leadership
The clear agenda here is establishing your brand as the undisputed authority in your niche. Talking of your deep understanding of the market, the trending topics, the current vibe and innovative solutions helps garner the much-sought spotlight. Talking of insights from past projects and your unique methods of delivering the optimum solution to it makes you stand apart. Resorting to reiterating what your competitors are saying leaves you far behind in this cut-throat race.
– Customer Education
Furnishing your audience with relevant and reliable information about your product and service influences your raw audience to turn into potential customers. One of the most practiced indirect methods, this tact of educating people to understand your idea and product as a solution to their problems is an exemplary catalyst for sales and revenue.
The collateral effect of quality-intensive content is increased traffic to your website. Well-researched and well-distributed content attracts traffic on its own.
2. Audience
Knowing the persona of the audience is a key factor in developing the right kind of content and emanating it to the appropriate groups of people. For a content strategy to succeed, it is imperative to know the kind of people you are cooking up the content for.
Fundamentally, one must pay good attention to the following-
● The people you seek to reach
● The things that the target audience is affected by
● The precise problems faced by them
● The medium of the consumption of the information
Organizations invest heavily into resources dedicated to lay out a catchment area for this major data bank. With relevant information and properly researched persons, you could reach out to the people who are the closest match to it.
It is hereby essential to indulge in social listening, that is hearing out what the people of your ideal persona have to say about your brand through social media. Better yet, you can also run a survey for the same.
Having the right keywords via keyword research could enormously benefit the visibility of your brand for your customers’ most searched product, problem or question.
3. Competition
When an in-depth competitor analysis is conducted, it puts you in a good stead to understand where you stand as a brand, the selling points of your competitors and also the strengths that you can play upon, in order to be different and better. For creating content that matters, it is crucial to be backed by this knowledge, lest your content would be just another drop in the ocean, muted by the multitude of stories pouring in perpetually.
Start off by rooting out and tracking the activities and style of your competitors. Ascertain what works for them and the kind of formats that they employ to disseminate information. Peg the figures that thor content is generating for them and what are they missing out on that you could utilize.
SEO tools are at your disposal to give results for the content that is working for your competitors and the keyword gap analysis, coupled with manual analysis, you can draw up the blueprint for a brilliant content strategy that works wonders for you.
4. Current Scenario
Evaluating the content quality and quantity can help you answer the evasive question- If your content is provisioning value to your audience or not. Through this assessment you can reap two key benefits- Saves your time; it can officiously indicate the minimal modifications that are needed in the pre-existing content, so a complete rewrite is not called for. Additionally, you can coagulate various smaller pages into one integrated guide.
Secondly, this technique lucidly enumerates the content that is working with your audience and which is not. This information can prove to be a vital foundation for making the next content piece. Keeping yourself updated and supported by data always helps in the long run.
Content Audit can be easily classified into these headings-
● Keep- the content has had good feedback and engagement, marking itself as relevant for the audiences and taking the set objectives forward. This would not need any change and can be kept as it is.
● Update- Content that holds a certain degree of value and relevance and can be made more fruitful through some changes and modifications.
● Consolidate– Clearing the clutter. When you spot numerous pages, extending similar or related information, you can centralize that all into a single and more cogent resource.
● Redirect- Content that is obsolete and does not exhibit substantial scope for productivity and retention, these should be done away with.
5. Clarity and Consistency
At this point, content execution comes into play. The phase when you have triumphantly audited and organized your data and information and now are in a position to use it as a base to form new content.
The foremost step towards it is creating an editorial calendar, one that keeps record of the content to be published and when it is to be done. Simple software’s like Excel or Google Sheets can serve your purpose gleefully. For a more formal approach, you can use Google to search out some sample templates.
Having an editorial calendar ushers in some advantages, which are-
● Plan- assists in planning, organizing and scheduling your content. To highlight major events or dates around which content could be generated.
● Bird’s Eye View- A calendar provides ample of exactitude of upcoming events and segregates the timeline that you could devote to each. Overall, it’s potent to help you prepare for the next.
● Consistency- With an evenly spread-out calendar, you can conveniently fill out gaps and spaces between content publication to retain the nature of consistency
6. Production
A well-defined timeline for tasks greatly aids in a successful content strategy. Allocating duties and work to each member of the team is again vital for quality content production on a large scale.
With different content formats in place, the methods are subject to variation, but the overall flow of work can be grouped as-
● Clear Brief- Well established and explicitly stated goals, audience, formats, guidelines, budget, SEO requirements and deadlines. These are the prerequisites to start the content production with utmost utilization of available time.
● Teamwork- Content that is laudable and exemplary is often the by-product of vigorous brainstorming by the whole team. Right from the sales team inputs to the copy-writing acumen, each element proves to be a boon for your content piece. Catchy graphics are the cherry to your cake.
● Quality Check- The step that you cannot miss before publishing your content, and that is Quality Assessment. Proofreading, grammatical error rectification or any other alteration are all under this umbrella. Stringing in the right people for error checking can make your content rather fantastic.
7. Amplification
Capturing the right audience for your content is indispensable in this case. Often, this mammoth aspect is neglected and a paucity of a clear distribution plan, lands a great content in the quicksand.
Placing the content before the right audience is more important, you think. Serving it to the people who have the appetite for it is the catalyst to the whole content strategy. Reach out to the right people using channels where you know your targeted audience speeds its majority of time and hence magnify the scope of your content visibility and engagement.
Taking a backseat and hoping that the search engine will automatically crawl and index your piece is certainly not a smart move. You need to be proactive about it and endorse all available avenues. Most likely, you will find yourself on social media platforms for content dissemination. Just a few tweaks to the anchor text or Call-to action according to the network you are using, and you are good to go.
Another one of the surest hacks is to take up email-marketing when you can present your content to people who like it for sure and are interested in your products and services on the whole.
Often, employee advocacy or user-generated-content could be rather influential on social media, giving paid marketing channels a run.
Therefore, it is advised that you must include the amplification of your content in your calendar itself for best results.
8. Analysis
Rounding yourself back to the spot or the agenda with which you started in the first place, you will now find yourself in an expedient position to analyse and study the metrics and projected KPIs. The three primary KPI sections to consider are-
● User Behaviour- Make note of the traffic figures, source of the traffic, views, impressions, page per session, bounce rate, time spent in total etc. These are the indicators of the quality and engagement of your content.
● Sentiment- The activity with respect to the content is to be accounted for. The comments, shares, likes and mentions play a big role in making your content go viral.
● Conversions- Finally, to tabulate the effectiveness of your content and the strategy on the whole, you ought to compute the number of leads generated and the number that successfully converted as customers. Return for Investment is also a string parameter for determining the success rate of the content strategy.
Using these, you can refine and fine-tune the tactical plan of action into more viable moves. More metrics can be assimilated eventually to know if you are approaching your set goals as envisaged.
9. Insights
The list of steps elucidated above culminates at this point- the evaluation of your content effectiveness. The metrics help point in the direction your content is moving, if it’s an upward trend or a downward spiral. If it is engendering the expected and desired results or simply missing the mark. To help grasp the insights carefully, reach out to a digital marketing agency in Dubai.
When working with a wider spectrum of content types, these insights help form a distinctive view of the performance level of different content formats.
These data pointers are raw inputs that you must translate into actionable moves, implying the adjustments that you could make at different places.
10. Conclusion
It’s time to burst the bubble- content is viewed as simply mulching out readable communication on behalf of the brand or product, but in the bustling marketplace, its placement, quality and objectives become of prime importance. Understanding the minor nuances that can make or break a content piece and for truly effective social media marketing in Dubai.
Reach out to us to know more about the trending content styles and standard practices and help amplify your thoughts.
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