Content Marketing Plan
Why Effective Writing Is Key To Your Content Marketing Success
There are many factors that contribute to the success of your content marketing plan. In this article we’re going to cover a number of things to help your content marketing efforts. The first thing you have to master is effective writing. Content marketing is about the content you create and put out. If you want your content marketing plan to succeed you need to be able to write effectively and communicate directly with your audience. Writing content is more than typing a lot of words, sentences, and paragraphs. You have to be able to communicate your message and your thoughts in such a way that your audience will find it extremely valuable and helpful.
Keyword research is also important. Knowing keywords to target and knowing the search volume for each keyword will give you an idea of the topic’s overall demand. Of course, with search engines becoming smarter, keyword research is more of a guide than anything else. But it’s still powerful, especially if you uncover profitable keywords that not many people are writing about!
To write effectively, you need to put your content’s message front and center. The best way to go about this is by storytelling. People love stories. Your message will be easily understood if you wrap it in a story. Use your introduction as a hook to capture people’s interest and keep them scrolling down your page.
When writing for the web, it’s also essential to break down your content into an easy-to-digest structure. With the plethora of content online, people have become masters at scanning content. They’ll scan through the subheadings until they find the section they’re interested in. So, make sure you use this strategy when writing your content.
Always follow SEO best practices. If you’re using WordPress, you can use a free plugin called Yoast SEO (https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo) which helps you make sure your content is search-engine friendly. It won’t matter how effective and valuable your content is if search engines aren’t able to find it!
3 Essential Components Of A Successful Content Marketing Plan
Your content marketing plan needs to be well-thought-out. You can’t just rush into it and expect to succeed. Here are 3 essential components of a successful content marketing plan.
• Set the right kind of goals
There are smart goals. And there are non-smart goals. Non-smart goals are basically those that don’t fit the S.M.A.R.T. criteria. What does that mean? Well, for your goal to fit this criteria, it should meet the following:
– Your goal should be Specific / Significant
– Your goal should be Measurable / Meaningful
– Your goal should be Achievable / Acceptable
– Your goal should be Realistic / Rewarding
– Your goal should be Time-based / Tangible
Having a SMART goal in place will help you achieve success faster. You’re eliminating the fluff and focusing on what can help you accomplish your goals. You probably need to do some trial and error to find out what works best for your business, but you’ll still be closer to your goals than if you decided to just ‘wing it.’
• Build an audience persona
Not knowing who to create content for the internet has caused many content marketing strategies to fail. Quality will always trump quantity anytime. And one of the best ways to guarantee quality is knowing who your audience is. Armed with this information, you can create the kind of content that will appeal the most to them. It will be easier to present yourself as an authority because you identify with your audience’s needs and their pain points. Fail to create an audience persona though, and you could be wasting your time.
• Create valuable and shareable content
Of course, the last ingredient to a successful content marketing strategy is the content itself. When you create content that strikes a chord with your audience, then it will be easy to persuade them to follow your call to action.
Your audience will see you as an authority. That makes it easier to convince them to join your mailing list. They’ll be more likely to listen to your recommendations, and you can easily monetize your content by inserting your own products or other brands’ products you’re affiliated with.
5 Ways A Content Marketing Plan Can Benefit Your Brand
Content marketing is a solid marketing strategy that has brought success to brands and businesses of all sizes. When you do content marketing correctly, you can expect to benefit now and in the future. Here are 5 ways content marketing can help your brand.
1. Valuable content brings hordes of traffic to your site
Who doesn’t want traffic? No webmaster in their right minds would say they don’t want traffic. The truth is we build websites and establish a presence on the Internet because we want people to know more about us. With content marketing, you can bring a ton of people to your site without paying large amounts of money for advertisements.
2. You’re building your brand identity
When people see your brand on posts and articles, you’re letting the world know what your brand is about. You’re establishing an identity online.
3. You’ll gain your audience’s trust
It takes a lot of work to gain people’s trust. That is essentially what content marketing is. You are writing valuable, informative content to gain the trust of your audience. Once you’ve successfully established yourself as an authority it will be easier to gain their trust. You’ll find that when you’ve captured people’s trust, getting them to follow your calls to action become much easier.
4. Get higher conversion rates
The most successful content marketing campaigns have excellent conversion rates. This means they’ve successfully positioned themselves as authorities in their industry. They’ve created content that resonates with their audiences. Add in great web design and an easy to navigate website, and you’ve got a recipe for success.
5. It’s great for your site’s SEO
There are plenty of SEO benefits to content marketing. When you consistently publish valuable content, you’ll be able to eventually rank for more keywords on search engines. You’ll have a highly engaged audience on your site, meaning they’re not going to bounce right after they land on your page. You’ll have people linking to your content (search engines love this!) which will help boost your rankings on search pages.
