You’ll already be well aware of the crucial role content plays in digital marketing. Helpful content, such as the kind you find in blogs, has the potential to better reach your audience compared to the more aggressive direct marketing copy, offering exactly the right help, at the time they need it the most. 

Content has the potential to grow your business like nothing else, but it has to have the right marketing strategy behind it. So, how do you manage this? 

How to do content marketing

1) Always have a content strategy

Your content should always have a focus – whether that’s an answer to a question your audience has, or an overarching theme or topic. The easiest way to do this is by coming up with a content strategy before you start writing. Now, this doesn’t have to be fancy – just a list of content titles, a blurb with possible subheadings, and preferred format will do. If you’re feeling extra efficient, you could do some keyword research into the types of phrases people are searching for to do with your topic (pssst… we’ve a great guide on how to do this here). 

So why should you go to all this extra effort? Well, content without a focus will quickly lose the interest of your reader. Remember, it’s likely that your website is competing with hundreds of others in your industry. Don’t give your reader the excuse to leave you for one of them. 

Let FINALLY help you to plan your content

2) Think about your routes to market 

There’s no point in writing all of this great content if you haven’t the foggiest about how people will find it. Have some routes to market – or ways in which to reach your audience – in mind before you begin your writing. 

One of these could be social media. Social media platforms - such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter – are a great way to share your content (and, more importantly, have it re-shared by your followers). That said, you may want to think long and hard about which one is right for you, and which you’ll gain the most traction from. 

You may also decide to showcase your content in an e-newsletter to your customer base. Well, we’ve loads of tips on how to do this too – take a look at our email marketing guides for some extra help. 

Need more advice on choosing your routes to market? FINALLY can give you a steer. 

3) Measure and react

Once your content strategy is up and running, don’t forget to report on how your content is doing. Now, there are LOADS of ways to do this but don’t get too overwhelmed by it all. Simply choose two or three KPIs – key performance indicators or ways in which your content is bringing visits/sales/engagement to your website – and keep a note of how much success you’re having with these. 

Keeping an accurate measure of these, via Google Analytics or social media reporting, is useful since it’ll help you to do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t. For instance, if your main route to market is through Facebook and your posts are getting little to no engagement here, you may decide to switch social media platforms, or find another route to market altogether. 

At a glance: why should content be a part of your content strategy?

1) Always have a content strategy – your content should always have a focus and a content strategy will help you to keep track of that.

2) Think about your routes to market – well, your content isn’t going to be found on its own. Put some thought into how you expect to get eyes on what you’ve written and your ultimate goals for your content.

3) Measure and react – if something isn’t working, you need to know this, and change it, before you invest any more time and money in this direction. 

For help with creating content for your business, get in touch with the FINALLY team.