Why You Must Set Up Goals

Your content marketing strategy needs to be well thought out. You can’t just rush into it and expect to succeed.

Content marketing is not just a fad. It is a solid marketing strategy that has brought success to brands and businesses of all sizes.

There are two groups of marketers. The first one says we should focus on publishing as much as possible, quantity. The second group says quality trumps quantity anytime. But what does this mean for you?

Well, it means that if you want search engines to give you some ranking love, then you need to publish long-form content, long-form articles.

Types Of Content Marketing Campaigns

Most people think there’s only one type of content – the written kind, like blog posts, articles, and eBooks. And that’s what many brand focus on. But the truth is that if you want to make the most of your content marketing campaign, you are going to have to explore other types of contents as well. This will help you cast a wider net over your target audience.

So, here are top content types you can implement in your content marketing strategy.

1. Blog Posts – Blog posts are an essential component of a successful content marketing strategy. When you blog consistently, you establish your brand as an authority and people can quickly see all the other posts you’ve published on your site.
2. Case Studies – People love case studies. If you are lessing a product or a service, you can do a case study on how your product was able to help people.
3. Videos – Some people dislike reading and would prefer watching videos. You can choose your most popular content and re-purpose it into video format. This will make it easy for you to reach those segments in your audience who prefer to consume content in video form.
4. Infographics – Infographics make it easy for people to see your content’s main points in just a few seconds. They don’t have to read thousands of words, they can just scan your infographic, and they will know what you are talking about.
5. Checklists – Checklists are especially useful for highly actionable content. It gives people a framework of what they need to do. You can also use this as content upgrades to get people to join your mailing list.
6. Social Media Posts – You can re-purpose your content into graphics that will make it easy for your audience to share your content on social media.
7. Presentations – With presentations, you can simply copy and paste the most important points in your content into a visually attractive PowerPoint template. Then upload the entire presentation to sites like Slide Share.
8. Quizzes – Quizzes have become popular in recent years. And it really shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, quizzes are highly interactive as it lets people engage with your content.
9. Online Courses – Online courses are a huge hit. They are easy to consume, and people can find all the information they need in a single place.
10. Memes – Memes are popular on social media. You can ride on the hottest topics of the day. Post it on social media and if it catches your audience’s fancy, then your meme may even go viral.

Your Content Marketing Strategy

There are tons of resources you can look up online to help make sure you are on the path to success. To help you get started, I had written down six key steps you should undertake if you want to create a successful content marketing strategy.

1. Set Your Goals Having the right goals can mean the difference between success and failure. Identify what you hope to achieve. Look under the hood and see if it is a feasible goal.
   A solid plan of action should then accompany your goals. Break it down into milestones to make it easier to achieve. You’ll get extra motivation every time you cross something off your list.
2. Know Your Audience – Knowing your audience can’t ever be underestimated. It is one of the backbones of a successful content marketing strategy. Without it, you could be very well shooting in the dark. If you want to make the most of your content marketing, then know who your content is for first.
3. Identify Your Content Platforms – There are a lot of platforms you can choose to publish your content on. Of course, have your own website should be at the top of your list. A solid social media presence is also very important. Find out what other platforms are preferred by your audience.
4. Decide on Content Types – Once you know where your audience hangs out, then it is time to decide on the types of content you should be publishing. In addition to blog posts and articles, you can re-purpose your content into many other formats like videos, infographics, podcasts, etc.
5. Create Content – Now here comes the hard part. Creating content is going to take time whether you do it yourself or not. If you are building your business all by yourself, expect to spend a significant amount of time in front of your computer. If you don’t want to do that, then you should consider outsourcing. It is probably going to be pricey, but you do get your free time back.
6. Promote and Market – Your content is not going to get discovered on its own. You’ll need to go out there and promote your content. You can make it easy for your audience by adding social media sharing buttons on your site. Then you can straight up ask them to share it with their own networks.

Quality vs. Quantity

In the old days, quantity got you a lot of traction on search engines. You could publish very short blog posts and articles, and you’ll find yourself at the top of Google. However, this strategy doesn’t work anymore.

If you check the first page of Google search results, you will find that the articles on the top 3 spots average at least 2,000 words. And that is just the average.

Nowadays, ‘skyscraper’ content is gaining in popularity. Brands and businesses are competing for the top spot by publish long-form content and articles.

What does this mean for you?

Well, it means that if you want search engines to give you some ranking love, then you need to publish long-form content and articles. Note, however, that not all long-form articles fall into the high-quality camp. After all, it is so easy to string together a bunch of sentences and paragraphs to come up with 2,000 words.

Good thing search engines have become so much smarter. It is harder to game the system, and Black Hat SEO tricks in the old days don’t work anymore. If you are unlucky it could potentially backfire on you big time.

If you want to rank up high on search results pages, then you need to more than just publish a 2,000 word article. It can’t be all fluff and no meat. Search engines can detect the amount of time people stay on your site. If people bounce far too quickly, then it is telling Google that your content is no good. Therefore, when creating content make sure you don’t just do it for the sake of search engines. Rather, you should always put your human audience first. Make sure they love your content, and you will be rewarded by Google and other search engines.

At the end, it is best to focus on quality while also making sure you publish consistently and regularly. The best-of-both-worlds suggestion should be that you should always publish good quantity of high-quality content. Your chances of dominating the search engines will be so much higher.

Ending

There are many factors that contribute to the success of your content marketing strategy. Writing content and have a content marketing strategy is not just typing a bunch or words and then publish them as a blog post etc. It is about bringing everything together in such a way that your audience will find it extremely valuable and helpful.

If you just follow my tips and always writing high quality content that your audience wants and have a content marketing strategy that you follow, I am sure you will succeed.

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