Looking for this year’s keys to help you build your next content marketing strategy?
Do you want a powerful content roadmap to help your business reach new heights in 2023?
Wondering what other content marketers have that you might be missing out on?
According to Semrush’s 2022 State of Content Marketing Report, 78% of marketers who believed their content marketing was driving positive results had a documented content strategy.
So how do you set up the right strategy to really beat your competition?
The key to a successful content marketing strategy is follow through this ultimate content marketing checklist:
Create buyer personas; explore your audience and find their pain points. This will help you become the most useful resource on the web. Establish your brand story and let it shine through your future content. Set measurable content goals for the year. Run a content audit to find gaps in your existing inventory. Discover the topics that matter most to your audience. Optimize your content not only for readers but also for search engines to gain more visibility. Choose the best content distribution channels. Use tools and templates to automate every step of the process.
This article will show you the steps to create an effective content marketing strategy and action plan, plus the tools you’ll need along the way.
Develop audience personas with buyer persona templates
Tool you will need:
Who exactly are you targeting with your content?
What goals are they struggling with that your content can help them achieve?
Without a solid understanding of who you’re targeting, it can be very difficult to figure out what topics to cover and what content to create.
Without a clear audience in mind, you can’t create solution-oriented content, and you won’t have a clear, easy-to-formulate content plan.
Fortunately, finding out who your target audience is with person templatesyou will be directed directly to the ideal content for your audience.
These templates will guide you through the process of defining your personas:
Pain points Motivations Demographics Favorite Channels The best influencers and more.
Once you know their pain points and can connect with your audience with true empathy, it’s easy to create useful content which answers popular questions and offers solutions.
Image created by Semrush, October 2022
Establish your brand story with template kits
Tool you will need:
If you want your content to provide the right and consistent image for your brand, you must first establish your brand story.
You can gain valuable insights by examining your brand:
Clients. Competitors Unique value proposition in your market.
To establish your brand story, use this six-step narrative template.
Use it as an element of your content strategy that allows you to make deeper connections with readers and customers.
Define your content value proposition and mission statement
Why should readers choose your content over your competitor’s?
What unique value does your content have that will encourage readers to finish articles, subscribe to your email list, and follow your brand?
Use the answers to these questions to define your content value proposition and formulate your content marketing mission.
The process of creating your mission statement should include identifying your target audience and their goals, as well as how your content will help that audience achieve those goals.
While I don’t have a tool for this purpose, I suggest using the following mission statements as examples to base yours on:
“Educating and empowering the SEO community by providing the latest news and best practices from the industry’s smartest professionals.” (Search Engine Journal) “Our content is where digital marketers find multimedia information about SEO and content marketing so they can help their businesses grow through organic channels.” (Semrush)
Set your content marketing goals
Guide you will need:
What goals do you hope your content will achieve to have a positive impact on your company’s bottom line?
Setting specific goals will help you determine if your content marketing strategy is serving its purpose.
According to more than 40 sellers respondentsthe main objectives of content marketing they are an increase in brand awareness, website traffic and lead generation.
Image created by Semrush, October 2022
As you set goals for your content marketing strategy, use your company’s website analytics and social media reporting tools. Determine if your content has had an impact on your metrics, and if so, by how much.
This will give you a baseline to work from as you prepare the goals for your content strategy to measurably achieve specific key performance indicators (KPIs) and objectives and key results (OKRs).
Project management tools com asana they have goal setting features within their product.
Sharing goals across the company lets everyone know how their work is being applied to help the company achieve business results.
Inventory your current content library
Tools you will need:
You can’t complete a library without taking stock of what you have in your current inventory. A content audit allows you to see what content you have, exposing areas for optimization and improvement.
65% of marketers who found their content marketing efforts to be highly successful conducted content audits at least twice a year.
Of course, if you have a large website, auditing your content can be a tedious task. Fortunately, you can use a content audit tool to automate the process.
Using real-time metrics from Semrush, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console, the content audit tool will inspect your website’s folders and subfolders to reveal content that needs to be improved, rewritten, or removed to improve overall content quality .
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