3 Keys to Creating a Solid Content Marketing Strategy

To my mind the secret to having a solid content marketing strategy comes down to three things:

1.  Great content includes a great strategy

2.  Make sure your content gets found by the search engines

3.  Your content must be promoted

Great content includes a great strategy

Having a great content strategy only happens if it matches your business goals.

So what exactly are you trying to do with your business?

Add more customers? Build a larger email list? Increase search engine traffic to your site? Build credibility with the public?

In short, what are your business goals for your marketing generally and your content marketing specifically? What is your strategy to achieve these goals and is your content marketing in step with them?

To make this easier and help get it on track, you need an editorial calendar. Any sort of successful content marketing takes time and it can take weeks or even months to develop a loyal following.

A lot of elements go into any content marketing program and they all need to fit together. This is especially true when you’ve got more than one person doing your content marketing.

Editorial calendars can make everything go smoother, and it also gives you a way to record and then put into action your best ideas.

Make sure your content gets found by the search engines

In the days of pre-Internet marketing, having well written and useful content was enough.

Today, of course, content must be well written AND written with the search engines in mind. It shouldn’t be written for the search engines, since people read the content, but targeting the right keywords for the search engines in the content is an important part of today’s SEO.

In other words, content marketing and search engine optimization need to complement each other.

And you shouldn’t get too far ahead in your content planning without using a keyword research tool. One search tool to try is InboundWriter. There’s even a free version to get you started. Another great choice for suggesting keywords is Ubersuggest.

You need to make sure that you create something that people seek out and actually want to read.

Your content must be promoted

Create a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. Build it and they will come.

Chances are you’ve probably heard one of these stock phrases and it’s relation to marketing advice. Put another way, creating great content is never enough. You need to promote it too.

And in even in today’s social media world you need to do more than just invite people via email and Twitter and Facebook. A rule of thumb in some marketing circles is to spend at least a third as much time and money promoting your content as you spend creating it. And many experts think that those ratios are low.

Remember too, that if you want to get your readers to share your content, it had better be more than merely entertaining. It had better be useful too.

Readers after all have given up time from their hectic lives to digest that content. Will they get something worthwhile for that investment?

What sort of investment have you made in your content marketing strategy? We always appreciate what you have to share with us and our readers.