It’s hard to think of another time in recent history when all businesses needed to instantly upskill in a specific area. (And it’s a highly competitive, hugely complex and time-consuming area too!)
But in the past decade, the internet has made us all into content producers.
Picture this. It’s 1985 in Sydney, Australia. A plumber and his wife are chatting over the kitchen table.
She says, “Darl’, I think you need to consider your personal brand. How can your customers take you seriously if you don’t have a professional headshot? You need to communicate with potential clients too – what font do you think matches your voice best?”
He scratches his head and wonders whether his wife has lost her actual mind. (And back then, he’d have been right.)
Now fast forward to 2021. Picture the same job and the same conversation. This time, though, the wife is right.
These days, customers expect that all businesses, big or small, have some sort of online presence. That means they all need to partake in some kind of content marketing. And although anyone can jump on Facebook and make some noise, without a strategic content marketing plan, it’s just a waste of time.
That’s why a content marketing strategy is so important.
Now, perhaps you’re still at the stage of asking, why content creation is so important.
In short, it’s because – quite simply – your customers want to engage. For more detail, we recommend taking a moment to click that link, and then coming back to us here. (Don’t worry, we’ll wait.)
Ok, so now you know the why, it’s time to talk about the how.
It’s true in every area of business or life that hard work doesn’t always convert. You can slog away blindly with the work ethic of an ant, only to be outperformed by a lazy person with a good strategy.
That same concept applies to your content.
We see so many companies producing content without any kind of strategy in mind. And if your strategy is simply to throw mud against a wall and see what sticks, then good luck, and make sure you analyse the outcomes!
But if you want the best chance of getting a reasonable ROI on the time, effort and money you put into creating content, you need a clear plan. And we’d love to help you with that.
Here’s a quick rundown on how to create a content strategy that works…
There are several reasons you could be looking to develop a content marketing strategy. And it’s important to have a solid understanding of your why before you can decide on your how.
A few common motivations are:
- to improve your SEO
- to connect with clients
- to find new clients.
How you go on to develop your strategy will depend on what your goals are. Maybe you’re only interested in one of the above areas, or maybe you want a strategy that covers all of them.
Either way, there are no wrong answers. As long as you know what end goal you’re working towards, you can make a plan to get on the right track.
Here are a few techniques you might use to achieve those goals.
Any content marketing strategy will tell you that SEO is the most important area of content marketing strategy, because it helps people to find you. Populating your website with great content is useless if your potential clients never get to read it because they don’t know you exist.
And most of the time, if Google doesn’t know you exist, neither do your potential clients.
The bad news is that just writing a lot of articles with no thought for keywords is not how it works. There’s a real art to SEO. And if your goals are to find new clients, convert better or raise the visibility of your business, you’re definitely going to need to think about it.
(Or, of course, you could employ some talented SEO copywriters – and we know some great ones! – to help you develop a strategy.)
While it’s simple in theory, SEO can be a bit more complex to implement in practice.
If SEO is an area you want to focus on, we recommend:
- avoiding these common SEO mistakes in digital content production.
- getting familiar with how to generate SEO leads.
Or, if you feel like this is a job for the professionals, get in contact with us today.
We usually believe that SEO and content marketing strategy need to go hand in hand. But in some situations, SEO may not be the most important element of a content marketing strategy.
For example, your goal might simply be to connect with existing clients.
If so, your strategy will look very different from the SEO strategy we chatted about earlier.
To build trust, connect with existing clients and foster relationships, you’ll want to focus on emails and social media, and not worry too much about SEO.
After all, your customers want to engage. They want a real story, they want community and they want connection. To give it to them, you need to tell your brand’s story while ensuring your customers feel like they’re part of that story with you.
- Build your email list and use it!
- Become a storyteller on social media, and make sure your clients all follow you there.
Get in contact with us today, we can whip up some cracking content for you!
If you’re hoping to find new clients through your content marketing, your strategy needs to be all about discovery.
This should involve an element of SEO, yes. But discovery is a long game, which means you’ll also need to look at a mixture of native advertising, traditional advertising and social media.
Wondering what’s the difference between content marketing and native advertising? If you’re hoping your content marketing is going to reach new audiences – you should probably click the link above and brush up.
- Get your SEO in order.
- Create useful blog posts that answer your target audience’s search queries.
- Run competitions on social media accounts to grow your following.
- Engage in both native and traditional advertising.
As with anything, you’ll get a better outcome if you engage a professional to create your content marketing strategy. But we also understand that (especially in small businesses) it can be hard to find the budget to make that happen.
So our recommendation is to first engage someone who’ll help inform your strategy. Then, decide whether you have the capacity to create your content in-house, or if you need to outsource.
Either way, we have a bunch of Sydney-based SEO copywriters and strategists that can help you make that happen.
