Content Marketing Initiatives You Need For A Prosperous 2015
Looking out of the window, it was the rainy season here in Asia at this time. Reality struck… I realized that it was already the first of November (at the time of writing this post).
And this means that I only have less than two months before I say good bye to 2014.
It was time to plan my content marketing strategy for the coming year. If you are wondering, yes I’m already late. However, it is better late then never, right?
I’m a huge fan of content marketing and I know the power that lies in it.
For a brick and mortar business, powerful content marketing strategies could make or break your business. For bloggers, the chance of competing with millions of blogs out there is a daunting challenge.
Either way, you need to have solid content marketing strategies if you want to be really successful in this industry.
In this article, you will find 3 strategies to help you built a systematic marketing system for 2015. These are the exact steps I took to determine the best route for me to take.
Tactic #1 – Understanding your target audience
- Do you know what your readers or potential customers are interested in?
- Why do people visit your website or business blog for?
- Which content of yours is getting the most shares and comments?
- And the biggest question, do you know where your readers are actively engaging on?
Don’t be panic if you are not able to answer any of these questions. Majority of my clients couldn’t define those as well.
The above are not meant to make you push the panic button, but it is certainly a red light for you to take a step back and do some serious research.
It doesn’t matter if you are doing content or social media marketing; you got to understand your target audience.
After all, your target audience are the ones that would be your potential customers.
Tools you can use to understand your audience
You are short of time and the guessing game will not work. You need to have precise answer(s) not from what you see but from your target audience… and you got to collect the information fast (remember that 2015 is really, really close).
Two of the fastest ways to get the exact information is by using:
- Survey forms
- Analytics
1. Survey forms
Survey forms are great methodology to get more feedbacks and fast. The only challenge you will face is readers have the conception that it is a lengthy process.
And in most cases, survey forms are really lengthy!
If you are planning to use survey forms, providing rewards for your readers is a great move and as well as making it as short as possible (3 to 5 questions are always great).
For those who are using auto responders, you can easily embedded survey forms into your weekly or monthly newsletter too.
2. Analytics
Analytics is probably the fastest compared to survey forms and the information usually relies a lot on your traffic. You can use:
- Google Analytics
- Google Webmaster Tools
Using Google Analytics, head over to your account and select the following: Acquisition > Search Engine Optimization > Landing Pages.
This will give you a full list of popular pages / posts your readers that your readers are seeing when land on your blog. The data received will give you an estimation on general topic your readers are looking for.
Using Google Webmaster Tools, select the following: Select account > Search traffic > Search queries.
You will see a graph-like data which shows the number of impressions and clicks. You can consider impressions as the keywords that your readers are searching for while clicks are the ones that your readers are clicking.
And the above proves two vital information for your content marketing strategy:
- The types of information your readers are looking for
- The types of blog title that makes the conversion
Tactics #2 – Preparing content marketing strategies to work on
The term content does not relates solely to written content and instead, it could range anything from blog posts to videos. The sky is literally your limit.
How do you prepare a working content marketing strategies like a professional?
Several very simple outlines are as below:
- Finding the type of media that provides the best return of investment (ROI) or results
- Working a content distribution schedule
Understand the power of each media techniques
When it comes to content marketing, there are several types of media you can work on such as:
- Blog post
- Podcast
- Videos
- Slides
Each has their own advantages which you need to leverage from. For example, I often consider myself as a reader of my own blog.
I would listen to podcast when I am driving and working out while reading the latest content marketing trends on mobile. Before bed, I would dig into some videos and if I am running short of time (real late at night), I would just search for some slides to glance through.
Thinking back, if I am able to do so, your readers would do the same too right?
That’s the whole point!
Working on content distribution schedules
As a content writer or marketer, you are always short of time and as a matter of fact, no one is blessed with 25 hours a day.
The ultimate goal here you should be targeting is to have a good schedule.
My go-to tools would always be Google Calender as I am able to sync it across multiple devices. Here’s an example of my day to day schedule for guidelines:
- Monday, Wednesday and Friday – Updating my blogs
- Tuesday and Thursday – Preparing guest posts
- Saturday – Weekly SEO checks on my blogs
- Sunday – Preparation for the schedule for the coming week
Of course, this is really a simplified version of my schedule. My real schedule consists of per hour work and this makes me become more productive.
If you are wondering, No – I don’t use a mindmap for my content marketing. Instead, I use Edit Flow plugin which is a great add-on to any WordPress sites.
Important note: There are many content strategies out there which you can find using Google. However, be vary as not all of them works well for you. I even wrote about 3 (Terrible) Content Marketing Best Practices Of All Time which you can read later.
Tactic #3 – Measuring your marketing success
- Doing research prior to writing – Done!
- Writing great content – Done!
- Sharing on social media platforms – Done!
- Setting up goals to measure success – ( … )
Every successful content marketing strategy is useless without a goal.
But why?
Without setting a goal, you are not able to judge the success level of your content marketing. “Is your content marketing strategy working?” or “Are you getting the results that you are wishing for?” are two simple questions.
And I am not talking about getting tons of traffic and you give yourself a pat for a job well done. Not even close!
Content marketing is just like any other online marketing out there. You want to make sure you are always two steps ahead of your competitors.
Therefore, tracking your content marketing strategy is really important. A few examples are as below:
- Number of unique users
- Time spent on a page
- Mobile versus desktop readership
- Bounce rate
- Heat map and click patterns
- Number of total shares
Note: Tracking and measuring success help you to determine and what works and what doesn’t. In the end of the day, you can use those information to further enrich your content marketing strategies.
Over to you
I hope you find this article useful and now it’s your turn. Share with me your content marketing initiatives you have for your business in 2015 and let’s discuss them further in the comments below.
Additional image: http://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/content-marketing
Reginald Chan
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