Seven tips for developing a successful campaign
People who 20 years ago would never have used the word “content” are now deeply focused on creating their content and leveraging the channels to distribute it.
These days influencers, soccer parents, side hustlers, designers, poets, and unclassifiable attention seekers are thinking about their content marketing strategy.
Here are seven tips, for individuals as well as companies.
1. Marketing strategies are essential
A study by the Content Marketing Institute found that 57% of content marketers don’t have a strategy. This is foolish. Without a strategy you don’t know where you are going, and have no reference for your choices.
2. Determine your goals
What are your personal or business objectives? This is the important “why” underpinning your efforts. It helps you direct your energies. If something doesn’t move you toward your goals, or align with your purpose, then perhaps you shouldn’t do it.
3. Embrace your specialty
This is not just what you do, it is about what makes you unique among everyone else who does it. Then lean into that. Make sure your content and how it is promoted supports that unique value proposition.
4. Recognize audience needs
Who are the target audiences for your content? What are their challenges, and how can your content help them? You could be providing professional advice, or humorous entertainment, just make sure your audience benefits.
5. Understand audience preferences
Think of your audiences – and you may have several different types – as personas. What attributes do most of them share? What do they want and how do they prefer to receive it? Will they like certain types of content or marketing activities, or hate them? Successful content marketing is not just what you say, but how you say it, and to whom.
6. Don’t work too hard
You’re probably doing content marketing off the side of your desk, so don’t let it overwhelm you. Streamline your process any way you can. Content can be ephemeral, especially on social media. Repurposing and cannibalizing things across multiple channels and platforms can make them new again, for you as well as much of your audiences.
7. Create a calendar
Your content marketing life will improve the more you plan it out. A marketing calendar gives you greater control over cadence, helps you identify gaps, and provides a long term view of your campaigns. A little extra work up front can save you a lot of confusion, anxiety, and last-minute panic later.