As the final quarter of 2019 ticks on, it’s time to think about the coming year. As a business owner, you’ve already considered hiring needs, new product rollouts, and countless other tasks for your upcoming year. Don’t overlook your content strategy for 2020. It’s one of the foundations of your modern marketing program, yet often overlooked until the last minute.
There are several steps to take to create a digital marketing content strategy for 2020. Work on each of these steps to ensure you’re communicating the best possible message in the year that’s approaching.
Review Where You Have Been
Before you can move forward, you need to consider where you’ve been. It’s important to look at the types of content you’ve used in the last year, especially around key times for your business whether that’s at the holidays or in the middle of the summer months. Address the following:
- What types of blog posts hit your goals out of the park? What do you think was the reason for this?
- What type of content failed to get any target readers to your site? Can you spot the flaws in it?
- What type of growth have you seen over the last year? If you haven’t seen enough, that doesn’t always mean you need to spend more money. Rather, it means it’s time to adjust your message or content style.
Looking forward, consider what you want to focus on for the upcoming year. You’ll want to include those methods and content types that really hit it home for you. Yet, you also want to put some time into finding new trends and tools to reach even more people.
Define the New Year’s Strategy
What should be included in your new content strategy? Consider what a content strategy actually is. Moz puts it clearly by defining it as a vision of how and why your content is going to be created. It also includes methods of creating and managing that content. Let’s take a look at what you’ll want to focus on going forward.
#1: Define Who Is in Charge
If you see the value and importance of a content strategy, but you aren’t so keen on learning the ropes yourself, it may be time to hire a pro to manage it for you. A content strategist is a professional that can do this work for you. Even if you plan to do this in-house, it’s best to have one person that’s the goal is to focus on content development and outreach.
It’s also essential to have this professional operate as part of a larger team. Don’t silo this individual to handle it on their own. They should be a component of your overall marketing team and answer to your CEO and COO. In other words, make content marketing a core component of your business model.
#2: Define What’s Important Going Forward for Your Company
Take a good look at who your target audience is. You’ve done this before, perhaps, but your company has morphed over the last year. Has your ideal customer changed? Who are they? What social networks are they using? What’s important to them, and to your business, heading into 2020? Consider any social efforts you’ve incorporated, such as a go-green policy or an equality message in your brand. Update your mission statement.
Then, consider products and services. Do you have plans for a new product launch? Are you conducting research on new solutions? This should be a consideration for your content strategy.
#3: Get with the Trends
Over the coming months, you’re sure to hear about new content marketing trends and methods. Some of these may be just what your business needs to push forward and reach your target goals. It’s essential to weed out what may not work specifically for your business. Let’s take a look at a few of these that are already becoming essential for marketers.
- You’ll need to be visual. Good photos are important, but video is the standout tool for 2020. It needs to be a part of every marketing campaign you develop. Digital Marketing World estimates 13 percent of all internet traffic (not just marketing) will focus on video by 2021.
- Content itself will need to be focused on long-tail keywords. More tailored and specific keywords will be important.
- Focus on quality, not necessarily quantity. It’s going to be essential to develop longer pieces that hit all the key marks for the search engines. Yet, quality is paramount here.
Are you ready to get started? Work with WriterAccess on developing your content strategy goals and link up with a content writer to get your initial campaigns underway.
Sandy B. is a full-time, professional freelance writer and copywriter with more than 10 years of online experience. She is also a published author of seven, top-reviewed, in-print books on Amazon. These focus on financial topics such as retirement planning, bankruptcy, business finance, estate planning, and personal credit health as well as organic gardening and clean living. She’s ghostwritten content for hundreds of clients on topics ranging from health to finance, business services, online and offline marketing and much more.
