Ready…aim…write! Success in content marketing is all about consistency. If you want to hold customers’ interests and convince them your company is trustworthy, you can’t simply bombard them with unrelated pieces of content, no matter how intriguing they are individually. You have to put out a consistent set of messages while appealing to potential clients’ needs and interests in a coordinated, systematic way.
This is only possible if you come up with a comprehensive content strategy ahead of time and stick to it throughout the campaign. The following guide will help you put together such a strategy and achieve quick but lasting content marketing success:
Step 1: Define Themes & Topics
You need to determine what your writers will write about. Although you can’t tell ahead of time what all the specific topics of your content will be, you can come up with general themes and parameters that your writers should follow over the course of your campaign. Here’s where you can draw from for content inspiration:
- Content Goals – First and foremost, figure out what goals you want to achieve most through your content marketing. Is your objective to raise awareness of your company, to gain trust among those who are already aware, or to push past customers to buy more? Of course, these are not mutually exclusive. But setting goals at this stage lets you determine which is most important.
- Buyer Personas – A buyer or customer persona is an idea of what your typical reader is like. By coming up with a persona at this stage, you and your writers can more easily determine what style, vocabulary, and other choices will appeal to customers.
- Hot Topics – Define some general topics that you can tie back to your brand; then plan to write on these topics every time they come up in the news or otherwise receive public attention. For example, say you are an apparel company selling gear that improves safety in the construction industry; every time there is a major construction accident, you can publish content about it.
By defining themes and topics for your campaign–based on your goals, customers, and industry hot buttons–you give your writers a clear sense of what they’re trying to achieve. They can thus begin writing for you without hesitation, confident they’re contributing to your success.
Step 2: Assemble Your Writers
Every content marketing campaign goes into the proverbial battle after putting together a team of trustworthy, skilled writers who will be able to deliver all the content you need. To find these writers, you must:
- Define the Job – Figure out what kind of content you need to publish and what skills the writers will need to have. For example, if you’re writing content to boost your company’s search engine rank, you’ll need writers who are familiar with SEO. Likewise, if you’re a financial company, your writers should have the training and experience to cover financial topics.
- Set Parameters – Determine how much you’re willing to pay for each piece of marketing content, as well as how long that content needs to be and how often you’ll be publishing it. The better you define this at the beginning of the writer exploration process, the easier it is to make sure you’re getting a writer who can handle your needs.
- Find a Talent Platform – Once you know what you’re looking for in a writer, find a forum where you can hire writers to create content as needed. Ideally, the platform should let you search for writers with specific skill sets, industry expertise, or levels of experience.
The writer exploration process always involves some degree of trial and error. You may find writers who seem suitable at first, but prove unable to meet your needs. But over time, you should be able to find writers with the specific skills you need, establish a working relationship with them, and put together the team you need for lasting success.
Step 3: Fuse with Other Marketing Features
Now that you’ve chosen your topics and given your writers clear goals, you can begin publishing content. As you do this, it’s important to coordinate your new content with other marketing materials. Make sure that everything you say in other marketing efforts is consistent with what your content marketing says. And if possible, try to cover similar themes and topics in each type of marketing at the same time. This reduces customer confusion and makes your company look more consistent.
Of all your marketing efforts, it’s particularly important to coordinate social media posting with content marketing. Your writer can help you with this, too! Posts on Facebook, Twitter, and other major networks let your customers know when you have new content. They also give readers a chance to leave questions or comments; by responding to these comments, you show them that you care about what they’re saying, giving them an incentive to come back and read more. Thus by coordinating content and social media marketing, you make both efforts maximally effective.
For more information on writer identification, goal-setting, and otherwise developing an effective content marketing strategy, contact WriterAccess today.
Andrew S has completed more than 1,300 assignments through WriterAccess and other marketing sites. He has written blog posts, articles, web pages, white papers, and grant proposals. His specialties include history, finance, healthcare, and the environment, though he is happy to learn and write about any topic at a moment’s notice.
