Content is king, and you need it to drive traffic to your website, cast yourself as an expert in your field and shape your brand image. However, focusing on your content strategy when you have hundreds of other things to worry about can be challenging. To help, here are some unique ways to improve your content strategy:
1. Track your metrics
Rather than popping up a blog and hoping for the best, businesses need to track their metrics. Ideally, you should have software that tracks the basics such as page views and downloads, but you also want information about how often clients take action. In particular, you want to know where clients have been or what they have been reading before they take the next step. That allows you to see what impact your content is having, helps you decide which content is working on your site, and assists you in figuring out which direction to take future content.
2. Focus on your buyers
Don’t let metrics distract you from your buyers. Instead, let your metrics as well as customer surveys guide you toward the type of content your clients really want. Whether your clients want short sound bites, how-to articles, quirky posts with lots of pictures, empathy-inducing narratives or any other type of content, give them what they want, and make it better than they expected. Also, consider how your clients like to access content and present it to them accordingly.
3. Integrate social media
In many cases, customers may be more likely to read content if it appears on their social media pages. Regardless of whether you send out email blasts or incorporate direct mail, make sure you also integrate social media. You can use your social media accounts to distribute and promote your content, but you can also leverage them as a way to obtain contact information from prospective clients so you can add them to other marketing distribution lists and further tailor their promotional messages.
4. Share your ideas
Your content strategy shouldn’t be restricted to your own blog or website. Instead, branch out and share information. Offer to write guest blogs for relevant websites. Share timely information about your company or your industry and include a link bank to your page with your author bio. You can also put out press releases to share big and exciting company news. These types of efforts help generate organic traffic to your site and strengthen your brand image in the Internet world and beyond.
5. Focus on timely ideas
Regardless of which industry you are in, there is likely always something new and exciting happening. When possible, craft your content around timely information. Set up news alerts for keywords related to your business, and read industry papers and journals. Then, craft content that answers the questions your customers are likely to have about new advancements or changes in your industry or related fields.
6. Expand as needed
At the beginning, doing a little can be better than doing nothing, but as your business grows, you need to match its growth with more engaging content and marketing initiatives. To make that possible, have a revolving line of credit or another funding source on hand, and tap into it as needed to invest in new platforms, better software, updated graphics or other improvements to your website. Extra funds can also be useful if you need to consult with a content strategist or a social media manager or hire additional content writers.
7. Hire professionals to help
In most cases, you wouldn’t cut your own hair, build your own house or do a number of other things on your own, and content should be no exception. Whenever possible, hire a professional to help you write your content, craft your content strategy and run your social media campaigns. There are numerous consultants who are happy to share their expertise or skills as needed. In some cases, you can work with professionals who share ideas, show you how to implement them and then let you handle the rest. In other cases, you can hire professionals to do the writing tasks for you.
When creating a content strategy, outline goals for your content and consider what impact you want your content to have. Then, track your metrics so you can see how closely your content gets you to your goals. Finally, write for your customers, spread your ideas around, and get help as needed. If you keep these tips in mind, you will be able to boost your content strategy and help your business grow.