According to Marketing Charts, 64% of marketers want to know how to build a scalable content marketing strategy.

You may be wondering the same thing right now.

“Content is King”. This is one of the most well-known internet phrases. As cliche as it sounds, it is undeniably true.

There are a few ways to use content marketing strategy in your business. One is to create ‘clustered content’ that will help you dominate a topic. Another is to have an editorial balance between a search-focused and thought leadership content. The third is to align your content with the problems that your business solves.

In creating your content marketing strategy, here are a few questions you should answer first.

• Who will read your content?
• What problems will you solve for your readers?
• What makes you unique?
• Which content channels are the best for your business?
• How will your content be created?

Here is how to create your very own content marketing strategy.

1. Set your goals

Before anything else, you must learn the aim of your business for why you want to develop a content marketing strategy. You can use the SMART goal model to help with this step. The SMART goal must be: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. 

• Specific – Define exactly what you are trying to improve with your content marketing strategy. This should a few sentences long and easy to share with others.
• Measurable – Making your goal trackable is key to tracking your progress. This should be numeric. For example, if you want to increase your social media following, without giving a number to this goal, it is unlikely for you to know how far you’ve come.
• Attainable – Know where your business is in relation to your measurable goal. Your goal must be 
• Relevant – You have to know why exactly you are pursing your content marketing strategy. How will it contribute to your company? Ultimately, it should be tied to creating a business impact.
• Time-Bound – Set your timeline to have a meeting about your goal. Determine what changes you can adjust to help you get back on track.

2. Create buyer personas

Creating a buyer persona will help with identifying who your target audiences are. It is especially important for people to start out with having an idea of what your readers want to read and what you can realistically provide.

3. Run content audits

Although most people start their content marketing strategy by writing blog posts, there are a whole variety of content types you can create. For example, if you have been running a blog for a while, consider writing an ebook that put together all your previous blogs and forming them into a guide. This is one of the many ways you can repurpose your content into several different formats. 

Running a content audit will help you review your previous content marketing efforts. This will make it easier for you to come up with newer types of content you can try out to develop a variety in your content marketing strategy.

4. Choose a content management system

There are various Content Management Systems (CMS) you can try out. Some of the most popular CMS are HubSpot and WordPress. These are systems that will allow you to plan and publish your content, handle email marketing, track analytics, and more.

5. Brainstorm content ideas

After setting up everything, it is time for you to come up with content ideas. There are a few tools that can help you with this. A great place to start is by browsing for topics on BuzzSumo. This platform will help you discover popular content and ideas that you can build off of when planning your own content.

6. What types of content will you create

There are a variety of content types you can explore and experiment with. Consider what you or your team are capable of creating and the time limit you have.

Here are all the content types you can try creating:

• Infographics
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Social media
• Blog posts
• Ebooks
• Case studies
• Templates

After having worked on the same few formats for a while, try adding a new type of content into the mix. 

7. Publishing and managing content

Apart from just deciding on what types of content you will create, you will also have to manage and schedule your content appropriately. 

This is where a content calendar comes in. Putting all the content you plan on publishing in one calendar will allow you to see what needs to get done first and manage your time working on those content accordingly.

Great content are usually evergreen. Evergreen content are content that will stay relevant after months from when it is written. While evergreen content is important, seasonal content, or content that is based on news or events, is just as important to have. 

Those timely content will help create a spike in your traffic. They bring in more visitors compared to the consistent but lower traffic evergreen content. 

Therefore, make sure you incorporate different kinds and different types of content into your content marketing strategy.

For seasonal content, it is good to make a list of important holidays in your content calendar to help remind you of when to create and publish them.

Conclusion

Implementing a content marketing strategy will undoubtedly help you grow your business. With this, you are providing value to your audience and providing solutions to them consistently. Whether your business is a B2B or a B2C, there is always something you can create content from. It is just a matter of execution!

If you are interested in learning more about how to use digital marketing in your business, take a look at our digital marketing guides here. But if you are considering having an expert help you out, let MarketingGuru help you! Contact us for a free digital marketing strategy consultation today!