Create A Content Marketing Strategy

​Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to educate, engage with, and provide value to your customers. Not sure what content marketing is exactly? Check out my Why Content Marketing? blog.

With content marketing, the emphasis is on creating quality, not quantity. This means developing a strategy takes time, but the results from posting crafted, polished material that reflects your brand far outweigh posting something hurried and rushed every single day.

The good news with content marketing is, you can re-purpose and re-use a lot of the material you create. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time. Here’s a step-by-step guide you can use to create your own content marketing strategy.

Blogging

Google loves websites that are updated regularly. Over time, posting a new blog at least once a month will help improve your SEO and Google rankings. Be careful though. Your blog must be unique. Google penalises websites harshly that use lots of copied and pasted content.

People don’t like staring at pages full of text. When you’re uploading your blog, make sure you break up large chunks of text into easy to read paragraphs and sentences. In case they are in a hurry to see if you can solve their problem, include plenty of headings and sub-headings so your blog is easy to skim-read.

​Your blog is an opportunity to highlight your business. What is it that sets you apart? Answer some frequently asked questions, offer a tutorial, or post something your customers will find valuable. 

Make sure it’s relevant, interesting, and contains plenty of specific keywords. For example, if you’re a plumber based in Christchurch, you want to make sure your blog has the words “plumber,” “plumbing” and “Christchurch” included a multiple times. Try answering only one question on one subject, instead of rambling across a few different areas.

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​Images and Graphics

Make your page more colourful with images and graphics. While Google may not penalise you for copying someone else’s photos, you could find yourself in legal trouble if you take someone’s image without their permission.

A Google Image search is not an appropriate way to find graphics for your website. Tools like Canva, PicMonkey and Pablo allow you to create your own content, while stock photo databases like Pixabay or Freerange Stock have a wide range of images on different topics. 

Two or three images per 600 word blog is usually enough.

Social Media

​A number of studies have shown that if you want your social media posts to stand out, they should be accompanied by a photo. Text based posts don’t have the same kind of engagement.

Use one of the images you have just created, and post it to Facebook along with a link to your blog. You can do this as many times as you have unique images for that same blog post. Just use a different line or angle to encourage people to click on the link and read more.

Video

​After you have posted your blog to your website and across social media, make a short video video where you summarise your blog’s content. Don’t read the whole article word for word. Just highlight the main points in an engaging and informative way. Try to keep your videos short and snappy. Ninety seconds to two minutes is usually enough time to get your point across.

Creating videos has never been easier. Most smartphones or digital cameras will let you create decent video quality. There are also plenty of apps and online editing software that will help you create the right style and tone for your Christchurch business. 

Newsletters

​For a number of reasons, Facebook and Instagram won’t show your posts to every single one of your followers. Not all of your followers are online at the same time of day, and to be honest, Facebook can limit the organic reach of your posts to encourage you to pay their advertising fees.

MailChimp is another simple tool that helps you create beautiful emails. Now you can make sure your message reaches the inboxes of all your customers. You can include an image or the video you have created, a snippet of text to make them want to read more, and a link to your website so they can read your whole blog.

​That’s a basic content marketing strategy. Blog, images, social media, video, newsletter. Rinse and repeat. The more regularly you post content to social media and your website, the more you will engage your audience and create a following for your business.

Not sure where to start? If you want to know more about content marketing, or getting started with MailChimp, blogging or social media, contact the team at Inform PR.

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