Content marketing tip #2: How to develop a healthy content marketing mindset
How to develop a healthy content marketing mindset?
Believe it or not, it's a very important question ... Why? Because, according to Point Visible 73% of B2B marketers say their strategy includes a plan to operate content marketing as an ongoing business process, not simply a campaign.
Content marketing is the process of creating valuable, relevant and helpful content in order to attract and engage a well-targeted audience group. This is why businesses need content marketing. This is why content marketing has become a literally vital and critical aspect of being visible in today’s digital busy world.
And that’s the biggest challenge for every internet marketer: getting heard through all of that noise. There is a ton of information out there and on top of that it’s a complex multi-device and multi-channel world where your customers’ attention is highly divided among different areas, platforms, etc. In other words, the attention that they actually have for you is very scarce. But a well-grounded, powerful content marketing strategy can help you break through that noise! Unfortunately, creating relevant, value-packed content is not easy at all. And of course, content marketing is much more than just content production. There is also SEO, link-building, promotion, monitoring, optimization, etc. Basically, any basic content marketing process should involve at least 8 mandatory steps:
- Aligning your content with your goals
Business objectives, main and secondary messages, desired actions, etc.
Technological considerations
Choosing the perfect design and the appropriate content type, structure and style.
Editorial calendar.
Creating valuable and unique content.
Optimizing your content for SEO and link-building.
Mapping the content to the sales funnel.
Defining a diversified multi-channel promotional strategy.
Finding the most efficient ways to monetize your content.
Tracking your results and optimizing the poorly performing marketing elements.
Leveraging the power of content curation.
Got scared? Don’t be! All you need to do is to hard-wire – or re-wire – your brain for success achieved through thought leadership. Relax, I am not talking about a surgical intervention … All you have to do, is to accept and to follow 5 basic rules:
1. You always need to be relevant and available for your target audience; while you are trying to connect with your audience in that complex, multi-channel, multi-device world, you should never forget that content marketing engages individuals on their own terms.
2. The content must be aligned with its purpose; in order to achieve different objectives (lead generation, thought leadership, brand awareness, etc) you are going to need different content types and content formats
3. The content must be a right fit for the delivery channel too; you’ll have to create different types of channel-specific content for every communication channel. A social media post for example won’t work very well in an email campaign …
4. Your content marketing should rely on clear pre-defined metrics; you should always create your content with a specific end-goal in your mind (10 new customers, 25 new subscribers, 50 new followers, etc).
5. The real power of content marketing lies in evergreen content; putting aside certain trend-related or time-sensitive content types, content marketing has to be (almost always) evergreen. In other words, your content should last months or years.
So, keep in mind the above rules when you are trying to define what content marketing means for you or your business, because they will help you to become a trusted source of information and to achieve your content marketing objectives.
Recent Comments
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This is what I hope your website training will help me do. To stay on message even though I may be coming from different angles. To stay consistent with the message, and not become muddled or lose focus.
Thanks for all the posts. I get excited when you have a new post for me to read and learn something new.
Thanks Clint!
These post basically are excerpts from my blog ...
In case that you want to check it out is mentioned in my bio :)
Thanks Zed for this valuable information I will incorporate this into my brain and apply the information as thinking like the people I am targeting.
Such a well written article!
Your statement on the need for us to "re-wire" our brain for success is powerful.
I'm finding I'm s-lo-w-l-y doing this on a subconscious level - when I sit down to write I find myself trying to "think like Google".
Also, the need for our content to "evergreen" cannot be overstated.
Thank you for sharing this!
Susan
Thanks for your time Susan!
And yes, you need to think like Google ... while you are wearing the shoes of your target audience!
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Getting the right audience to see your content seems to be the endgame here. Any content you produce, I take it, is, in effect, part of the sales funnel - to get people to your website to buy your product, or, in my case, to be directed to the right service for their needs.
Great tutorials. Ted
Thanks Ted!