We live in a world where content exists everywhere we go.
Every hour, minute, and second of every day, we’re bombarded by content.
To say the least, it’s a very large part of our lives in many different ways.
Although content marketing creates opportunities to get in front of your customers, it also means that there are challenges you’re already facing, or that you’ll soon-to-be faced with.
The abundance of content available to consumers and businesses alike means that there is no shortage of the good, the bad and the ugly when it comes to content that marketers and brands are putting out there.
Truthfully, I’ve had my fair share of all three – it’s how I’ve been able to learn what works, what doesn’t, and continue the iterative process along the way.
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5 Effective Marketing Strategies to Apply in Your Business
In this article, I’ll quickly breakdown five informative and useful things you can start taking action on immediately that will improve your overall content marketing strategy.
Keep in mind that this article isn’t a how-to on creating jaw-dropping content. Instead, it’s about how to level up your entire content marketing game from strategy and creation of content to distribution so that your content actually gets in front of real humans.
1. Take a Pause and STOP Creating Content
Wait… stop creating content? You might be thinking this is completely counterintuitive to the article, but I promise you it isn’t.
I’m not saying stop creating content entirely, but rather to stop creating content for the sake of just creating it. Take a pause on the creation train and take a look at why you’re creating the content in the first place.
One of the [many] reasons why there is a ton of not-so-good content out there is because marketers are continually creating content for the sake of creating content.
They’re objective and KPIs are based on filling some sort of content quota without goals that are addressed to have more impact on revenue.
When you’re working off a content quota, it’s inevitable that not every piece you produce will be a smashing success.
Instead of over-producing content based on a quota, consider creating content that’s driven by intent and purpose.
More specifically, here’s what I mean:
- Create content that answers questions your sales team continually gets
- Create content based on specific keywords your audience is searching for
- Create content that’s related to industry-specific terminology
- Create content that’s interactive and engaging, while informative
- Create content that provides detailed explanations of new product features
One thing’s for certain. When you start creating content with purpose, intent and a concise way of communicating, you’ll find it much easier to connect with the right type of people.
2. Think About the Long-Term Value of Content (LTVC)
This is one of the easiest things to do, and it’s often one of the most overlooked as well.
Sure, creating content around recent events and trends is exciting and can pave the way for success—there’s no questioning that. However, it’s also challenging because a strategy around this type of content is very time sensitive.
Instead, here’s what I would recommend to get a better ROI on your content. Create evergreen content that remains both relevant and valuable to your visitors, prospects and clients even six to twelve months from now. Really, with minor edits and updates every so often, this type of content should remain relevant well beyond that.
Remember, there is absolutely no shame in consistently reviewing your content every month or quarterly to keep it fresh and up to date. In fact, if you’re already doing this, you are well ahead of the game—we’ll get to this one in a bit.
3. Distribution is the Real Winner
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
This is what always comes to mind when I think of individuals and companies that focus on creating content, but lack the most important part… distribution.
Without having a solid promotional plan for spreading the word, it’s tough to really do much with even the best piece of work.
This is why it’s necessary to create a solid model and framework for distributing your content and getting it in front of the right people at the right time.
If it sounds complicated, it really isn’t. Your framework for getting content out the door doesn’t have to be complex at all, it can be as simple as some of these examples below:
- Text in a word document will bullet points (just like this)
- Checklists in Trello, Asana, Notion or some other project management tool (this is what I personally use)
- A slide deck that your team has available to reference
The key here is to have something you can refer to, and something that you can update and improve along the way.
4. Consider the Different Types of Content
By default, 90% of marketers and executives they’re working for refer to content in the context of articles or whitepapers.
However, content can be and should be much more than just articles. Especially if you really want to experiment on ways to make a significant difference.
Rather than doing the same thing day in and day out, in terms of writing blog articles, consider these different types of content that you can use:
- Checklists, guides, and templates
- Calculators and interactive tools
- Short podcast snippets
- Facts, stats and research on your industry
- Contests, quizzes, and polls
- Infographics
And the list continues. The key here is to know and understand that the type of content you’re creating doesn’t have to be limited to articles based and 101’s.
5. Review, Edit and Recycle Old Content
Let’s think about how most companies approach their content marketing: They produce a really great article or e-book or landing page, write clever captions for social, schedule those posts, and that’s it.
Once that’s been said and done, it’s on to the next piece. And so on, and so on.
The major problem here is that there is SO MUCH missed opportunity. This is especially true if you’re content strategy focuses on creating evergreen content as we talked about in tip #2.
Not only that, it actually devalues your content as an investment.
Think about it for a few seconds. There’s a really good chance your team is able to update previous content that you’ve already created. Whether that’s adding new internal or external links to your articles, editing the descriptions of your videos, or even changing the layout of your landing pages.
Now think about the time and money investment that it takes to create new content from scratch compared to updating that existing piece of content that has already proven to be effective and useful.
It also gives you more opportunity to reintroduce this piece of content back into distribution to get it in front of more people. By reintroducing your content back into the distribution mix, you’ll significantly increase your chance of success and earning a greater ROI than if you just left it.
You can let your clients and audience know that you’ve spent time updating it as a way to provide more value, or just leave that part out of the equation. Try experimenting with the two to see what works and what doesn’t.
Regardless of the above, the best approach when it comes to the upkeep or your content is to establish a regular cadence; weekly, monthly, quarterly, that one is totally your call.
It’s time to start improving your content
So, what’s next? Well, it’s simple. Start putting these 5 tips to good use so that you can improve your content marketing strategy today and well into the future.
