Using content marketing to promote your business is a powerful way of generating awareness. The challenge can often be coming up with relevant and impactful content ideas. Like all marketing activity however, it’s about preparation and planning. Here are five ideas that will help:
- Define the objectives
Understand what you are trying to achieve. Are you looking for increased brand awareness, greater market engagement or to generate more sales leads? The type of content required and where it needs to be seen, clearly depends on the desired outcome. Look at concepts as opposed to formats as a starting point. This knowledge of defining what you want to achieve and how you’ll measure it provides a great start.
- Analyse what’s out there
It’s a valuable exercise in analysing what your competitor’s online performance is and what level of engagement there is in your sector. This helps in setting realistic targets, shows what is already being done and importantly what works best. There are tools such as Buzzsumo that can help with this analysis.
- What do you want to spend?
As with all marketing activity there is a cost in producing content, whether you are producing it in-house or through your agency. Clarity on what your resources can provide is valuable and worth getting clear from the outset.
- Schedule the workload
Determining how long it will take to produce content, who is responsible for producing it and when you want to start seeing results are fundamental questions that need asking. The time available may rule out certain types of content. If your agency is producing the content it is likely you will need an internal resource to manage the process. A formal review to analyse results also needs to be set up.
- Where are your audience?
Where are your target audience most engaged? Are they online or consuming content via traditional media? Know where you want your content to be seen and by whom. After knowing the target publications, websites and blogs for example, understand what content types they prefer. If editors of a trade publication can’t upload your content you’ve wasted your time. Make it easy for them!