How To Develop A Content Marketing Strategy

Choose Your Platforms

Choosing your platforms is probably the easiest part of putting together a content marketing strategy. First, just think about what type of content you may be producing and then think of the most popular platforms for that content. For instance, if you are planning on publishing PowerPoint Presentations, you can use SlideShare. If you are planning on publishing short bursts of content along with an image, you can use Facebook or Google+ and if you are planning on creating how to articles, you can use Ezine websites and article directories.

The platforms that I most frequently use are Facebook, Google+, YouTube, Twitter, SlideShare and blogs in general, whether they be mine or a guest blog related to my niche or ones that I have an existing relationship with and blogs where I have a small following around each post that I publish.

Choose Your Content

As stated above, you need to write specific types of content for specific types of platforms. If you have earmarked Google+, YouTube & SlideShare as your platforms of choice, you then need to go ahead and create content that fits each platform. On Google+, you need to either need to source some of your top articles that you can share via links or write small bursts of content to go alongside an image, on YouTube, you need a video that will engage your audience, on EzineArticles you need to create a how to resource or information piece that people will be interested in and finally on SlideShare, you can pieced together a PowerPoint Presentation that people will find useful and share around.

Choose Your Times

Have an editorial calendar for organizing which content will be published where, and on what time. It is a good idea to organize your content so that it flows and at the end of the month, it has a theme or particular direction, rather than simply spitting out content willy-nilly. It is also a good idea not to post too frequently on each particular platform or else you may find that your readers get sick of you and stop following you. You need to leave them wanting more, not wishing that they didn’t hear from you again.

Schedule & Publish

If you use tools to assist you with your SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing efforts, you will be able to schedule when your posts go out which saves you logging into each platform, each time and publishing your content manually. I personally suggest that you use Sendible but if you already have software in place to help you to distribute your content, you are already one step ahead. Input your content inside your tool, pick a date that you would like to publish that content and save. On that date, on that time, your content will go out to the masses automatically, without you going back in and doing anything.

Monitor Progress

When you know what content you are going to publish on which platform and what time it is going to be sent out, you then need to head across to that platform at that exact time and monitor what your audience are saying, manage your community and interact with your audience. Allow them to have their say and then thank them, respond to their comments and keep the conversation going. The more discussion you can build around the content that you publish or syndicate, the more popular it will be, the more reach it will get, the more exposure your business will achieve and the ultimately, more sales will come through.

Needless to say, this type of content reach and discussion around your brand will also help you in other areas of your overall inbound marketing approach such as with SEO. Google has openly stated that it factors in social elements into it’s algorithm so if you can get people talking and sharing your content, the better your rankings will be in Google.

In Conclusion

Gone are the days where you can just publish any old content, throw some links within it, dominate the search engines and generate traffic. Google in particular are tightening the reigns on such practices and guess what, so are your target audience. Be sure to publish high-quality content across multiple platforms, keep your audience engaged and be a constant presence. Not only will this ensure that you don’t ever get caught by Google updates or algorithm changes as you will have multiple streams of traffic and Google loves content reach but it will also ensure that your business gets the exposure it needs and deserves and it will result in constant growth and success for your business.