Creating a Solid Content Marketing Plan for Small Businesses

GoalsContent Marketing is a long term strategy. It often takes four, six, or more months to make any sort impact and short term goals need to reflect this.

Realistic/obtainable goals that direct readers down the conversion funnel

Audit Current ContentIncrease email subscriptions by determining if you need…An infographicAn ebookMore visual contentEtc.

Auditing your existing content lets you find holes and determine which content can be re-purposed.

Determine Baselines(Starting Point)

Record current size and engagement in your community. This gives you something to compare with when gauging the success of your content marketing.

BenchmarksLeaders in the industry?Leaders for specific tasks/jobs?How do they perform?

Allows you to develop concrete metrics based on benchmark competitors.

Target AudienceSegmentation – Splitting off the customers most likely to need/want your product and targeting communications toward this segment.

Buyer personasTailored messaging

The Conversion FunnelFrom awareness to conversion, create content related to each stage of the customer journey to ensure effective movement down the conversion funnel.

Understand YourPurpose

More nuanced than goal setting, this is the overarching activity related to your content marketing.

If your purpose is to create brand awareness, you’ll likely focus on creating content that performs well in search to bring in more prospects.

Develop anEditorial Calendar

This is the lifeblood of any content marketing plan.What it includes:HeadlinePlanned social networkWriter/EditorDue DatePossible LinksKeywords/phrasesImagesPublicize planTopic

Develop ContentThe purpose of content is to tell your brand’s story in a way that attracts and engages your audience… It’s marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing.

Great content…Uses short paragraphsVaries in sentence lengthUtilizes keywords & phrasesUses the active voiceIs proofread

Promote Your ContentIn essence, all you need to do is create lots and lots of search optimized content and you’ll eventually feature well within the search rankings for your market. This works and is content marketing in its truest form.

Promotion also means:Building your social networksSharing content created by others

Track Results

OptimizeNow that you’re measuring results, you should do more of what’s working and stop what isn’t.

Rinse, RepeatThe fact is, everything eventually changes...

Personas change.

The Google Algorithm changes.

Facebook changes.

You must constantly measure and adapt your content marketing to keep up with today’s standards and trends.