My degree is in nursing. It’s different from the business world, so when I started my business it was hard for me to do understand the content marketing strategy of the business. Now I figured out the technical side, and realize how many entrepreneurs struggle with the business and more importantly content strategy and marketing. Only 3% of businesses consider their content strategy successful. If only 3% of businesses consider their content strategy successful, it probably won’t surprise you that 87% of those businesses consider themselves lacking in the areas of producing relevant and engaging content. If you look at last year did you have a good content marketing strategy? If you didn’t, this guide will help you plan for 2020 and years to come.
Your Content Marketing Strategy for 2020
Content marketing strategy and marketing are complex words for a simple process. The process started with finding the audience and writing for their needs. Let’s dive right Into how to start an amazing 2020.
Funnel Analyzer
The first part of content marketing is to figure out your funnel, as in your marketing funnel or sales funnel. If you don’t know what you’re selling and whom you’re selling to, the entire strategy will be confusing for the potential customer journey. You want your customer journey to be simple. First, you want to figure out who your audience is, and where you’re going to take them. It sounds simple… You want them to go to your sales page and buy a product, right? As you know, it’s not that easy. You have to start lead generation through blog posts and social media. You have to nurture those leads through an email list and free download. Then, from there, you want to encourage them to take action.
Content Needs
Only you know your business and you know your ideal client. There are so many ways to produce content these days via video, audio, and reading that all of those may be an option for you or maybe just one. You can easily take one blog post and repurpose it into many content upgrades.
Editorial Calendar
Use an editorial calendar to start planning your content marketing strategy. An editorial calendar is something that will keep you accountable for all the ideas for content and how often you are posting them, showing them on social media, or sending emails. Using an editorial calendar takes time, organization, and diligence.
Ideas
Brainstorm ideas for content. Most entrepreneurs have some ideas to start with, but the trouble is to keep them flowing. Remember you’re the guide to your audience and every piece of content needs to have some sort of purpose.
How to come up with more ideas for content:
- Questions from readers
- Groups
- Keyword searching
- Learn
- Inspiration from competitors
- Headlines
Now, it’s time to brainstorm with awesome headlines. Think of some words that make you click an article to read. Sumo has a cool headline generator you can try to help you create engaging, powerful headlines. A good headline gets three times more engagement!
Content Outline
Create a content outline to make sure you are covering every topic or call to action with your audience. Every one of my blog posts, I use a template. Now, it’s time to write. This is the easiest part. Start filling in the blanks to your outline. <Not a fan of writing? Check out this blog post: Blogging Without Writing>
Schedule
After you create the post it’s time to schedule it. WordPress you can schedule on the dashboard or you can use a tool like Infusionsoft to produce of broadcast for an email campaign. I use Tailwind for my Pinterest and Facebook and Instagram and Buffer for other social media. I challenge you to write every single day to your audience.
If you’re not writing every day try to at least research content and show up to your audience. Now, go back to your earlier posts. Check those headlines, Make sure you are talking to the audience you want to talk to, check your readability and your keyword and SEO and add images. These are the keys to a great 2019 strategy. Use these guidelines to avoid the most common content marketing mistakes most businesses make. The sooner you have it written down on your calendar, the better you will be at making it work for your business.
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