7 Steps to Effective Content Marketing

The importance of high quality, compelling and unique content cannot be overemphasized. Content marketing has gained momentum when Google unveiled Penguin and Panda and today, “Content is King” is every marketer’s battle-cry.

In just a short time, SEO content writing has matured. Brands have now become publishers in their own right and every organization with an online presence is striving hard to become the preeminent information providers in their respective niches.

At the end of the day, not all content marketing strategies are created. Here are seven steps to help you in achieving awesome and effective content marketing.

Step 1. Review Past Content Marketing Efforts
For those who have not done any form of content marketing previously, you have nothing to worry about. All you need to do is to evaluate where you are in terms of your online presence and where content marketing will play in. Is it to build brand equity or boost your social presence?

For those who have done some content marketing in the past, you don’t necessarily have to begin in square one. You just have to streamline your past content materials and tailor fit it to the demands of today’s Internet users. If you are clueless where to start, it’s advisable to hire content writing services to get your strategy going.

Step 2. Identify Your Objectives
Content marketing is not all about beautiful words strung together. Rather, it should fulfill certain business objectives. One of the major mistakes content marketers make is diving right into content development without definite objectives. Do you want to increase traffic? Increase sales by 10%? Improve your conversion rates? Be specific and realistic when it comes to determining your SEO content writing business objectives.

Step 3. Establishing Your Audience
Yes, you were able to develop great content, but do people read them? For those who hire content writing services, it’s not enough to provide the writers with topics to write about, you should be able to identify who you are talking to. Pay attention to their demographics and their psychographics.

More importantly, know their motivations which can stem from their needs and fears among others. You can do this by employing social listening. Go to the forums and social media platforms where your target market is and listen to their queries.

Step 4. Create Your Content Blueprint
When it comes to SEO content writing, failing to plan is planning to fail. Before you engage in any content creation, make sure everything is mapped out. Topics should progress and build on one another. Create a feasible timeline. Every piece of content should be in line with your strategy and most importantly, with your brand equity.

Step 5. Content Development
Once you’re done with your content strategy and matrix, it’s time to proceed with content creation. One technique you can use is by merging content and copywriting. This basically means making the information you are offering more interesting and palatable to your audience.

Also, when you talk about content, you should not just focus on written content. Diversify your tactic. For example, videos are very in right now. Next to Google, YouTube is the second biggest search engine. Photo-driven social media platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest are gaining momentum so make sure you look into infographics and the like.

Step 6. Marketing Your Content
Your articles, your blog posts, your infographics and videos won’t promote themselves. Even viral content starts with a push. There’s nothing more disappointing than spending time and creating perfectly good content and no one sees it. When you create your content strategy, make sure to include how you are going to promote your content. Are you going to do a blogger outreach? Are you submitting press released to credible media firms and PR distribution networks to redirect traffic to your site? Social media is big, how are you planning to leverage on this?

Step 7. Gauge Your Success
After all has been said and done, it’s time to go back to your set business objectives and measure how well your SEO content writing initiatives measure up to your success metrics. If you can identify an ROI, this means you set really good metrics and the strategies you employed are spot on. If not, maybe you have to revisit your objectives and revamp your content roadmap.