5 Useful Items About Content Marketing That You Need To Know

It’s the start of a brand new year. And already, it’s chock full of resolutions and do-overs, fresh starts and new days.

And that’s good because today starts a new day for marketing your business. Or your non-profit. Or, perhaps for marketing yourself, in hopes of establishing a dynamic personal brand. And we’ll get into all that this year on the “Yellow Box” blog.

But for now, let’s take a closer look at one of our biggest targets for 2016 – helping you better understand content marketing and how it can help transform your marketing results this year.

Marketing, in general, works best when you accept a few simple truths. To be effective, you need to have an extremely deep understanding of the needs and wants of the people you want to attract. Secondly, you have to understand how what you offer fulfills those needs. And lastly, you have to communicate that capability to that group of people in a relevant and meaningful way.

And that is the basic definition of content marketing. By creating content that your audience has a desire to read and need to use, you build credibility and preference by providing value, as opposed to creating dissonance with loud off key self-promotions.

Before you start a content marketing campaign for your organization, there are a few things that you should know first. Here’s a short list of our top items that we often see overlooked.

A well-thought-out content strategy.

You have to know where you want to go and how to get there if you want to arrive on time. And your content strategy will help you figure that out. Determine your end goals, then brainstorm the types of content you’ll need to create and which distribution channels you’ll need to use to help you achieve those goals.

As a side note: zero in on a handful of topics that you want to be known for as opposed to being all over the map. The more you write on those topics, the more of an authority you’ll become.

A deep understanding of your audience.

You want to be familiar with where, how, and why your audience interacts with your content, or similar content produced by competitors. What are they hoping to get from your social media posts, for example? Or why should they take 2 minutes to read your blog post?

People connect with certain forms of content for very specific reasons. Some are looking to be entertained, and others inspired. Others want to fix a problem. Get down to the molecular level and figure out what’s in your audience’s DNA.

A high-level content audit.

This really should be comprehensive, but if you have a small team, hitting the highlights will still shine a light on how your content assets are faring so far.

Create an inventory of your content real estate. What resides on each page of your website, on each social media platform, or in the newsletter? When is the last time that content has been updated and does it still fit how you operate? How effective has the content been in the past and are readers taking the desired actions? The answers to these questions will provide the insight you need to ensure the effectiveness of your content.

A good writer.

Writing compelling copy is hard, and it’s even harder to get it into the mainstream. We’re marketing in a content dense environment fueled by technology that empowers anyone of us to become a publisher. Unfortunately, it doesn’t guarantee anyone of us success.

Hiring a good writer or brushing up on your writing skills is worth the investment. And still that’s only half the battle. Amplifying your content – or making it widely available on the appropriate channels – is equally as important. But, the content has to be good, inspired, and full of utility for it to work.

And open mind.

While the founding principles of marketing remain the same, the nature of marketing itself is evolving. Technology has changed the way we position our organizations in the minds of the consumer.

So you have to be willing to evolve with it. That doesn’t mean you have to be an early adopter of every new technology that comes out – in fact, we advise against that. But you should be vigilant about taking the pulse of your audience and delivering content that they want to consume.

Have you tried content marketing for your business or nonprofit or have plans to do so in 2016? Leave a comment below and tell us your plan.