Structure and planning are key to successful content marketing campaigns. As we go into 2014, here are five things you should build into your thinking.
Where do you plan to take your content this year? If this is a question you haven’t yet asked, now’s the time to start thinking clever when it comes to content.
Content marketing offers great benefits when done well, but projects must be underpinned by good planning, strategy and people.
If you’re looking for ways to beef up your content marketing planning, here are five things to think about.
1) If you haven’t got a strategy, get one
A sophisticated content strategy is the key to a successful content marketing campaign. Without ideas, creativity and long-term vision, your content risks being dead content. And we don’t want that.
So if your content planning is rather limited, it’s time to step things up a gear. Develop a content philosophy, set up an editorial calendar for the coming months, brainstorm ideas and start using analytics to measure the effectiveness of your content.
When you’ve got a few moments take a look at this post from the Content Marketing Institute about the benefits of content strategy.
2) Harness your teams
As well as working with an outside content marketing agency, it’s also a good idea to start getting involvement on the inside. If your marketing team is more used to traditional marketing channels, start educating them about content marketing through case studies and research. And for those people who you don’t have tagged as being ‘content’ people? Get them involved too.
As you’ll see, encouraging company-wide engagement with content marketing is a great way to convince people of its potential and the best way to secure investment for future plans and projects.
3) Start thinking about people and processes
As a follow-on from company involvement, start thinking about how best to manage content administration, approval and sign-off in-house. Getting more people involved is important, but it’s not without risks.
No company is devoid of politics and hierarchy, and it can often be the case that too many cooks spoil the, er, content broth (sorry). If you have stakeholders or senior management involved that can be good, but remember that they’ll likely want to approve, manage and sign-off content.
That can often result in what content marketing specialists Sticky Content call Franken content – work that is off-brand, off-message and just plain out-there – this fun Christmas post from The Poke gives you an idea.
4) Put mobile first
Mobile, mobile, mobile. If you haven’t yet put mobile at the forefront of your content thinking, start doing it now.
Offering mobile content is simple common sense – more and more people are using mobile devices to shop, work and play, so align your content accordingly. According to research by eMarketer, three out of four UK mobile users will own smartphones by 2016.
When people read content on a mobile, they read it differently to the way they would on a desktop, so make sure your content is fit for purpose.
5) 2015, 2016 – and beyond
While one can never peer into the mysteries of the future, don’t just position your content marketing strategy for the year ahead. That doesn’t mean you should start planning blog posts for January 2015, but more that you should take a big-picture approach.
Ask what you want to do with your content and how you see it helping your company over the years to come. Develop a long-term vision for your content marketing and move it up and up the company so that it becomes a vital business imperative.
This guest post is courtesy of JonJon Yeung of TUG.
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