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So you’ve decided to give content marketing a try. Great! You put together some blog posts, social media pictures and videos, have an email ready to go, the whole nine yards. You publish it all, expecting to see flocks of customers engaging with all your incredible content. But surprisingly, you see very little change in your customers’ behaviour. What went wrong? And how can you make sure your future marketing efforts don’t go unrewarded? Our marketing agency in Vancouver knows the not-so-secret secrets to content marketing success, and it all starts with planning.
A goal without a plan is just a wish
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Creating An Editorial Calendar
When you published all your initial content, you probably thought to yourself, “this is great, and my audience is going to love it!” This is, of course, a great start. But you should refine your plan before you send it to the masses. In comes the Editorial Calendar.
An Editorial Calendar (EC) is a document that maps out all the content you’ll be providing for a month or given period. This is your guide to content marketing success. Everything that you need content wise should be organized in the EC with relevant dates.
The items in your EC can include:
- Special events
- Blogs
- Newsletters
- Social media posts
- Videos and photos
- Infographics
- Any other content relevant to your industry.
Once complete, you will have a birds-eye-view of your monthly content strategy. EC’s take a lot of time and experience to get just right, if you’re finding it difficult to create a comprehensive marketing plan, your marketing agency in Vancouver is always here to help.
Creating Engaging Content
It can be quite a challenge to create valuable and engaging content for your target audience. This is especially true when you are busy running other parts of your business! To help you out, our marketing agency has put together a few “guidelines” to help get you started. With an engaging content marketing strategy, we are not explicitly selling your products or service. Instead, we are providing valuable content for your fans to enjoy and interact with. We want to build trust and relationships with consumers to move them further down the marketing funnel, and turn them into customers later.
Social Media
For social media marketing, a simple way to start a conversation with your followers is to ask questions. This strategy invites your followers to share their opinions, giving you an opportunity to reply and so on. Connecting with your fans on a 1-on-1 level builds trust. Make sure to ask your question in the first sentence of your copy as your followers are likely scrolling down their newsfeed and will likely only read the first sentence of every post.
An added benefit of asking questions is to see how well your potential customers understand your product or service. Why not create a blog post, send out an e-mail, or create an infographic addressing their concerns? People won’t move down the marketing funnel and become customers if they do not understand your business.
Blog Posts
Blog posts are crucial for any content marketing strategy. You can address your customers pain points, show off your brand, attract people to your website, boost SEO and so much more. Start by creating a fantastic blog post. It should be long enough to provide the best value for your target audience. A well written short blog post will attract more people than a long blog that repeats itself over and over again just to reach a specific word count.
Enable a comment system on your blog pages. This gives your audience a platform to engage with you without leaving your website. If this isn’t possible, direct your audience to your Facebook page.
Explicitly ask questions in your blog post. What does your audience think about the topic at hand? Do they agree or disagree with you? Have they ever tried what you’re suggesting? Ask them what their burning questions are. As they start engaging, make sure you are replying to their comments and questions to build that relationship.
E-Mail Marketing
Another great tool to engage with your audience is a monthly newsletter. Remember now, at this point in the customer journey we are not telling our e-mail subscribers to “Buy Now!” We want to provide valuable content for them to enjoy to move them further down the marketing funnel.
Make sure you’re providing links to your social media platforms, and you can promote your engaging blog posts as well. In your e-mail layout, embed polls, questions, and surveys. Most people nowadays will be answering their emails on their phones so make sure that all of your content shows up nicely on a smaller screen. Polls and surveys are great tools to keep track of your audience’s interests, gather valuable insights, and create engagement.
Analyzing Your Posts
As you move through your monthly EC, make sure to take some time and analyze which pieces of content are earning the most engagement. Could there be a possible trend linking your top posts? What happened to your posts that underdelivered? What improvements can you make? This analysis is crucial if you want to improve your content marketing efforts down the road. Our marketing agency provides clients with monthly reports. We analyze everything we do so they can reach their business objectives.
Creating an engaging content marketing strategy can be a challenging, but ultimately rewarding task. Today’s consumers are looking for more personal and engaging experience when deciding between brands, and these strategies will help you do just that! If you’re looking to create the best content possible and increase engagement levels, contact your marketing agency in Vancouver or stop by our office! We always have chocolate.