Do you have your 2014 content marketing plan in place? Content is king in today’s modern marketing world. There will be many moving pieces to your strategy. And many things you will need to think through. You need to create content that your buyer cares about. It needs to be thoughtful, and relevant – think quality over quantity. It needs to be dynamic and ever changing – you can’t let your content go stale. It also needs 
to be written for the web. People are going to be reading it on the go on different devices. Short sentences, bulleted points, etc., make this easier.
These are a few of the basics you’ve probably already thought about. Hopefully you’ve also incorporated some type of content audit. The purpose of this audit would be two-fold:
- Find out where you are strongest in content. Your content should be mapped to your customer’s buying process. Where in this process do you have the most content? These are your strongest areas.
- Find out where you are weakest in content. There are probably some areas in the buying process with little to no content. These are your weakest areas.
This gap analysis shows you what content you need to produce this year. Armed with this information, you can create your content plan and plot on an editorial calendar.
Now what?
You now have a plan. But who will own this plan, and the pieces within? Essentially, how should you allocate your team’s resources? And possibly, even more important – how do you make sure the plan works?
Download the Content Marketing Allocation & Coaching tool to understand these items:
- How to allocate your content marketing resources.
- The responsibility of each member on the team.
- How to enable your team to be successful.
You may be saying to yourself that this isn’t going to work for you. Maybe you think your team is too small. Maybe you have other priorities that your team is focused on. As marketing leaders, we have limited time, resources and budget. But content marketing must be a focus to be successful in 2014. You must have the right people in place. And you need to know your role in making them successful.
MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute recently published content marketing benchmarks. 86% of the most effective organizations have someone dedicated solely to overseeing their content marketing strategy. And 39% of their marketing budget is dedicated to this initiative. You have no choice. You want your marketing team to be considered among the “most effective”. Therefore you must dedicate team members and coaching time to your content marketing initiative.
Next Steps:
There are a few different ways you can allocate your resources. There are strengths to look for within each role. Download this tool to understand their roles and responsibilities. And more importantly, learn how to help your team to succeed in their content initiatives.
