Building a content marketing system for your business is the first step to a successful campaign. In order to ensure your content marketing reaches the right people and reels in leads, you need a thorough blueprint of your goals in place. That’s where your content marketing system comes in. We’ve put together this nifty guide to help you build one for yourself.
What is Content Marketing?
Before we jump into the system itself, let’s quickly go over what content marketing is in general. Content marketing should be seen as a strategic approach to marketing that focuses on creating and distributing high-quality, relevant content. The point of this content is to attract and retain customers in your target audience with the purpose of generating sales.
What is a Content Marketing System?
A content marketing system is an actionable plan that outlines your goals and how you plan to achieve them. Think of these systems as a guide on where you want your marketing efforts to take your business. How do you plan to get from point A to point B?
There are a lot of different ways to approach your system. Aspirations vary for each company and plans change based on specific goals. The way we built our system was by following three core pillars:
– Strategy (research)
– Create (content)
– Amplify (promotion)
We discovered that each of our pillars work incredibly well together. As you put in more research, your content will improve, thereby giving you the material you need to generate buzz for your business.
It won’t do well to just talk about our system, though. Let’s dive into what our pillars entail and how they all work to drive our brand forward.
Core Pillar 1: Strategy
A helpful way for us to look at our content marketing system is to imagine each core pillar as parts of our business’s body.
Our first pillar is Strategy, which we view as our skeleton. Your skeleton is the core of your business; without a strong structure, a business is doomed to fall by the wayside. Branding, target audience research, competitive analysis, and long-term goals are just some of the bones your skeleton needs to stand tall.
Before you hop into all the different kinds of content, you need to think about the basics of your company. Before you start, ask yourself some of these basic questions:
– Who is my target audience? Do I know what they look like?
– Have I researched what their pain points are?
– What do I want my brand to look like? Do I want to be light-hearted and funny or will I tackle things with a more professional take?
– Have I researched my competitors? What are they offering clients that I can improve on?
– Which keywords have they targeted? How much engagement do their social posts get?
– In the next year, what tangible goals do I want my company to achieve?
Make no mistake, each branch of our Strategy pillar comes with its own set of questions, concerns, and research involved. In order to do content marketing right, you need to put in the time to build yourself a sturdy foundation.
Core Pillar 2: Content Creation
Your next step would be creating content. Our second pillar, Create, is like the biology of your body. It makes up all of your nerves and systems, which is an integral part of staying alive. The different systems of our bodies are complicated and have a lot of moving parts. This same is true when it comes to creating your content. You can’t have just one pair of nerves running through you. In other words, a few blog posts here and there won’t cut it.
Just like with your strategies, you need to think of which content will best benefit your business. For example, as you continue to gain new readers and customers, you’ll want to think about introducing gated content. Gated content comes in several forms and it’s up to you how you want to play it! Do you want to capture leads with downloadable content or white papers? Which one will bring in more traffic to your site and earn you more newsletter subscribers?
Your content also expands into things like infographics. Readers are visual creatures and in today’s fast-moving world, consumers want information quickly. Infographics are a good way to bring in substantial traffic and retain interest. They also break up walls of text and reiterate vital information in a way that’s easier to consume.
As you can see, we’re starting to generate quite a list and we haven’t even covered everything yet! (Don’t even get us started on what it takes to build an effective email campaign.) That’s why your content needs just as much attention as your other pillars.
Core Pillar 3: Amplification and Promotion
This brings us to our last pillar, Amplify. Now that you have your research and content ready to go, your business can finally walk on its own two feet. Our third pillar refers to the processes necessary to really market your brand. It’s the anatomy of your business and includes various methods of promotion and engagement.
Promoting your content comes in several shapes and sizes. Take online communities, for example. Not too long ago, we cashed in on the activity of Reddit users. Reddit is an active community full of users interested in learning more about the world of marketing and business. So, we decided to share a strategy that worked well for us, which garnered several hundred comments and upvotes.
That’s just one strategy of many, however. Building yourself a solid backlink portfolio also helps exponentially. With relevant backlinks to your site, you’ll build brand authority and rank higher in search engines, resulting in more traffic.
Conclusion
A content marketing system may seem like just a plan you can fluff off, but it’s actually an integral part of your strategy. Thorough research, the right kind of content, and creative promotion all drive your business forward and bring the kind of success you want.
