About Me
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Since restarting my blog in January,
I’ve been so busy with my fiction, and onboarding new clients that I kind of
dropped the ball on educating my audience, which has always been the
cornerstone of my writing blog efforts. So, with that in mind, I’ve launched
this series on Content Marketing to help you understand what it is, why you
need it and what you can do about it.
I know a lot of this will be
remedial for some of you, but it never hurts to check in on the basics. For
those who’ve never engaged in content marketing, or didn’t know that’s what you were doing,
this may be revelation.
The
starting line
It’s surprising how often the same
questions get asked of guys like me, here’s one, “What would it take for me to launch a content marketing plan?” After
boiling it down, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are really on two
essential ingredients to get started.
· You need to understand what you want to get out of it.
· You need to cook this down to its essence and come up with a
mission statement
Both of these are foundational. For
one, they help you determine what kind of content you need to create. Secondly,
they help you get a bird’s eye view of your content marketing in relation to
your entire business, so that you can determine the things you should not do.
Alright, let’s unpack each of these
a bit more.
Examining
business goals
Don’t
ever just crank out content because you can, or because it’s cool, or because
someone else did it. It needs to be integrated with your overall direction in
business. Specifically, it needs to be tied to one or more goals within your
overall marketing scheme. So, when considering
a type, or piece of content, think of what it does to support those
goals.
EXAMPLES
- · List building
- · Converting leads into customers
- · Customer retention
- · Brand awareness and authority
- · Upsell existing users
- · Looking to create new brand evangelists
Asking questions is a great way to
keep on track. Here’s one, “Which of my
business goals does this content work towards, and how?” Set your
priorities on content that supports your goals, over content just because.
Writing
an actionable mission statement
This, from Joe Pulizzi, author of
Epic Content Marketing, your business needs a reason to exist and that, boiled
down, should be your mission statement. In addition, it should carry your
company principles in its DNA. When developing a mission statement for
marketing, include these:
- · Target your ideal audience: who is going to be reached? Whose life can you improve most with your content?
- · Define the deliverables: you need to know what kind of data you want to transmit to your audience.
- · Build the ultimate outcome: are you teaching? What would you like your audience to be ready to do once they engage with your marketing?
PRO TIP: No,
not everyone is your audience. Even
if you honestly believe you sell something that everyone wants. If you aim your
content at everyone, you will likely appeal to no one. Narrow this down, then
narrow it down an even smaller part of your first target, and even more
specific if you can. Decide on one person you want to speak to and tailor the
content to people like them.
You’ll likely need to tailor content to a variety of audiences. That’s
okay, define your groups and serve up what they will be most likely to engage
with. The more targeted, the better. This is how you cut through the clutter
and make a direct connection with all of the noise online.
If you have a solid grip on your
analytics, going to your SEO data is a great way to profile the ideal consumer
of your content. They are the ones that are finding your website, coming back
and spending extra time there.
Here’s
how I did it:
I’ve been going back to the basics,
trying to serve up what my ideal customer needs. So, I went back through my
client list over the past year and I thought it might help to show you what I
personally came up with.
My main aim for my clients is to
help them build authority in their niche, through excellent content, shared in
the right way, at the appropriate time.
Our key goal is to build our email
list, as it’s the backbone of everything else we do (such as our live
events, our online training program, etc.).
So, here is my Mission Statement as
a freelance writer/ content marketing consultant:
I am leading my industry through educating my clients in the
best practices of content marketing, on a scale that is meaningful for their
individual businesses. I work to develop content for each client based on their
ideal customer, the goals of their business and the current trends in content
marketing.
So, when I consider a new piece of
content, I just ask myself a few questions:
- Will this build a better understanding of content marketing for my clients?
- Is it useful to readers, even those who are not looking to hire writing done?
- Will this content help me build a list of potential clients and encourage sharing to further build the authority and audience for my brand?
I know that not every blog post I
write is going to hit a home run, but I need to make sure that the bulk of my
content is aimed towards these goals. My mission is the central theme of what I
do and if I am spending time creating things that don’t support that, I need to
reconsider. I also make sharing these goals with my clients a priority, so that
they understand what my goal is, and they are better able to communicate how
that fits within the framework of what they are building.
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