Most business owners are aware that content can make or break an online business, the problem is in knowing how much content to create and how often to publish it on your website. The real key to an effective content strategy is consistency – consistency in quality and quantity.
The quality of your online content can be ensured by hiring a copywriter, or by delegating specific employees with a flair for creative writing to take over this role. When you find that certain people write content that engages your audience and can write on a range of topics that are relevant to your audience (both current and potential customers), you are well on your way to creating an ongoing and meaningful relationship with your audience.
Quality content is king!
A good writer is priceless, and is essential to the success of your business’ presence online. However, it’s not just the quality of your writing, but it is also the quantity and more specifically, the consistency of your online content that helps to build positive connections with your audience.
When you provide engaging content on a consistent basis, you start to become an authority in your industry and a name that people can trust. This is the true foundation of a successful business.
1. Write down a workable content strategy
There is no point in telling your employees to write one or two blogs a week, you need to actually create a strategy with goals and steps to achieve these outcomes. This gives your employees accountability and helps to keep everything moving along. Your strategy will need to include the demographics of your target audience, the type of content that needs to be written, and how to promote this content. With all of this written down, any new employee who steps into this role will know exactly what is expected of them, right from the start.
2. Use a customer relationship management (CRM) system
CRM software collects and manages all of the information about your customers and potential leads. A CRM helps you to record every interaction with your customers, storing a vast amount of information that is perfect for upselling, generating leads and understanding your audience.
You can leverage this massive amount of information and data to create content that seamlessly addresses your customer’s concerns; giving your customers the impression that you are completely in touch with their needs. Creating engaging content that speaks directly to the reader becomes much easier when you have this type of database ton hand, making it much easier to tailor your content specifically to your target audience.
3. Put together a team dedicated to creating your content
As mentioned earlier, this is an important step in creating consistent content that is engaging and of high quality. If you are a small business you might take on this task yourself, but if you don’t like writing very much, then it is best to hand this role over to someone who enjoys the work and is a good writer.
Another relevant point here is that it is easier to scale your content if you have a group of writers and marketers who each have a defined role in the process. Building a content marketing team is something that every business owner should aim to achieve if they want to expand their business (whether this is managed in-house or outsourced to an agency, like Chilli).
4. Create an editorial calendar and schedule
At least once a year (and more often if deemed necessary), meet with your content marketing team to create an editorial calendar and schedule. You can brainstorm topics and ideas, plan social media campaigns and product launches and organise everything for the next quarter, financial year, or beyond. This keeps everyone on track and also gives you additional information that can be leveraged for future campaigns. For example, if you find that certain types of content are more successful than others in a product launch or that blogs posted on a particular day convert better than other days, you have additional information for your marketing strategy that is quite simply, priceless!
5. Promote your content
Your marketing team needs to include people who are experts in promoting your content, after all, there is no point in publishing good content consistently if no-one sees it! This means that part of your brainstorming process needs to include the marketing channels that will be used for specific content and campaigns, and these will work in parallel to your content creation schedule.
At Chilli, we’d love to assist you with tailoring your strategic content marketing to get the best results for your organisation. Drop us a line and we can show you what content marketing can look like for your business with a tailored and strategic approach.
