management

How to Write a Content Marketing Plan in 7 Steps

Once you’ve established your business online with a website, it’s time to start advertising to your audience. The Internet is a huge space with vast amounts of pages and information, so it is unlikely that customers will just happen to stumble upon your website and engage with your business. You have to be the one to put it out there and draw customers to your site. The best way to do this is by using a content marketing plan.

Instead of traditional advertisements that tell audiences what to do, the new and better way to attract customers is to show your audiences what to do. To do this, you need to create informative content that shows readers the benefits of your product or service without directly telling them to buy it. Given the growing number of businesses using content marketing plans, this is clearly a very effective way of making your business known and increasing its sales.

So how do you write a content marketing plan?

1. Set a goal

Figure out what it is you’re trying to achieve with your content. Are you trying to get traffic to your site? From what source? How much? How often? Be specific. Once you have an objective in mind with your content marketing plan, you can create content to fit this goal.

2. Figure out your audience

There is going to be a certain type of audience you want to reach out to. It’s called your demographic. Before you write your content, make sure you have a clear picture of your ideal customer so you can direct your topics and writing style to this potential reader.

3. Find out what’s popular and trending

Check out what other businesses are doing with their content marketing plans so you can get ideas for your own strategy. Try to figure out the types of articles that most customers are reading, and what kinds of content businesses are publishing to become popular. Then write about relevant topics that will interest your audience.

4. Write a good variety of content

When writing your content, make sure to vary the type of article, the topics, and the medium that you use. With the Web full of fast-paced, interesting content, customers will get easily bored if you constantly publish the same articles. Offering different types of content will attract different types of customers in your demographic and increase your following.

5. Write with SEO in mind

A great way to get your content seen online is to use search engine optimization (SEO) to increase your ranking on search engines. To improve your visibility in searches, use specific keywords and phrases in your content that will direct searches to your website. But please, make sure your content is well written and interesting, because articles will be flagged and punished by search engines if they are stuffed with keywords. Writing and publishing SEO content properly will attract readers to your content while maintaining your website’s integrity.

6. Share on social media

Social media are hubs for news and information and have become a popular way of finding content. To spread your content among all of your customers and reach out to other circles, you need to make sure you have a constant presence on social networks. You can achieve this by publishing your content on multiple platforms.

7. Evaluate metrics and use them to improve

Once you’ve published the content from your content marketing plan, you need to ensure that it’s achieving your initial goal. The best way to figure this out is to look at the metrics, such as how many customers have engaged with your content by taking actions like sharing on social media, visiting your website, or purchasing your product or service. You can then use this information to improve your content marketing plan.

How to Use Newsletters for Awesome Customer Service

Newsletters are an ideal way to connect with your customers. If a customer has opted in to your newsletter, they want to hear from you. You want to make the best use possible of that indication of interest and trust.

Newsletters speak directly to your customers and help build a relationship. A great strategy for achieving this is to send out a customer service-oriented newsletter that shows your business’s dedication to their needs.

Here are some ways to do that in your newsletter:

Provide news and updates that are relevant for the customer

You know it’s great that your company got that award and all, but that should not be the feature story of your mailout. The top story (which is the one that customers are likely to see if they click open your email) should be about something that will help the customer solve her problems.

The more often your customer sees copy that helps him, the more likely he is to click open your next email, and your next, and he might even start scrolling down to see your other stories — like that one about the award that shows how amazing your company is at doing what it does.

Show how your product or service can benefit the customer

Pop quiz! Which works better:

A) We’ve just released a new social media feature. It works with Facebook and Pinterest, and you can find it in your Dashboard under Social.

B) Save time! We have just released a new Facebook and Pinterest posting option that will cut your status updating time investment by a third.

Clearly B wins, but why? Because A was a description of the features, and it didn’t explain why the client should care. The second version works because it describes the benefit to the customer. Your customer service newsletter should always provide information about your product or service in terms of the benefits it offers.

Show how your business affects the community at large

If your business has a presence at local events, fundraisers, and other community activities, this is perfect content to include in your customer service newsletter as a second or third story. Your participation in the community lets the public know you have an interest in matters beyond your business. The contributions your business can make to the community show your dedication to maintaining a healthy relationship with your customers.

Feature an employee

To help build the relationship you need with your customers, make your business real! Small writeups about the people at your company adds that human touch and it will help customers build a strong emotional connection with your company. Customers will see that there are actual people in your business who care about their needs.

Update customers on internal changes that affect them

If your company changes policies, it’s a good idea to inform your audience of these changes via your newsletter. This includes good news and bad news. Indeed, proper handling of bad news (e.g., getting out in front of the story, explaining what you’re doing and why, etc.) will make your company even more trustworthy, because you’re being transparent. It’s always reassuring for customers to know that you care about their interests too, not only about the revenue they provide.

Ask for feedback

Building a relationship requires effort from both sides, which is why it is important that your business try to encourage customers to interact with the newsletter. By making your business open to constructive criticism, you can generate a public response that will indicate if you’re meeting customers’ needs. If you’re not, you can change your business in various ways to try to satisfy the customers and maintain their interest. Encourage them to respond to your newsletters with feedback, and then act on the feedback. This will show that your business is committed to keeping your customers satisfied.

Good customer service is an important part of making your business successful, and a great way to ensure that your business is providing the best possible service is through your newsletter. Newsletters dedicated to customer service will help build solid customer relationships, show that your business is constantly working for the customers, and can help improve your bottom line.

How to Create a Content Strategy

Before you can begin marketing your business online, you need to create a strategy that outlines exactly how your marketing will work. Just like any goal, establishing an online presence is a process that needs to be planned out, step by step. This way, you can use the content to spread your business’s name and help your business grow. A content strategy is a plan that you can use to determine what content you publish, when to publish it, what platform you use to publish it, and what it will achieve.

Creating content is a great way to promote your business. And methodically planning out what content you will present to your customers will help you shape the message you want to convey. This a huge part of building your brand.

So how can you create an effective content strategy? Here are four steps to consider:

Determine your business’s goals

The best way to plan out a content strategy is to start with very, very specific goals. Why specific and not broad? Beginning with the end in mind will help you to work backward and create clear, actionable steps to get there.

A good goal might be something like: I want to have a ten percent increase in leads for product X by the end of next quarter.

Do you see how that immediately makes everything so much clearer? Instead of floundering around wondering what content to produce and then hoping it somehow goes viral, you’ve already made some decisions. You now know that if you’re going to get an increase in leads for product X, you’ve got to create content related to product X. And you also know that if you want to increase leads by a specific number by a certain date, you’ll have to produce Y amount of content and promote it by Z amount.

To be sure, there are still a few unknowns in the preceding paragraph. For example, it can take time for content to help your organic search traffic, and it might be difficult to estimate just how many pieces of content you’ll need to bump the lead count. You’ll have a better idea of how your content is received as time goes on. But by basing your content strategy on business goals, rather than using the so-called “spray and pray” approach, you’ll get results much, much faster.

Determine your audience

Choosing a specific demographic group for your content is an extremely important part of disseminating your message. Figuring out the exact target group can help you determine what types of content should be shared, what medium you should share it through, and even the specific phrases you need to use.

Specific phrases? Really?

Definitely!

If you want your audience to be your customers, then you have to speak their language. For example, let’s say you sell high-end audio equipment, and you’re trying to grow your sales revenue. You could create several highly technical articles targeted at the sound geeks who get into heated debates over the best speaker cables to use. But are those the people who are coming to your store, or visiting your website? What if the people doing that are saying things like “I want something really good, but I don’t know where to start” or “All of this seems so intimidating!” If you use similar language when creating a piece of content that solves a problem your audience has, your audience will feel that you are speaking directly to them.

Your content needs to cater to the needs of your audience, so you need to keep their interests in mind when you plan the content you intend to share with them. The more you know about your audience, the better the experience they will have when engaging with your content.

What format and why?

One of the most cost-effective pieces of content to produce is an article, especially if you outsource the writing part of it to allow your team to concentrate on their core skills. However, other types of content might be appropriate to your audience. You could produce an infographic, a video, an ebook, or an email course. Again, think of your audience and their needs. What format best serves them?

How will you share it with your audience?

To reach your demographic, you need to share your content in a place that your customers will frequent. If your audience doesn’t know a Tweet from a twit, there isn’t a lot of point spending time promoting your content on Twitter, is there?

Take the time to find out where your customers hang out. You can do that by asking your sales staff, your customer service teams, checking your referral logs in your website analytics, and even just straight up asking your customers via a poll, or in a direct conversation.

Having a good long think about these factors will help you figure out your content strategy. And remember, a long term strategy beats short term tactics any day.