A powerful content marketing strategy may carry different connotations for different marketing needs but its fundamental purpose is to give you the results you want. It doesn’t matter whether you want to generate more leads, more sales, more subscribers for your email updates, more blog readers to generate ad revenue, get more donations for your charity organisation, get more students for your school or college or further your political career, a powerful content marketing strategy can help you create an impressive presence on the Internet. Again, impressive presence means that it’s easier to find you for the stuff you should be known for and what people find is compelling, relevant and useful – it solves the purpose.
This Huffington Post blog post on creating a powerful content marketing strategy lists 5 steps that can help you create one for your business, although it misses the 2nd step, which I will try to incorporate here. These 5 steps are
- Know your audience
- Prioritise and plan your content publishing and marketing
- Assign roles and responsibilities if you have a big content marketing team
- Set goals and track performance
- Focus on the long-term (the point that I feel is missing)
Points 1-4 are explained in the blog post so I will throw some light on the 5th point.
Although content marketing is one of the most effective ways to project yourself (or your business) it also takes time and effort, and money if you want to work with a content writer. Many small business owners mistakenly believe that since content marketing seems to be free (because hey, everybody can write blog posts and articles) it should be quite easy and low-investment.
Yes, exceptions are always there. There are many small-business-owners who are doing a great job doing their own content marketing and many small businesses have transitioned from small to medium and even big. But for every small-business turning into big-business there are thousands of businesses that never grow or evolve. In fact, a majority of businesses shut shop within the 1st year because they get disillusioned. If everything is so easy and free on the Internet, why doesn’t it work, they wonder?
Well, just like any other marketing medium, content marketing is for real businesses and when it comes to real businesses, you need to spend money, time and effort.
You want to achieve success in your content marketing? Then prepare a long-term plan. Don’t expect a jump in your targeted traffic or your social media exposure within a couple of months unless you have a million dollars to spend. Content marketing requires a strategic, focused and sustained effort. Only then it shows results.