When it comes to growing your audience and your business, sharing original content can be a great way to get eyes on your company.

Maybe you’re brand new to content marketing, or maybe you’ve tried coming up with content and posting it but you just don’t seem to be getting anywhere. The key to effective content is to start with a content marketing strategy!

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how to create a content marketing strategy:

1. Set goals

Think about your business goals, overall marketing goals, and what you want your content to accomplish. Do you want it to drive traffic to your website? Increase brand awareness? Grow your email list? Knowing what you hope to achieve will help you determine what kind of content to create plus how and when to distribute it.

2. Understand your audience

In order to know what content to create, you have to know who you’re talking to. What is their demographic information? What pain points do they have? What problems can you solve for them? What information would they find helpful? Understanding your audience will help you create content that’s going to resonate with them.

3. Plan the content

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What’s the key to a good content marketing strategy? Strategy! Now’s not the time to just post whatever randomly pops into your head. Remember your goals and your audience. What topics do you want to cover this month? Are there any events coming up, such as a product launch or giveaway? Are there any holidays coming up that you should post about? Be sure to plan ahead!

You’ll also want to consider the format of your content, such as blog posts, videos, infographics, white papers and more, as well as how it’s going to be distributed, such as via certain social media platforms, your email list, etc.

Another key to success during this step is to create a content calendar! This will help you stay organized and give you a better look at the month ahead. There are a lot of great apps out there that can help you create a content calendar and even allow you to schedule your posts.

4. Know how you will measure results

Tracking analytical data is crucial to understanding how your content marketing strategy is performing. Based on your goals, have a list of information you’re going to track, such as engagement rate, number of followers, click through rates, number of content downloads, and more. Collect stats every month so you can compare them to previous months and adjust your strategy accordingly.

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The idea of planning, creating, and sharing content can feel overwhelming, but with a solid content marketing strategy in place, you’ll find that it’s much more manageable.