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Frank Hamilton, Blogger

By this point, every business owner and marketer knows about the importance of having a content marketing strategy. However, it’s worth stressing that your strategy needs to be effective and successful – otherwise, there’s no point in it.

But if you are a beginner or if you don’t have a lot of time, you might not be able to create a detailed, advanced content marketing strategy. Luckily, you can still create a simple but effective one. Hence, here’s everything you should know about how to create effective and simple content marketing strategies.

Why Should You Update Your Strategy Regularly?

Changing or updating your content marketing strategy may seem counterintuitive at first, but there is a reason for it. Your current strategy may not work as well as you would like it to. On the other hand, your strategy may become outdated and ineffective. In both cases, you would have to change or update your strategy. Doing this regularly will further improve the performance of your content marketing campaigns.

#1 Do Your Research

Without a doubt, the very first thing you should do is research. If you don’t know your audience, competitors, and market, you can’t create an effective content marketing strategy. Start with your target audience and make sure to segment it. Then, look at what your competitors are doing with the content they create. Lastly, look at the overall situation in your niche (e.g. the popularity of your products, recent trends in the industry, and so on).

#2 Establish Goals and KPIs

Once you have completed your research, you will need to establish goals for your strategy and KPIs for your content. The goals you set will determine which types of content you will be focusing on, which marketing channels you will prioritize, and so on. Likewise, your KPIs will help you analyze the performance of your content to see how successful your content marketing efforts are. With the help of your goals and KPIs, you can better understand how effective your strategy is and which aspects need to be improved.

#3 Choose Marketing Channels

As mentioned above, your goals will determine which marketing channels you prioritize. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t choose a wide variety of these channels. Saoirse Coleman, an expert from the essay writing service ratings site, explains it this way, “It’s a good idea to work with different types of content marketing, including email marketing, social media marketing, guest blogging, etc. This will expand your content marketing strategy and will help you reach your audience through a variety of channels.”

#4 Set Content Requirements

Content requirements or guidelines are fundamental for any successful content marketing strategy. A clear set of guidelines for your content allows you to be consistent with your content quality, format, themes, and so on. It’s necessary to set guidelines for every type of content you work with (e.g. articles, photos, pie charts, podcasts, etc.) Keep in mind your branding and integrate it into the guidelines to create a particular brand image for your business.

#5 Create A Posting Schedule

Just like content guidelines, a posting schedule is meant to help you with consistency. However, the importance of a posting schedule goes further than that. Olly Dodd, an expert from the custom writing ratings site, puts it this way, “When you determine the best hours for posting, your schedule helps you publish content consistently and during the right time. At the same time, a posting schedule allows you to align the content you post on different channels.”

#6 Distribute Resources

Now that most of your preparation is complete, you need to distribute the resources you possess. Of course, you probably already had a good idea of your budget and other resources when you started creating your strategy. But now that you know what exactly you will be doing (content formats, posting schedule, etc.), you need to consider your resources again and distribute them. Keep in mind your goals, KPIs, and prioritized channels.

#7 Act and Track Performance

Last but not least, start creating content, posting it, and tracking its performance. If your goals are reached and your KPIs show that your content is performing well, you can’t update your strategy to set new milestones. If it’s difficult to reach your goals, it’s a good idea to review your strategy and see where you tried to jump over your head. In any case, make the right steps to create a strategy you can actually work with successfully.

All in all, creating an effective yet simple content marketing strategy for your business is possible – and even necessary. Use the steps in this article to help you create your own strategy and continue regularly updating it to make it more efficient.

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About the Author: Frank Hamilton is a blogger and translator from Manchester. He is a professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digital marketing and self-education. He also loves traveling and speaks Spanish, French, German and English.