Planning Your Content Strategy for 2016

It’s fast becoming common knowledge that content is an essential element of marketing. Done well, content creation can build and engage an audience, and ultimately drive sales. However, to ensure that you get the best return on investment, it’s crucial to plan a content strategy – and stick to it.

So rather than taking a scattergun approach to content marketing, start the New Year on the right path with an action plan that’s easy to follow. We’ve got some tips to help you create a robust, realistic and results-orientated content strategy for 2016. 

Identify Your Goals

Content doesn’t necessarily equal success. To get results from your copy, you need to be clear about your goals. Do you want to increase your social media following, boost your search engine ranking for specific keywords, or drive sales of particular products or services? Goals will give your content strategy direction, and enable you to measure the ROI over the year.

Research the Market

Creating high quality content is one thing. Making it relevant to your target audience is quite another. To ensure that your blogs, guides, infographics or videos get results, it’s crucial to research the market.

What do your customers want to read about? Do they need handy tips and advice, or would they appreciate humorous content on related topics? By gaining a clear picture of your target audience, you can ensure that your content has an impact.

Compile a List

Once you’ve researched the market, it’s time to start drumming up ideas! From lists of activities to ‘how to’ guides, there are plenty of ways to inform, inspire and entertain your target audience on relevant topics. To ensure that you never run short of inspiration, keep an ongoing list of topics and titles that you can draw from whenever you need ideas.

To make your content stretch further and to transform readers (or viewers) into fans, brainstorm topics that can be broken down into a series. That way, you can keep people coming back for more and establish yourself as an influencer through consistently high quality content.

Schedule Your Content

Finally, you should spend some time planning out your content and when you’re going to post it. Figure out how often you want to publish content, bearing in mind how much time your team has to create it, or what you can afford to pay a copywriter or designer per month.

When scheduling titles, try to keep the content varied, but if possible make posts follow on in a logical order. Also bear in mind that certain occasions such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, school holidays and industry-related dates present a great opportunity to take advantage of seasonal spending, and ensure that your content stays fresh!

Follow these tips to create a strategy that drives results for your business. Plan your content strategy now, to make creating quality copy on a regular basis easy, and master the art of content marketing in 2016.

Need a little help with your content plan? Start 2016 with a bang by partnering with an award-winning copywriting agency. Get in touch to discuss your content marketing needs today.

Words by Kelly

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