Content strategy is an important factor in any company’s marketing initiatives today. Content isn’t an optional part of marketing strategy; it is integral and should be a central focus. Your company’s content should blend into several different areas of your marketing, which is one of the reasons it is so important. It becomes the backbone for almost all other initiatives in marketing, including search optimization, public relations and press releases, email, social media, and paid listings. All of these marketing efforts are hinged on good, solid content. Content really needs to be all things to all departments. It helps with sales and search placement, and is the basis for social and lays the foundation for how you communicate with your customers or clients. This article will explain how to make content work for your entire marketing strategy and show you how to blend it with all of your marketing initiatives and campaigns.
Prioritizing Content
One of the best ways to ensure that content strategy is king in your marketing efforts is to prioritize it at the CMO level. If your marketing team has a separate department for content, consider centralizing the marketing department under the CMO or head of marketing. This will ensure that you don’t have competing marketing departments vying for the attention of being green-lit by the managing staff. Develop a content strategy and calendar that is integrated with your general marketing calendar to make sure that the right content has been created and is ready to use when each department needs it.
Blending Content with Search Optimization
Content writing is both a science and an art. Search optimization is often focused on keywords, however your content shouldn’t sound like a list of keywords. You need to write for the search engines, as well as your target audience. Most of the time, writing first for your audience and then making sure that the keywords are in the mix is the best approach. Your searchable content must always be refreshed, so running reports and making edits should be a constant part of your search optimization content strategy.
Blending Content with Social Media Marketing
Content and social media marketing have a very symbiotic relationship. You need good fresh content to post on social media, and you have to promote your other marketing content through your social channels too to amplify and maximize the value of your content. The content marketing team must work closely with the social media team to cascade the content throughout all the relevant channels. The social media team should also provide feedback and guidance to the content writers as to which topics will work best for social engagement.
Blending Content with Paid Marketing
Just like social media marketing, paid marketing and content also have a reciprocal relationship. Content has to bridge the sweet spot between being informative, enticing, and not too sales-forward. You must stay committed to the content and, at the same time the content strategy team has to be open to feedback from the team responsible for paid marketing as to which types of content will work best.
Blending Content with Public Relations, Press Releases and Email Marketing
Of course, when it comes to public relations, press releases and email marketing, the content is the backbone of each specialty. However, we grouped these two together because PR writing and email newsletters or communications all require subtle differences and nuances than regular content creation. There is a format to follow for each, and the content has to be tailored to fit each specific need. Press releases must have a newsworthy angle. Email marketing must be done in a specific way to have impact. For both PR and email you have to use a short headline or subject line to grab the audience’s attention and make the target audience open it up and engage. Testing and reporting features really come into play in order to give content writers insight as to what strategy and wording works best.
Summary and Takeaways for Your Company
We hope these tips help you to enhance, integrate and transform your content marketing and position it at the center of all your marketing programs. Remember that it starts with planning and possibly restructuring your marketing teams to prioritize content strategy and creation. As with any marketing efforts, you should regularly measure and re-evaluate your content program to ensure it is performing the best it can for you. If you aren’t using an in-house content development team, make sure that your outsourced content provider understands your business and can write as if they were a part of your company, sitting in your offices and working with your customers and clients. Continually develop keyword research as part of your content strategy and remember to use intelligence software to understand how your audience speaks and which keywords they use to describe your company, your brand, your products and services. Once you have that information in place, you can be reassured that your audience will understand your content and engage with your content efforts.
