You’ll sell more with quality content!” are words that almost every marketing guru repeats today. It’s true that quality content helps you build closer relationships with your audience, and Google loves it too. Sounds like a win for you and your business. But creating really good content is not easy at all. Many companies create content just because others are doing it, or because it’s in fashion right now. They don’t realize how powerful content really is. Let me share with you four simple tips to help you develop a quality content plan that actually delivers results.
1. Determine your goals
What are your goals? You cannot move forward without answering this question. You know your business best. Only you know what you want to achieve with your content . For example:
- I want to create content that will help me rank higher in Google search results for luxury tours to Mauritius, thereby increasing sales of this product by 20%.
- I want to create content that will help me demonstrate my knowledge and skills, making me better at selling consulting services.
- I want to create content that will help inspire my target audience, which will improve my image.
- I want to create content that will bring new people to my site and learn more about my services. The content will attract them so much that they will later become my customers and this will ultimately increase my sales.
If you have been creating content for several years, you should reevaluate it . Does your old content strategy reflect your current goals? What are the results? What could you improve this year?
2. Think like your target audience. What is he interested in?
The buyer persona is very important. If you know what your customers like, it will be easy for you to create content that will engage them . Thanks to him, they will then become part of the sales process.
For example, imagine that your target audience is moms between the ages of 25 and 40. Maybe you sell baby clothes that help babies sleep better. Obviously, your topics should include children’s sleep – how to help children sleep better, interviews with experts, tips for apps with different soothing tunes, etc. However, you must not forget that your audience is also interested in other topics. In the case of young mothers, it can be breastfeeding, proper nutrition for children, diapers, child development, health and other similar topics that you can cover in your content. Even if these topics don’t specifically involve your product, they can help you attract a new audience.
Let’s say that some mom is looking for articles about proper baby nutrition. She finds your article that interests her. He decides to read other articles on your blog and discovers that you also help with children’s sleep, which leads him to your product.
3. Experiment with different types of content
Based on your goals and target audience, determine the type of content you want to create. You already know the persona of your buyers, so you know whether they prefer to read or watch videos , what media they watch the most, and which social networks they like to use the most.
You can also combine types of content . Let’s go back to the mothers from the previous example. They spend a lot of time on Facebook, where they discuss their lives, children and husbands. They love Facebook contests and often share motivational pictures with quotes about motherhood. They want to be informed so they can be good mothers, so they read a lot about new trends in parenting. They laugh and cry over videos of children and animals. Thanks to this information, we can guess what kind of content would be most interesting to this particular target group:
- Funny and cute videos,
- Educational articles,
- Infographics,
- Competitions,
- Motivational, inspirational and funny pictures.
Every few months , you can evaluate the results achieved by different types of content . Thanks to this, you will see what has been the most successful with your target group. Remember, learning how to manage content properly takes a long time. Country and culture are also very important factors that can influence a lot. Young mothers from Germany will react differently to your content than mothers of the same age from the UK. Even though the two countries are relatively close together, your results may differ significantly. Keep this in mind if you’re creating content for markets in different countries.
4. The time has come to create a content plan
So you already know everything about your target group. You also know what your goals are and what kind of content you want to create. Finally, you can safely proceed to the last step, which is the actual creation of the content plan. Before you jump on the whiteboard with the perfect plan, there’s one last question you need to answer. What resources do you have and how often are you able to publish quality content? The answer will determine how often you should publish. Regularity is very important in a content plan. Thanks to it, your audience knows when they can look forward to new content.
You don’t need any special software to create a content plan. Excel or Google Spreadsheets will suffice. However, the plan must include :
- Topic,
- Article title,
- Release Date,
- Type of content,
- Target audience (if you have several),
- Products or brands you want to reprint (if you have product articles or banners to add).
Prepare your content plan several months in advance. You can still change it, but it’s good to have a clear idea of where you want to go. Remember that your plan must still align with your goals.
Also Read: How To Implement An SEO Content Strategy With Hubspot