Thanks to clichés like this, we all know that well-written and intentionally optimized content is vital to a company’s overall marketing success. In fact, most marketing departments have incorporated some form of content marketing into their strategy with varying degrees of sophistication and impact. So what are the factors that determine why some companies enjoy royal returns on their content efforts, while others never make it to King Content’s palace?
According to the sixth annual Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends-North America report, having a written content marketing strategy and editorial mission statement in place are two of the four key qualities that define a best-in-class content marketer.
Let’s start with the editorial mission statement. Given the importance of this foundational element, if your team does not have an editorial mission statement, the nobility of King Content may be in jeopardy. Fear not majestic marketer; defining your editorial mission statement can be as simple as answering a few basic questions:
- Why do you exist?
- Who is your core target audience?
- What will be delivered to the audience?
- What is the desired outcome for the audience?
After satisfying the answers to the four questions above, challenge yourself to summarize your editorial mission statement in 35 words or less. Then query your colleagues to see if they would position it the same way. Interdepartmental cohesion is critical in the content production process and it starts with the mission statement.
Now that you have solidified your editorial mission statement, evaluate your actual content marketing strategy through the lens of your mission statement. If your content strategy is either ineffective or, perhaps nonexistent, now is the time to invest in the supreme foundation upon which your virtuous content can emerge.
While a quick Google search will provide an abundance of tips and templates for creating a content marketing strategy, the four steps below offer a simple roadmap to establish a lineage of content excellence.
- Content Ideation: Summon all of the relevant dukes and duchesses within your empire to come forth with their finest ideas. Ideally, this meeting of the minds will result in a comprehensive list of topics upon which to base future content production.
- Content Creation: The success of your dynasty hinges on this step! Creating and maintaining an editorial calendar – based on the topics revealed in Step One – is crucial and consistency is key.
- Content Amplification and Sharing: All Hail, King Content! Hear ye, hear ye. Now that you have impeccable content, it’s time to expand your territory. One of the best ways to broaden your authority, is to re-purpose your own content: blog posts, customer stories and even data are a splendid source.
- Content Management & Analysis: The squires in your data department can help you assess the efficacy of your efforts. What is working? Where can you improve? Opulence acquired by supreme content only comes from executing a formal regime.
Enough cannot be stated about the high rank and honor of utilizing images within your content. Content with images gets 94% more views than content sans images. It doesn’t matter what industry, topic, niche, or specialty
Just a few last tips on repurposing your crown jewels, as they may hold the key to unlocking the holy grail within your organization:
- Avoid double posting! What you can do, however, is take the content that already exists and turn it into appropriate posts for each of the social media sites you are participating in.
- Narrow your focus. Select one informational gem from existing content that is valuable on its own and tweak it for social. Add an image or infographic and link back to the original source for a perfect post.
- Do a round-up post. Collect all the posts you’ve done on a particular topic and start a conversation around that issue. It also serves as a way to resurface older content and make it fresh again.
Alas, my honorable marketers, it is time I bid you adieu. I sincerely hope that your quest for harnessing the power of King Content is a successful one, worth more than a king’s ransom.
