Spring Cleaning: Hard Work, Big Payoff

Experts recommend businesses evaluate and fine-tune their content marketing approach annually— but the best time to reassess your marketing plan is anytime you think it’s not working. Even if you did an analysis in 2021, if your business is growing or experienced big changes as a result of the pandemic, it’s probably time to do it again. Like many spring cleaning projects, this may seem overwhelming, but we’ve broken it down into five components that make getting started easier.

5 Steps To A Stellar Content Marketing Approach

Story – It’s a basic question that modern consumers ask of the brands they choose to give their business to: who are you, and why should I give you my business? If you don’t have a cohesive story that’s engaging and relevant— or if you have one, but you’re not effectively sharing it— you’re going to lose customers’ interest. Make sure your brand’s ethos is at the forefront of your content marketing approach, tell your consumers the story of your company, and you’ll lay the foundation of lasting relationships with them.

Data – We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: good marketing is based on facts, not feelings. You need to look at all the data you have available to you on what’s been working in your content marketing and what hasn’t. Maybe an email campaign you weren’t sure about was actually a high performer— maybe a blog post you were really proud of didn’t generate much traffic. If you’re quickly growing your follower base on Facebook, you probably want to make sure you’re funneling lots of good content to that platform. Looking at the numbers will help you focus on the areas that will give you the most bang for your buck, and de-prioritize the ones that aren’t generating much engagement.

Repurposing – It can be daunting to think about creating tons of new content along with a new content marketing approach, but lucky for you, you can re-use old content in new ways. Take a look at your top performing blogs, social media posts, and email campaigns, and repurpose them. A blog post can be updated with new data or broken up into a series of social media posts; high traffic social posts can be given a fresh coat of paint with new images or videos; anything can be cross-posted to a new platform you haven’t used before such as TikTok.

Competition – Another source of data is available to you just by looking at what your competitors are doing. If you’re not subscribed to their newsletters, following them on social media, and reading their blog posts, you should start doing that now. There are also many tools available like SEMRush to show harder data on engagement with your competitors’ content, which can show what’s working for them and can help inspire new ideas for you.

Personalization – Last but absolutely not least, you have to make your content marketing approach personal. Modern consumers will ignore marketing that doesn’t feel personal and relevant to them, so targeting groups of your customers based on their behavior (which looking at your engagement data will help categorize) will help you tailor your marketing to fit their needs. Once you’ve set up these channels, using them to build relationships and broaden your reach will follow naturally.

Experts in Social Media At Your Service

My Content Co knows how to create relevant, engaging, and timely digital content, just like you know how to grow your small business. We specialize in creating websites, blogs, social media posts, and newsletters that are consistent with your brand. Partner with us to keep your content marketing approach up to date so that you can get back to doing what you do best – running your business. Visit us online or contact us today at 410-324-3934 to get started.