A few days ago, the content production platform Skyword released a white paper on how to kick-start your content marketing. It includes a seven-step approach that can be used by any organization to develop or re-energize a successful content marketing strategy and program. Additionally, it includes insights from 21 experts and influencers within the fields of content marketing, search engine optimization and social marketing.

According to the paper, the formula for success is fairly simple: Provide people the information they want, when they want it and where they want it – but this may not be as easy as it sounds. Businesses need to transform themselves into publishers and develop the processes, technology and employees to deliver highly relevant content at scale in order to obtain success. In the report, Founder & Group CEO of Mindjumpers, Jonas Klit Nielsen, states:

“Companies need to be ready to think as publishers and not marketers. They need to know what value they can provide their target group (above and beyond the value offered via their brand or products) and implement a robust editorial process in their workflow.”

 

The seven-step approach to delivering success

As with any other marketing initiatives, the ultimate goal of content marketing is to turn prospects into customers in order to increase revenue -  but not through relentless promotion of products. Your business needs to deliver information and advice of actual value to the target group and that calls for a well thought out plan. The seven steps to follow towards a successful content marketing strategy and program is illustrated in the following figure from the paper:

 

 

Define what you want to obtain

In the white paper, each of the seven steps are described in further detail, including advice on how to proceed and get closer to reaching the goal of your business. But the first and most important step in the approach is to define the objectives for your business. What are you trying to achieve and how can content help in this regard?

Before having established whether you aim to drive brand engagement, traffic, generate leads etc., it’s not possible to plan the actual strategy. Each step of the approach refers back to what you have determined to aim for, also implying that the objectives should be clearly defined and not focused on several goals. It’s important to keep it simple as wanting too much at the same time can end up making your strategy fail. As suggested in the report, choose one or two of the business objectives you consider the most important to your business specifically.

“You need to start with defining your business objectives and build your program and metrics around those goals. If you are not measuring against business goals, the whole effort is meaningless.” (Bill Ives, Partner, The Merced Group)

 

Go through one step at a time

Having established the foundation of the strategy to meet your objectives in the first step, it’s time to move on to the next steps. Here, the white paper also gives you a helping hand, providing great advice on how to form your strategy and which elements to take into consideration along the way.

It’s crucial to spend time on establishing the foundation for a long-term approach, which helps you provide your audience with relevant content on a continuous basis. The strategy you develop must adhere to your overall marketing efforts and thereby become an integrated part of your business initiatives.

To get more detailed advice on how to kick-start your content marketing strategy and program, please download the full report by clicking here.

 

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Tags: Advice, content marketing, goals, Jonas Klit Nielsen, objectives, Report, seven-step approach, Skyword, white paper