369: Creating A Content Marketing Strategy, Part 2

More Questions to Ask Yourself When Creating a Content Marketing Strategy

It's episode 369! Get ready to giggle all the way through this podcast because the Happy Hour girls have got a serious case of the sillies! Aside from the juicy content we've prepared for you (which by the way is wicked awesome stuff), you'll get to experience the real us and we hope that it will help make your day!

In Part 2 of Creating A Content Marketing Strategy for your business, Dawn and Traci will walk you through more questions you'll want to be asking yourself as you create a content strategy. Whether you're a coach, consultant, speaker, author, small business owner, marketing director or more, you won't want to miss this valuable continuation.

Let's pick up from where we left off in the previous episode. We've already given you four questions, so here's five more questions you should ask yourself:

 

5. What is the overall theme and messaging of your content?

Knowing your content objective and knowing who your content is for actually goes hand in hand with this. You have to have a theme and content that is tailored directly to your target audience. whatever your purpose is, whether it is for educating, entertaining, or providing value to them, it needs to be consistent with the brand voice or who you are as a business. Your theme should make sense for your brand.

A lot of entrepreneurs make the mistake of putting out content that has nothing to do with their business. For example, when Dawn started out, she used to make blogs about anything and everything in her life. First she'd talk about SEO, then about her dog, then about moving! That doesn't make sense if you are an actual business, unless you are super creative and you can tie those irrelevant content back in with your theme.

 

6. What kind of format should you use for your content?

There a couple of format options to choose from for your content. For example, you can choose to create audio content (like our podcasts), video content (for Facebook Live, Periscope or YouTube), written content (like blog posts and Tweets), or image content (for Instagram and Pinterest). It's important that you know the kind of format that bests suits your brand. Also, don't limit yourself to just one kind of format. You can repurpose content you've already used in one format and put in on another format.

 

7. When and where should your content be shared?

There are two things you need to consider: 1.) Where is your target audience hanging out? and 2.) What time are they usually online?

You have to think about the frequency of sharing and which platforms to use to share it. You also have to be consistent so that people will know the exact time and date to watch out for your content. For Happy Hour, we see to it that our podcasts are published every Monday. Once you've figured this out, you'll have a greater following because people will come to expect it.

 

8. How will you know if your content marketing objective has been met?

Last week we talked about the objective or the purpose of the content and how it can help your marketing become way better than it was before. But then how do you know that you actually met that objective? The best way to find out is by going back to your content and see how it did. Based on the objective you set, did it gain more traffic, get more likes, shares and/or views, or lead people to the next step? Again, it will be uniquely tied back to your specific objective.

 

9. How can you maximize the value of your content?

You also have to think of how you can maximize the value of your content for you and your business. For example, if you are blogging, it doesn't matter how many blog posts you make, if you it doesn't get ranked in search engines, it's not going to do you any good. So you should know a little bit of SEO so that as your content gets domain age and authority, it will show up in the different search engines. This is an example of creating value for yourself.

Just because you've created one piece of content doesn't mean it's one and done. You can use that same content and pull out additional pieces of content from it. For example, Happy Hour publishes podcasts every Monday in iTunes and Stitcher. From those podcasts, we make show notes and put them onto our blog. Then we create a short snippet, take the blog link and share it on our Facebook fan pages. We also Tweet about the podcasts and share the  same link on Twitter. So with just one podcast episode, we were able to make more pieces of content on different platforms and in different formats. See how wicked awesome that is?

 

Hopefully this week and last week's episodes are going to be very helpful when you start creating a content marketing strategy. When you consider these nine questions and put it into play, we're positive that it will take your content marketing strategy up a notch!

 

Happy Hour Marketing is also in the process of taking things up a notch! That's why we need your help! We hope you can take 3 minutes and fill out our survey to help make sure the type of content we create for you going forward will help you get crazy awesome results in your business!  https://happyhourhangouts.com/survey516. Thank you so much!

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