HOW TO CREATE AN EFFECTIVE CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY

1. INTRO: How did it create an effective content marketing strategy? I am your professor for today. My name is Kayla Breezy, and I'm a marketing strategist for ambitious online service providers in small business owners who are ready to grow and scale their business where they can stop trading time for money. I help them improve their online exposure with high level marketing and sales strategy so they can increase their sales and have the freedom to create memories with their loved ones . Before we dive into today's content, let's quickly talk about why I'm qualified to teach you today on content marketing. I started this business roughly three years ago, and I was able to fire my boss 90 days from the launch of my business as the breadwinning person for our family and as a brand new mom. I've been featured in several publications and online events such as Christian women in business today dot com. Amazingly, one of influence Summit and many, many more. I have my M B A. In finance, I have to undergrad degrees one, an accounting one in a business administration. I'm a certified spiritually life coach. I own and operate two successful businesses I have been an entrepreneur for over 12 years. I have over 10 years experience and marketing over nine years, experience in sales, accounting and finance. I'm extremely passionate about marketing and sales strategies, and I have helped hundreds of entrepreneurs harness the power of content marketing so they can increase their exposure, gain credibility and make more money. 2. STEP 1: TARGET AUDIENCE: the first step to creating an effective content marketing strategy is really looking at your target audience now, before we dive in and we talk about the benefits to knowing who your target audiences. Let's quickly debunk the myth and that I often see in the online space that Target Market and Mitch are one of the same. They are actually different in they. Both serve a different purpose but are important when considering what to create. As far as your content marketing goes, so your target market is the group of people in which you serve and your niche. Your niche is the service that use specialize in an offering to that particular target market, so they're not one of the same. They are different, but they support each other in terms of your target audience. Now, when we're looking at your target audience, there several benefits, but to name a few. The benefits are. If you talk to everyone, you talk to No one. Okay, so you want to be very specific and who you're talking to with your targeted on it audience . You have the ability to create really captivating content that's going to convert because it's super specific towards your audience that you are trying to target it, effortlessly, build rapport with your audience and ultimately builds community. It positions you as a credible expert in the industry as well. So when we're looking at the specifics for your target audience, you want to look at and consider, you know, who are you serving? Possibly their age range, their gender, maybe their income level, possibly their location, the industry, whatever their problems are that they are coming to you. For these are all things that you want to consider with your target audience, so that you can create content that's gonna move them and speak to them rather than speak at them. 3. STEP 2: OBJECTIVES: Step two, you wouldn't look at the objectives, all of your content. Marketing strategy. There are many ways that you can look at in terms of the goals that you wanna have for your content marketing strategy, but to name a few, maybe you're looking to grow your email list. Maybe you're looking to generate more income, more revenue, increase your website traffic, grow your online following, increased the likes or followers on your social media, or even generate more leads. Now Avary objective and goal that each business has for the content. Marketing strategy is going to be different, which is why it is important for you to evaluate what it is that you want to achieve with your content marketing strategy. Now, in terms of the objectives as well and in terms of your goals. You also want to look at what metrics are you going to measure? Okay, the saying goes, which you measure grows, and that's the same thing when it comes to your content marketing. If you are not analysing the content, if you're not tracking what is or isn't working, you could end up being on this hamster wheel of never really knowing what is or is not working essentially in terms, your content marketing and the goal here is this to figure out what is working and continue to keep doing more of it and stop doing what isn't working, because obviously it's not working for your business, and it's essentially a waste of your time. So the more that you track it and you analyze, in your view, your content, you're able to work smarter by leveraging what is currently working for you. So in terms of metric measurements, you're gonna want to determine how you're going to track them. Okay, so maybe you're gonna track you're going to track them inside of an Excel spreadsheet or a Google sheet, or in some other you know, method that you have. You're gonna need to look at and decide which metrics really are important for you to be tracking. So are you going to track the lights, the follows, the shares, the sales, the the reach that you have etcetera, and then you want to determine as well you're tracking frequency, you know? Could it be that you're going to track every day, every week, every month? I recommend that you track no less than one time in month because it's going to be a lot of content for you to go through in evaluating, analyze, but at the very bare minimum, you want to do at least a monthly look at all of your content. Look at the analytics. Look at how many people have reacted and shared and commented on your post on social media . And if it's newsletters, you want to look and see what is your average open rate and things of that nature. So you have to be paid attention to these analytics is faras your objectives and gold goes well so you know whether or not you're moving that needle of success forward in your business with their content marketing strategy or if it in fact, is hindering you or making its statement. 4. STEP 3: PLATFORMS: Step three is part of the cont American, and strategy is going to be taken. Look at the platforms that you want to leverage in terms of pushing out your content marketing, so you want to take a look and choose the right platforms for your particular audience. Now, if you are business to business and that's who you service, you could potentially be working off a linked in. If you are a product based business such as a boutique, maybe you want a leverage instagram, and you want a leverage Pinterest. If your service based provider that without a lot of content marketing in terms of courses or lead magnets and freebies or other relevant type of pieces of content, perhaps you want to take a look at Pinterest now. I could go into a whole discussion about the platforms, which I'm not going to do today, so you will need to go ahead and look and do a little bit of investigation to determine where your ideal audience is, where they're spending the most time and what platforms make the most sense for you to be spending the most of your time on now. I do recommend that you focus on one or two to start before you branch out to the others on . The reason is because you want to be really amazing at 1 to 2 platforms and truly master them before you move on, because it's better to be great at those 1 to 2. Rather than focusing on all of the social media platforms and then and end up having a mediocre online presence, you want your online presence to be strong and compelling, and being able to do that is gonna be with you, focusing minimally on wonder to social media platforms. 5. STEP 4: CONTENT STRATEGY: Step four of the Conta marketing strategy is your actual content strategy, so there are a few different things to consider when it comes to your content strategy. There are different categories of content, and I actually have six rules of content for you. So before we dive into the six rules of content, let's quickly talk about the categories of content. There are visibility, value and promotional pieces of content. Now I want you to keep in mind that every piece of content you create essentially promote to you your business and your brand. So it's imperative that you pay attention to that as you're creating your content. So visibility, a piece of content they usually very short and sweet to the point. And the goal is to be more of an engagement pieces to get people to engage its to build rapport, and it lets them let your audience really get into your life. Let them see behind the scenes, really just see your personality shine. It truly is just a form of building report, community and engagement with your audience. Types of this, this content could be quote or could be asking engagement type of questions. It could be sharing an industry related article or a video that could be sharing behind the scenes photos or sneak peek into your life could even potentially be a testimonial if it's not being used as a promotional aspect, right? Ah, in terms of value based content, value based content, in my opinion, is content that is really original content to you. So it's your content. It's, you know, comes from from your brain and to your fingers. And this is what you creating as you're typing out or coming through, is you is you're talking, but it's it's your original content. So it's what you want to share in terms of your knowledge or skills in your experience. And it's not something from someone Alice, which would be curated content. So when you share an industry related article or video from an industry expert or an influencer that is curated content so your original content is coming from you. It's your written content, and it's what you want to share with the world, so these could be in various forms. It could be a blogger. It could be long form content could be tips and tricks. It could be a freebie that you're offering whatever you want it to be. This is gonna be value based type of content. So in terms of freebie cup type of content, it could be a master class of weapon or a free course. What have you but their value in nature? Okay. And then the last piece is going to be the promotional piece of content. So typically, obviously, this is gonna be You know where you're promoting you. Your business in your brand in the objective is to obviously either grow your list, go you're balling or make some sales in the process. So this is where those freebies come in. This, you know, asking people to follow you on social media and hosting or promoting an upcoming event, sharing information about a particular program or course or a class or what have you? These are all different promotional pieces of content. So obviously the pro social peace is promoting you, your brand and your, uh, your business. And so it is important to separate those three three pieces of content or those categories of content. Now, when you're looking at the Six Rules of Content Marketing, you want to keep that in mind as you are, sharing your piece of content and something that I recommend is that you focus on depending on the platforms is at least one from each of those categories. If you're gonna be posting multiple times a day such as, like on Facebook, you want to post three of those one of each of those three pieces of categories of contact . Now, in terms of your six rules for content marketing, you want to make sure that your content is consistent, and so this is consistency with your brand consistent, they see with your the voice and the languages that you're using, its consistency and the topics that you're sharing, right? So everything needs to be consistent. The more consistent that you have, the better it's gonna be. And also in terms of consistency, is going to be the number of times a day that you post a number of, um, at the same time of day that you're posting is much of consistency, as you can possibly get. The butter is gonna be not only for your on insta Buell to get on board and to be aware of when you typically post, but It's also gonna help with the social media platform, especially with the algorithms. They like those consistency factors coming in now your content needs also be compelling and so compelling content. This is where you are really essentially pouring your heart out to your audience. So this could be in form of story. It could be informed. That's gonna be motivational inspirational, right? So you want to compel your readers to be able to follow you, to be able to read what you have to offer And if it's not compelling, they're going to unsubscribe. They're gonna leave, right? They're gonna not follow you any longer. And so you want to create those compelling piece of content? Um, and writing compelling piece of content is really simple when you use a short story and you share those piece of story in all of your pieces of content. Now, the third rule of content marketing is it needs to be converting. So every piece of content that you put out again essentially promote you your business in your brand. And so you want to put all content that is going to be moving your audience through a relationship building funnel. So to speak. I give him to the point that they're going to convert, so every piece of content is toe have an intention behind it, and it needs to be strategic so that it's not. You know, you're not throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping that something is going to stick your moving them through this relationship building process as you're nurturing this lead and you're moving them through so they can say yes to converting. Now your content needs to be relevant. This is something that I am extremely passionate about. There's nothing that grinds my gears more than when I see a really amazing brand share something that's completely off topic or doesn't even represent their brand. It completely stands out like a sore thumb. You want to make sure that your content is relevant, relevant to your audience, relevant to your business relevant to your brand. You know, that doesn't mean that you can't have fun and share an occasional mean here and there, but you want to make sure that it still represents your brand overall so that people can respond to it. They're going to see your personality. They're gonna be able to connect and engage with it. But when it's something that is completely irrelevant to anything that you do, you're relevant to your personality, irrelevant to your brand. It's actually going to damage your brand, and you don't want to do that in terms. Your content. Marketing strategy. Well, you don't want to do that in terms of anything, regardless, but you really want to make sure that it is relevant so that it's everything stays on brand , and you have that consistency factor that comes in this well. Now. The fifth thing in terms of your content marketing strategy for the rules of content is your content needs to be unique. OK, it can't be regurgitated content from everywhere else online. It needs to be coming from you, and he's toe have your personality, and that's how you can really make it shine and be different is really putting your personality into these content marketing strategies in every piece of content. In the copy of your content, put your personality and their use Burbage that you would normally use another day life, right like you talk. These are all things that you could do that are gonna help you stand out from from everyone else in the industry, and then the last rule is your content needs to be valuable. Make sure that whatever piece of content that you're putting out, that it's providing some sort of value and value is a loose term, and everyone has their own opinion of the terms of what value is. But you want to make sure that it is valuable in the eyes of your audience, right? So your audience is. Everyone is tuned into their own radio frequency of W I I F m. What's in it for me. Therefore, you want to make sure that you're creating content that's really speaking to them. That's moving them that they can really see, like the benefit of what's really in this. For me to be able to stop and read this or to subscribe, or to watch this video or whatever it's going to be, and unease appeal to provide them value that they're getting something out of it by taking the time to to do ah and read your content or into absorb the contact that you're putting out. So those are the six rules of content marketing, and you want to make sure that you follow them in terms of when you're looking at the three categories of content of the visibility of the value in the promotional content. 6. STEP 5: POSTING STRATEGY: now the fifth and final step to your content. Marketing strategy is your posting strategy. Now, we've talked a little bit about this previously, but let's dive into it a little bit more here. So you want to make sure that you choose your platform, okay? And so, truth in your platform, it could be your social media platforms it could be looking at. If you're going to blogger on a consistent basis, it's gonna be your newsletters, right? And so you want to decide how you are going to create your content where you're going to post it on, Then you want to determine how often you're gonna be posting this content and the best time that you want to be posting your contact. Okay, So in terms of social media you want to look at typically between eight AM and eight PM, is gonna be usually a good time for you to be posting your content. Now I read somewhere that newsletter should go out at 8 a.m. Eastern time, and you convert it to be whatever it would be in your time zone so that it goes out of 8 a.m. Eastern time and the reason for that is so that when it hits all the different time zones, it's typically around a time that is popular for people to be on their phone. So maybe in the morning, uh, on their lunch break or really late in the evening on that, in terms of your blog's your blawg, you know it's really up to you when you want to promote your blog's. But typically what I have read and what I've seen others have mentioned is that Mondays and Tuesdays are really great days to be publishing your block posts. So when you're looking at in terms of your ah, your your time is the day that you wanna post on social media, make sure that you are looking at your analytics that you can leverage those peak times if possible. And if you don't know if you're new, then obviously leverage. You know the times between eight AM and eight PM, based on the number of times a day that you're gonna be posting on social media now, in terms of the frequency, when we look at your frequency for social media, every platform has their own set of rules, so to speak, okay and so you can look at like Facebook. I typically recommend posting 1 to 7 times a day and it really all depends on the size of your page. If you have under 50,000 followers on your Facebook page, then you typically want to promote honey your page you know, anywhere between 2 to 4 times typically. Okay, Now, if you're on Instagram, you can get away with 1 to 2 times on Instagram linked in and Google Plus are usually one time a day And then if you have Twitter or pin dressed, you can definitely do, you know, 10 or more times a day when it comes to your blogger, your newsletter this is again no hard fast rule you can really share is much content as you want. So if you wanna blawg everyday and publish a block post, you could definitely do that. If you want to do it once a month, you're more than welcome, Teoh. Obviously, the more you Blawg it's gonna help in terms of the ASIO on your website and you're going to able to pump out more content that people are gonna be able to see and it's going to drive traffic. But do what works for you. Don't over commit. That's the worst thing you can do. Pick something that you know that you can commit to consistently. Because remember, consistency is one of those rules, and if you find that you can add in another post cure there, that's fine. Then you could increase it as you go. But it's worse. Who set this really high expectation on then to scale it, Really, you know, far back where it seems as if you're almost not posting at all. And the same is true with your newsletter. If you want to send out a daily newsletter, you're more than welcome to If you want to do it once a week, that's great. I really recommend no less than toe a month. Oh, so that you stay on the forefront of your mind and your audience. But you have the flexibility. There is well and, you know, same for social media. You really do have the flexibility, but with the algorithms and with the way social media works you do have, you know, mawr of the quote unquote rules that you need to follow on social media because over posting can become spammy. It can actually hurt you with the algorithm. If your audiences and engaging and, you know, like prime example Facebook, Facebook would see that your page is not relevant. It's not engaged, which means it's gonna lower the organic reach of your post that are being seen by Facebook users. So those are just a few things that you need to consider in terms of your posting strategy . 7. FINAL THOUGHTS: So here are my final thoughts for the course for you today. You want to remember this acronym kiss? Keep it simple, sweetie. Don't overcomplicate the process. Don't over commit as well. Okay, I want you to commit to 90 days of consistent action with your content marketing strategy. I want to remind you to test track and analyze your strategy so you can determine what is or is not working in terms your content marketing strategy on. Then make sure that when you are done with your 1st 90 day increments that you look at the analytics to review this analytics and then you tweak what is currently working for you so you can make sure you continue doing that and then tweak what isn't working so that you could do more of what is working for you to really powerfully put out some compelling content that's going to convert 8. WHAT'S NEXT: and that concludes our course for today. I want to quickly take the time to thank you so much for grabbing this course, learning the five easy steps to creating an effective content marketing strategy that ultimately will help you write compelling content that will convert. So what is next? As part of this course, what I would love for you to do is create a mock up of your content marketing strategy utilizing the five steps that I provided for you today. It could take into consideration everything that I have shared with you about how to really create that strategy. And I would love for you to share it it with the class for further discussion on the Don't forget. If you get stuck along the way, feel free to post your questions in the class discussion for further support from me again . Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to quickly learn how to create a defective content marketing strategy. And I can't wait to see how this is going to work for your business. Thank you so much.