Unit 9. 3 Be able to manage a content marketing campaign

Content marketing strategy, content strategy, and content plan.

People often use these terms interchangeably (which is understandable, as the lines are somewhat blurry), but each is a bit different:

Content marketing strategy
At its core, your content marketing strategy is your “why.” Why you are creating content, who you are helping, and how you will help them in a way no one else can. Organizations typically use content marketing to build an audience and to achieve at least one of these profitable results: increased revenue, lower costs, or better customers.

WANT MORE? More information on how to create your content marketing strategy is discussed is more detail below or you can download The Essentials of a Documented Content Marketing Strategy: 36 Questions to Answer.

Content strategy
On the other hand, content strategy delves deeper into (in Kristina Halvorson’s words) the “creation, publication, and governance of useful, usable content.” Note that content strategy often goes beyond the scope of a content marketing strategy, as it helps businesses manage all of the content they have.

WANT MORE? Here are 10 content strategy practices that will make you a better marketer.

Content plan
In contrast to the other two, a content plan is very tactical. It documents the specifics of how you will execute your strategy, and who on your team will be handling each task. It’s important to understand that you need a content marketing strategy BEFORE you build your content plan. Think of it as a marketing plan that specifically relates to content; thus, it should include details such as the key topic areas you will cover, what content you will create, when and how to share your content, and specific calls to action you will include.

WANT MORE? If you are interested in planning, check out these 23 templates, checklists and guides.

Do I really need to create a content marketing strategy?

Yes! As we’ve learned through our annual research, not only do you need a strategy, you also need to document it. Those with a documented content marketing strategy:

• Are far more likely to consider themselves effective at content marketing
• Feel significantly less challenged with every aspect of content marketing
• Generally consider themselves more effective in their use of all content marketing tactics and social media channels
• Were able to justify spending a higher percentage of their marketing budget on content marketing

What should my content marketing strategy include? 

Think of a content marketing strategy as an outline of your key business and customer needs, plus a detailed plan for how you will use content to address them.

While there are no definitive “templates” for building a content marketing strategy — each one will be unique to the business that creates it — there are five components that they commonly include:

1. Your business case for innovating with content marketing: By communicating your reasons for creating content, the risks involved, and your vision of what success will look like, you are much more likely to gain executive support for your strategy — and to get permission to make a mistake here and there as you figure out what works best for your business.

Learn more: Get our essential starter kit: Mastering the Buy-in Conversation for Content Marketing.

2. Your business plan for content marketing: This covers the goals you have for your content program, the unique value you are looking to provide through your content, and details of your business model. It also should outline the obstacles and opportunities you may encounter as you execute your plan.

Learn more: Get help determining where content marketing fits in your marketing plan.

3. Your audience personas and content maps: This is where you describe the specific audiences for whom you will create content, what their needs are, and what their content engagement cycle might look like. You may also want to map out content you can deliver throughout their buyer’s journey in order to move them closer to their goals.

Learn more: Get an in-depth look at how to create and use B2B buyer personas. You can also follow this five-step guide on mapping your content.

4. Your brand story: Here, you characterize your content marketing in terms of what ideas and messages you want to communicate, how those messages differ from the competition, and how you see the landscape evolving once you have shared them with your audience.
5. Your channel plan: This should include the platforms you will use to tell your story; what your criteria, processes, and objectives are for each one; and how you will connect them so that they create a cohesive brand conversation.

Learn more: For additional insights and advice, take a look at how to build social media into your content marketing processes.

Don’t have time to build a complete content marketing strategy? Take a look at how you can simplify the process with a one-page plan.

Do I need to share our content marketing strategy with other teams/departments in my company?

We’ve found that it’s beneficial to give everyone in your organization access to your content marketing strategy — even those who may not be directly involved in the content marketing process.

This is particularly critical in large organizations, as it can help keep siloed teams on the same page, minimize duplicated efforts, and ensure that everyone is working toward the same content goals. But sharing your documented strategy is also good practice for businesses that are just starting out with content marketing, for content teams that rely on internal or external subject matter experts, or for companies that outsource any part of the content creation and distribution process.

Of course, how you communicate your strategy depends on the structure and culture of your organization. In some cases, it may be appropriate to share your full documentation. In other cases, it may make more sense to create targeted summaries for certain stakeholders (for example, busy executives, or external agencies), based on how your content marketing strategy will impact their particular roles, processes, and objectives.

In short, consider this: How can you use the principles of content marketing to “sell” content marketing throughout your organization? What do people care about most? This should help you determine which components of your content marketing strategy are most appropriate to share with each team.

How often should I update my content marketing strategy?

Some parts of your strategy should stay consistent even as your content marketing program grows and evolves — namely, your mission and business goals. In fact, these two things are so key that you may want to put them on a Post-it note so you can keep them in view whenever you are working on your content. (For example, at CMI, we use them as part of our acceptance criteria for every editorial content submission we receive.)

However, other aspects of your content marketing strategy will likely benefit from being reviewed and updated periodically. To ensure that your content marketing program remains on target, consider revisiting your channel strategy, core topics, and team processes on an annual basis — or more often if you are just getting started.

3.1 Plan a content marketing campaign.

Whether you’re just starting out with content marketing or you’ve been using the same approach for a while, it never hurts to revisit your content strategy plan — to make sure it’s up-to-date, innovative, and strong.

After all, you’ve got more competition than ever. According to the Content Marketing Institute, the most successful B2B marketers report spending 40% of their budget on content marketing as of 2018 — up 1% from 2017.

The first step to getting a leg up on the competition is to have a solid, smart content marketing plan in place. If you’re having trouble planning for the upcoming year or need some fresh ideas to include in your plan, read on.

Click here to try our free Blog Ideas Generator tool.

In this post, we’ll dive into:

• What content strategy is.
• Why your business needs a content marketing plan.
• The exact steps you will need to take to create your strategy, including:
  • How your content can generate leads.
  • How (and what) to publish on social media.

What Is Content Strategy?

Content strategy refers to the management of pretty much any tangible media that you create and own: written, visual, downloadable … you name it. It is the piece of your marketing plan that continuously demonstrates who you are and the expertise you bring to your industry.

You might’ve heard how important content creation is to the growth of your business, but as you’ll see throughout this post, it needs to have a well-planned purpose. When you develop a content strategy, there are some key things to consider:

Whom You’re Creating Content For

Who’s the target audience for this content? For how many audiences are you creating content? Just as your business might have more than one type of customer, your content strategy can cater to more than one type of reader or viewer.

Using a variety of content types and channels will help you deliver different content to each type of audience you have in mind and engage everyone your company does business with.

The Problem it’s Going to Solve for that Audience

Ideally, your product or service solves a problem you know your audience has. By the same token, your content coaches and educates your audience through this problem as they begin to identify and address it.

A sound content strategy supports people on both sides of your product: those who are still figuring out what their main challenges are, and those who are already using your product to overcome these challenges. Your content reinforces the solution(s) you’re offering and makes your customers more qualified users of your product.

What Makes You Unique

Your competitors likely have a similar product as yours, which means your potential customers need to know what makes yours better — or, at least, different. This is where content comes in. In order to prove why you’re worth buying from, you need to prove why you’re worth listening to.

The Content Formats You’ll Focus On

What forms will your content take? Infographics? Videos? Blog posts? Having identified the topics you want to take a position on, you’ll need to determine which formats to budget for so you can best express that position.

The Channels Where It’ll Be Published

Just as you can create content in different formats, you’ll also have different channels you can publish to. Channels can include owned properties, such as your website and blog; and social media properties, such as Facebook and Twitter. We’ll talk more about social media content strategy in the step-by-step guide later in this article.

How You’ll Manage Creation and Publication

Figuring out how you’ll create and publish all your content can be a daunting task. It’s important for a content strategy to know who’s creating what, where it’s being published, and when it’s going live.

Today’s content strategies prevent clutter by managing content from a topicstandpoint. When planning a content calendar around topics, you can easily visualize your company’s message and assert yourself as an authority in your market over time. Learn more about topics in content strategy in the video below.

Why Do Marketers Need to Create a Content Marketing Strategy?

Content marketing helps businesses prepare and plan for reliable and cost-effective sources of website traffic and new leads. Think about it — if you can create just one blog post that gets a steady amount of organic traffic, an embedded link to an ebook or free tool will continue generating leads for you as time goes on.

HubSpot’s Sales Blog Team found this to be key to their strategy to increasing traffic to the blog over time.

The reliable source of traffic and leads from your evergreen content will give you the flexibility to experiment with other marketing tactics to generate revenue, such as sponsored content, social media advertising, and distributed content. Plus, your content will not only help attract leads — it will also help educate your target prospects and generate awareness for your brand.

Now, let’s dive in to learn the specifics of how to create a content marketing plan.

How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy

1. Define your goal.

What’s your aim for developing a content marketing plan? Why do you want to produce content and create a content marketing plan? Know your goals before you begin planning, and you’ll have an easier time determining what’s best for your strategy.

2. Conduct persona research.

To develop a successful plan, you need to clearly define your content’s target audience — also known as your buyer persona.

This is especially important for those who are starting out or are new to marketing. By knowing your target audience, you can produce more relevant and valuable content that they’ll want to read and convert on.

If you’re an experienced marketer, your target may have changed. Do you want to target a new group of people or expand your current target market? Do you want to keep the same target audience? Revisiting your audience parameters by conducting market research each year is crucial to growing your audience.

3. Run a content audit.

Most people start out with blog posts, but if you want to venture out and try producing other content pieces, consider which ones you want to make. For instance, if you’ve been doing weekly blog posts for the past year, creating an ebook that distills all your blog posts into one ultimate guide would be a one way to offer information in a different format. We’ll go over several different types of content you can use further down on the list.

If you’ve been in business for a while, review your content marketing efforts and the results from it in the last year. Figure out what you can do differently in the upcoming year and set new goals to reach. (Pro tip: Now is a great time to align your team’s goals with the rest of your organization’s goals.)

4. Choose a content management system.

Have a system in place where you can manage your content. A few vital parts of content management include content creation, content publication, and content analytics.

If you’re a HubSpot customer, you can plan, produce, publish, and measure your results all in one place using HubSpot software. Another content management system is a WordPress website hosted on WP Engine.

5. Brainstorm content ideas.

Now, it’s time to start coming up with ideas for your next content project. Here are some tools to get the wheels turning:

HubSpot’s Website Grader

HubSpot’s Website Grader is a great tool to use when you want to see where you’re at with your marketing. From your blogging efforts to your social media marketing, Website Grader grades vital areas of your marketing and sends you a detailed report to help you optimize and improve each area.

With this tool, you can figure out how to make your website more SEO-friendly and discover new content ideas.

BlogAbout

Get your mind gears going with IMPACT’s unique content idea generator, BlogAbout. This tool works a bit like Mad Libs, but instead of joke sentences, it shows you common headline formats with blanks where you can fill in the subject you have in mind.

This brainstorming technique helps you put general ideas in contexts that would be appealing to your target audience. Once you have a headline you like, BlogAbout lets you add it to your “Notebook” so you can save your best ideas.

HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator

Get blog post ideas for an entire year with HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator. All you need to do is enter general topics or terms you’d like to write about, and this content idea generator does all the work for you.

Feedly

This popular RSS feed is a wonderful way to keep track of trendy topics in your industry and find content ideas at the same time.

BuzzSumo

Discover popular content and content ideas at BuzzSumo. This company offers a number of market research tools, one of which uses social media shares to determine if a piece of content is popular and well-liked. In turn, this information helps you see which content ideas would do well if you were to create content about them.

Blog Post Headline Analyzer

CoSchedule tool analyzes headlines and titles and provides feedback on length, word choice, grammar, and keyword search volume. If you have an idea in mind, run a few title options through the Headline Analyzer to see how you could make it stronger, and to move your idea further along in the brainstorming process.

6. Determine which types of content you want to create.

There are a variety of options out there for content you can create. Here are some of the most popular content formats marketers are creating, and tools and templates to get you started.

Types of Content Marketing

1. Blog Posts
2. Ebooks
3. Case Studies
4. Templates
5. Infographics
6. Videos
7. Podcasts
8. Social Media

Blog posts

If you haven’t already noticed, you’re currently perusing a blog post. Blog posts live on a website and should be published regularly in order to attract new visitors. Posts should provide valuable content for your audience that makes them inclined to share posts on social media and across other websites. We recommend that blog posts be between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length, but experiment to see if your audience prefers longer or shorter reads.

Check out our free blog post templates for writing great how-to, listicle, curation, SlideShare presentation, and newsjacking posts on your own blog.

Ebooks

Ebooks are lead-generation tools that potential customers can download after submitting a lead form with their contact information. They’re typically longer, more in-depth, and published less frequently than blog posts, which are written to attract visitors to a website.

Ebooks are the next step in the inbound marketing process: After reading a blog post (such as this one), visitors might want more information. This is where calls-to-action (CTAs) come into play, directing people to a landing page where they can submit their contact information and download an ebook to learn more valuable information for their business. In turn, the business producing the ebook has a new lead for the sales team to contact.

Case Studies

Case studies, also known as testimonials, are your opportunity to tell the story of a customer who succeeded in solving a problem by working with you. A case study is perhaps your most versatile type of content marketing because it can take many different forms — some of which are on this list. That’s right, case studies can take the form of a blog post, ebook, podcast … even an infographic.

Your goal in a case study is to show the people who are considering your product that the proof is in the pudding. Before choosing a customer for a case study, you should determine which form the testimonial will take and the area of your business to which you’re trying to drive value.

Templates

Templates are a handy content format to try because they generate leads for you while providing tremendous value to your audience. When you provide your audience with template tools to save them time and help them succeed, they’re more likely to keep engaging with your content in the future.

Infographics

Infographics can organize and visualize data in a more compelling way than words alone. These are great content formats to use if you’re trying to share a lot of data in a way that is clear and easy to understand.

Videos

Videos are a highly engaging content medium that are shareable across social media platforms and websites alike. Videos require a bigger investment of time and resources than written content, but as visual marketing increases in popularity — after all, it’s 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content — it’s a medium worth experimenting with.

HubSpot Research recently found that video is the most preferred form of content. Video also captures people’s attention more than any other content format.

Podcasts

Starting a podcast will help audiences find your brand if they don’t have time or interest in reading content every day. The number of podcast listeners is growing — in 2018, nearly one-third of the U.S. population has listened to a podcast in the last month. If you have interesting people to interview or conversations to host, consider podcasting as another content format to experiment with.

Social Media

Once you’ve been regularly publishing content on your own site for a while, it might be time to start thinking about distributing your content on other sites. This could mean repurposing content into new formats and publishing them on your blog, creating original content specifically for external sites — such as Medium — or publishing website content on various social networks.

Posting on social media, however, is pivotal to amplifying your brand’s reach and delivering your content to your customers where you know they spend their time. Social networks on which businesses often post include:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Snapchat
• YouTube (yep, this is technically a social network)

When launching a business account on any of the social networks above, it’s important to post the type of content your followers expect to see. On Instagram, for example, users want photos, videos, and graphics that reflect current events, show off user-generated content, or even go behind the scenes of your organization.

On Facebook, your options for what to post open up a bit: Not only can you share your blog posts and website content, but you can also post native Facebook videos, product promotions, and original memes that resonate with your customers. You can also interact with other businesses that have a similar audience as your own.

While the goal on social media sites like Instagram or Snapchat is to connect more intimately with your audience, your goal on platforms like Facebook and Twitter is to expand that audience, drive traffic toward your website, and start conversations in your industry. Do some basic market research to discover which platforms your buyers are on, and mold your content to their expectations.

When you’re ready for more ideas, there are a plethora of different content types to diversify your website. Check them out below:

7. Publish and manage your content.

Your marketing plan should go beyond the types of content you’ll create — it should also cover you’ll organize your content. With the help of an editorial calendar, you’ll be on the right track for publishing a well-balanced and diverse content library on your website. Then, create a social media content calendar so you can promote and manage your content on other sites.

Many of the ideas you think of will be evergreen — they’re just as relevant months from now as they are today. That being said, you shouldn’t ignore timely topics either. While they may not be the bulk of your editorial calendar, they can help you generate spikes of traffic.

Most people count on incorporating popular holidays such as New Year’s and Thanksgiving in their marketing efforts, but you don’t have to limit yourself to these important marketing dates. If there are niche holidays that might appeal to your audience, it could be worth publishing content on your blog or on social media. HubSpot’s Service Blog Editor Sophia Bernazzani compiled this ultimate list of social media holidays — keep an eye on it when you’re planning your calendar.

We know this is a lot of information, but the work has just begun. It takes time, organization, and creativity to grow a successful content marketing strategy. From building the foundation of your content marketing plan to adding tools to better manage your content, setting up your strategy for the new year won’t be a hassle if you follow the steps and explore the resources here.

For additional guidance, use HubSpot’s Marketing Plan Generator to create a 12-month strategy in just a few minutes.

3.2 Use an editorial calendar in running a content marketing campaign.

When it comes to content marketing, many companies that struggle with consistency have found an editorial calendar to be the perfect solution. Even those that don’t have that problem have been using a content marketing editorial calendar for years.

So, what about your organization?

Could you benefit from adding an editorial calendar to your content marketing plan?

Most of us know that the answer to that question is yes. We know that the number one way to get traffic is through the very habits that an editorial calendar will help us develop—organization and consistency.

However, a lot of marketers still struggle with knowing exactly how to set up and use a calendar to achieve their goals.

If that sounds like you, it’s time to learn what journalists have known for decades: editorial calendars are essential for maintaining busy, successful publishing schedules.

Table of Contents:

• Free Editorial Calendar Template
• What Do You Need to Build an Editorial Calendar?
• What Is Content Marketing?
• What is a Content Marketing Editorial Calendar?
• Why Should Content Marketers Use an Editorial Calendar?
• Two Types of Editorial Calendars: Spreadsheets vs. Software
• Getting Started With Your Editorial Calendar Strategy
• Outline a Basic Publishing Schedule
• Building Calendar-Based Workflows
• Managing Your Calendar

First, Get Your Free Editorial Calendar Template

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

You’ve probably heard that quote before.

There’s good reason for that. It holds true. Especially for content marketers.

Without proper planning, content is liable to fall flat. Or not get done on time. Or at all.

Speaking from experience, creating better content more consistently starts with strategic use an editorial calendar.

If you don’t have one yet, though, you’re in the right place.

You can build one fast with this free Excel-based template below. Then when you’re ready to upgrade, consider an alternative like CoSchedule.

Now, there’s no excuse not to get organized.

What You Need To Start A Content Marketing Editorial Calendar

There is no shortage of free templates available for creating your editorial calendar. Some are digital, and some are even written out on paper, but none are more prepared for the modern age than the fully digital options.

The best part about using a paper editorial calendar is that it can help you start the habit of using one to plan your content marketing. Eventually, you’ll need bigger and better tools, but this is a great way to start out without making a major financial investment.

No More Spreadsheets: The Digital Content Marketing Editorial Calendar

When you’re ready to upgrade, a tool like CoSchedule can provide a fully digital solution, connecting your content calendar directly to your WordPress blog and social media networks. This powerful tool combines social media and content marketing scheduling with a robust productivity tool that will allow you to share tasks with your team and leave comments or critiques on their work. You can also schedule your blog posts with a drag-and-drop ease.

What Is Content Marketing?

Before we get too much farther into the importance of editorial calendars themselves, it’s essential that both you and your team fully understand what content marketing really is.

We often hear buzz words like “content marketing” and “editorial calendar” without fully understanding their implications.

According to Wikipedia, content marketing is:

“Any marketing format that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire customers. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, etc.”

In short, it’s marketing that doesn’t suck. It’s marketing that’s actually helpful to its audience. But, what does strong content marketing actually look like?

Let me share a simple example.

Weber Nation

Popular grill manufacturer Weber knows how to do content marketing.

A few years ago they launched a new site called “Weber Nation” that is 100% committed to helping its audience. It provides tips on grilling the best steaks, caring for your grill, and how to use a great grill to entertain your guests.

While the advice works great for customers of actual Weber grills, owners of any grill brand can benefit from their information.

Their efforts paid off so well, they doubled down with an iOS app.

What does that tell you?

Content marketing is worth the investment, and it’s not just for startups.

Does this mean that everyone who visits their site will purchase a Weber grill? Probably not, but it’s likely that Weber has gained millions of new fans that could all be potential customers.

It’s not about a quick sale. It’s about building an audience that trusts you long-term.

That is the ultimate goal of content marketing.

What Is A Content Marketing Editorial Calendar?

Most of us are familiar with the idea of a traditional editorial calendar that helps us visualize our content publishing on a calendar-like interface, but how does that differ from a content marketing editorial calendar?

Content marketing is highly strategic.

That means you need to understand your audience, what motivates them, and what they need to hear from you in order to make a connection to your brand.

A content marketing editorial calendar is essentially a planning document that gives your team a plan of attack. Like a traditional editorial calendar, it gives you a bird’s-eye view of what is going on. However, it should be expanded to fit all the different channels a marketing team specifically would care about.

Overall, it should accomplish the following:

• Provide a place to generate post ideas and key topics.
• Assign writing and other editorial tasks to key members of your team.
• Create a publishing schedule that helps you maintain a consistent presence.
• Allow you to make in-process adjustments with drag-and-drop ease.
• Visualize your marketing strategy in a way that everyone can understand.
• Act as a communication point to team members.

A content marketing editorial calendar gives you and your team a framework for being deliberate and intentional about how you are reaching and building trust with your audience. In part, it is a strategic marketing tool. In another way, it is a place to keep your team organized and on top of things. Both of these things are going to be very important as you move ahead.

Why Should Content Marketers Use An Editorial Calendar?

Journalists and news publishers understand the value of editorial calendars.

They’re essential tools for planning ahead and sticking to deadlines. Without them, it’s extremely difficult to plan content around centralized themes (think how magazines target themes each issue), or to even know who’s doing what, and when.

In other words, creating content consistently without a calendar is like driving a car without a steering wheel.

It doesn’t work.

Smart content marketers understand this, too. However, even if you know why you need editorial calendar software, it’s possible your boss is tougher to convince. This may be especially true if the person holding the credit card isn’t actually a marketer.

If this situation sounds familiar, stick with us through this post. We’re going to show exactly what you can accomplish with editorial calendar software.

If you want to create great content consistently, it pays to know what you’re going to do before you do it. As we like to say at CoSchedule, “plan your work, then work your plan.”

When it comes to planning, too many content marketers just wing it.

“Winging it” isn’t a real editorial strategy, though. It leads to creating directionless content that doesn’t produce results. Deadlines get missed, projects get planned haphazardly, and teams waste time spinning their wheels.

An editorial calendar helps create order out of chaos. It provides a simple planning tool for laying out:

• What content you’ll create.
• Why you’re creating that content.
• Who will create each piece of content.
• When that content will be due.

That sums up the basic functionality of a content calendar. Take things a step further with editorial calendar software like CoSchedule, and you can also achieve the following:

• Successfully plan out coordinated content campaigns and themes.
• Lay out your content publishing schedule alongside your social media promotion.
• Manage your team member’s workflow.

And that’s just scratching the surface. Let’s dig deeper and see what an editorial calendar app can do for you.

Keep All Your Content Ideas and Projects Organized

Having a great idea, only to forget it later, is frustrating.

Having a great idea and simply not executing on it may be even worse.

At CoSchedule, when we have a great content idea, it goes straight on our editorial calendar. That way, nothing gets forgotten, and those ideas get turned directly into actionable content that helps our audience and makes us more successful.

Stop Missing Deadlines and Get More Stuff Done

According to Parkinson’s Law, “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Without constraints, people take as much time as they have to get their work done. This isn’t necessarily because they’re lazily, but because it’s built into the way humans operate.

This is why we also often feel like we get more done under pressure. When deadlines are fast approaching, we’re more motivated to get the work done. With a clear content calendar to keep track of your deadlines, it’s a lot harder to forget when things are due.

Clear deadlines, combined with a tool for ensuring they’re enforced, results in more content getting created. It’s as simple as that.

Two Types of Editorial Calendars: Spreadsheets vs. Software

Spreadsheets are a common editorial calendar solution.

They’re free and flexible. If you’re just getting started, they’re better than using nothing.

But, they do have some downsides:

• Lack of automation. There’s no way to automate publishing or content promotion via spreadsheet.
• Disconnected workflows. The calendar is separate from social networks and email platforms used to promote content.
• Communication is missing. Without commenting functionality, teams must rely on outside communication tools.

Fortunately, there’s a solution.

Why Use Editorial Calendar Software?

Technically, you can use spreadsheets to build editorial calendars. They work well enough and they’re cost-effective. However, their functionality is fairly limited, they can be time-consuming to maintain, and ultimately, they aren’t a ton of fun to use.

Using an app instead can turn your content calendar from something you have to use, to something you actually want to use.

See Everything In One Place

The value of seeing your entire editorial strategy in one place can’t be overstated.

With CoSchedule, you can see all your content in one place. This includes blog posts, social media messages (which can be toggled on or off), and anything else you’re working on. You can also connect your Google Calendar so events and meeting times can be synced on your CoSchedule calendar:

Drag-and-Drop Convenience

If you want to move something on a spreadsheet, you have to copy and paste it.

When you have a lot of stuff on your content calendar, this can be a pain.

With CoSchedule, you can drag-and-drop content anywhere you want on the calendar. This makes adjusting your calendar to reflect shifting priorities easy.

Collaborate In One Place

With spreadsheets, your calendar and communication tools are separate.

As a result, discussion around projects can easily get lost. That’s why collaboration features are built directly into CoSchedule.

Integrate With All Your Other Tools

CoSchedule connects with other tools you’re likely using to help you get more organized and save more time. Here are some examples:

• Transfer content from Google Docs or Evernote directly into WordPress. Or, use CoSchedule’s built-in text editor:
• Connect your WordPress blog to schedule posts to publish automatically. Then, use either our WordPress plugin or web app to manage your calendar.

• Hook up all your social networks to schedule all your social media promotion in advance:
  Plus, with advanced features like Best Time Scheduling and ReQueue, keeping your calendar full of social media posts takes minimal effort.

• Automatically add UTM tags to every URL on every piece of content published through CoSchedule. This helps improve tracking in Google Analytics.

Convenient Color-Coding

It seems like a small detail. However, if you’re used to planning content in spreadsheets, you probably have elaborate color-coding schemes set up to make them easier to understand.

You don’t have to lose this when moving up to CoSchedule. Every item you place on your calendar can easily be color-coded for quick recognition.

Store Drafts for Later (and Never Lose an Idea Again)

Have an idea for a post you don’t want to lose? Or, do you have something in progress you won’t be able to finish until a later date? No problem. Just click an item on the calendar drag it into your Drafts bin:

Getting Started With Your Editorial Calendar Strategy

If you’re going to try and implement an editorial calendar with your team, you will need to be able to make the case as to how it will help you grow your traffic and improve your business. This will take you right back to some of the things we discussed earlier in the guide about the business value of content marketing as a whole.

Here are some key benefits to communicate:

• Better visibility across projects and campaigns. Everyone knows when each piece is publishing, and who is responsible for it.
• Ability to finally get organized. Disorganization leads to frustration and lack of productivity.
• Reducing the number of missed deadlines. No one likes missing deadlines. But, without a calendar to track them, it happens.
• Spending less time planning and more time executing. Spending time planning and getting organized saves more time later on.

Those are some strong benefits that most any marketing team will get behind.

Understand Who You’re Talking To With Personas

It’s cliche to say that you need to understand who your audience is, but it couldn’t be more true. Not only do you need to make sure that you understand your audience, but your entire team will need to know who they are as well.

A good place to get started would be with some basic customer profiles or audience personas.

Take An Inventory Of Your Team

Who’s on your team, and how will each of them be contributing to the end product? This may sound simple, but it is an important question. If there is only one of you on your team, this step may be better spent writing down some of the tasks that will need to be completed and the order in which you will do them.

Here are some roles that’ll likely be working off your calendar:

• Writers.
• Designers.
• Project Managers.
• Social Media Managers.
• SEO Specialists.
• Content Strategists.

If they’re on your marketing team, they can get value from your editorial calendar.

Develop a Basic Channel Strategy

Not all content is equal, so you should decide what yours will look like. The basic starting point is usually a WordPress blog, but you might have other channels, too. Those include:

• Social media (broken down by network).
• Email marketing.
• Video platforms.
• Landing pages.
• Webinars.
• Courses.

The world of content marketing is vast. And all of it can be planned on your calendar.

Find Your Content Core

The content core is the intersection between your brand’s purpose and your customer’s interests.

Understanding this will help you plan content that’s both:

• Relevant to your audience. What do they want from you?
• Delivers results for your business. How will it attract the right audience to your company?

How Will You Plan?

Most teams that use content marketing editorial calendars like to have regularly scheduled meetings to plan out their content. Decide if you’ll do one of the following:

• Run group brainstorming meetings. Great ideas can come from anywhere.
• Leave content planning to an editor or strategist. These folks are closest to the data that will guide you to success.
• A mix of both. This way, you can take advantage of the pros for each approach above.

Outline a Basic Publishing Schedule

Determining how often you will publish new content will also determine how far ahead you plan your content. This is a very subjective question.

Now, your publishing frequencies may vary depending on each channel. Here are some starting points if you’re fresh to the content game.

Your Company’s Blog

Your Brand’s Social Media Presence

Your Organization’s Email Marketing Schedule

You’re most likely sending marketing emails either daily or weekly per list segment. So, here are the best times to send those emails (according to 10 studies):

Videos, Landing Pages, White Papers, eBooks and More

If it’s content, it can go on your editorial calendar. Not everything necessarily needs to be on a fixed schedule. For example, landing pages and white papers might be things you create on an as-needed basis, rather than making up your bread-and-butter content.

But, the best way to keep it all organized is to plan everything on your editorial calendar. That’s the key takeaway here.

Building Calendar-Based Workflows

Calendars can support your entire content marketing workflow. Here’s how.

Brainstorm Topics and Campaigns

Before you can use your calendar, it needs content. One simple process that’s worked well at CoSchedule is to run a 30-minute content planning session.

Here’s how the process works:

1. Spend ten minutes writing down ideas. Have each team member jot down ideas on Post-It notes (one idea per note).
2. Spend ten minutes scoring those ideas. Put those ideas up on a board. Read each one out loud. Then, have each team member score them on a three-point scale (3 = Awesome, 2 = Meh, 1 = Dud). You’ll end up with ideas that fall into all three categories, and that’s okay. This isn’t about shaming anyone.
3. Spend ten minutes selecting the very best topics. Take all your ideas that scored mostly 3’s, and decide which are the very best. These will go on your calendar.

This video offers a more detailed breakdown on how this process works:

Map Content to Marketing Funnel Stages

Next, map each topic to a marketing funnel stage. You’ll need content that fits each of the following stages:

• Top of funnel. This is content that broadly interests your audience, but is only loosely connected to your brand. People looking for this content are likely not aware of your company or product yet.
• Middle of the funnel. This is content that speaks to potential customers who are considering buying the type of product or service you offer.
• Bottom of the funnel. This is content that converts shoppers into customers.

Here’s what a basic marketing funnel looks like:

The majority of your content will likely be top of the funnel, since these topics typically generate the most interest. However, content increases in value, even as it decreases in volume, the further down the funnel you go.

Establish Clear Workflows

Figure out which steps are required to create a single piece of content. Then, determine how long each step should take.

You can do this easily by first figuring out what needs to be done. Create a list:

• Generate an idea.
• Determine deadline.
• Do keyword research.
• Write an outline.
• Write content.
• Handoff for graphic design.
• Review and content.
• Ensure content is optimized.
• Write social media posts to promote content.
• Draft email copy to promote content to your list.
• Schedule publish date and time.

That’s a hypothetical checklist for a single piece. Next, figure out who is responsible for each step. Now, this list might look like this:

• Ideation (team/strategist).
• Determine deadline (editor/manager).
• Keyword research (strategist/SEO specialist).
• Write outline (content writer).
• Write content (content writer).
• Design graphics (graphic designer).
• Review content (content writer/editor/manager).
• Ensure content is optimized (editor/SEO specialist).
• Write social media posts (content writer/social media manager).
• Draft email copy (content writer).
• Schedule publish date and time (editor/manager).

These don’t necessarily need to be assigned to specific job titles; just tasks or roles different team members may fill, depending on your team size and structure.

Now, figure out how long each step should take. Having your team use a time tracking app like Toggl can help you estimate this more accurately. To get started, determine how long each task usually takes right now, per step.

At this point, the list might look like this:

• Ideation (team/strategist – 30 minutes).
• Determine deadline (editor/manager – 5 minutes).
• Keyword research (strategist/SEO specialist – 2 hours).
• Write outline (content writer – 2 hours).
• Write content (content writer – 8 hours).
• Design graphics (designer – 4 hours).
• Review content (writer/editor/manager – 1 hour).
• Write social media posts (writer/social manager – 1 hour).
• Draft email copy (content writer – 1 hour).
• Schedule publish date and time (editor/manager – 5 minutes).

These times are completely hypothetical for example purposes only. Next, determine how many work days this entire workflow will fill. Then, add two weeks. That’s how far out in advance your content should be placed on your calendar.

Finally, map this all out to a checklist your team can use. If you’re a CoSchedule customer, this can be done with Task Templates. These are reusable checklist templates that can be added to each piece of content on the calendar.

Select a piece of content on the calendar and click the Template icon:

Next, click Add Template:

Then, enter steps to complete each task. You can also assign team members and due dates to each step:

These can easily be re-ordered any way you’d like:

When you click each task, it’ll show the whole team that step is complete. This will be reflected by the completion percentage on the calendar:

Each time a team member checks off a completed task, it’ll be reflected on the Team Performance Report, which tracks everyone’s overall productivity:

Add Content to Your Calendar

Now you’re ready to add content on the calendar. As a reminder, take the estimated amount of time each piece, and add two weeks. This will give your team enough time to get each piece created, without constantly pushing up against deadlines.

If you’re using the template in this post, complete each field in the spreadsheet per piece of content:

For CoSchedule customers, select a day on your calendar. Then, add the Content Type:

Give your content a headline (plus add a description and any tags you’d like to use for organization):

Assign an owner, color-coded label, and set the publish date and time:

Hit Create Blog Post (this button text will change according to the content you’re creating). Next, you’ll be able to add tasks or a task template:

The content will now appear on your calendar:

Communicate and Collaborate on Content

As you’re creating your content, you’ll need to communicate with everyone on your team. You’ve got two options here:

• Use a chat app. Slack and HipChat are popular options.
• Use calendar software with built-in chat. CoSchedule incorporates Discussion Threads for this purpose.

If you’re using CoSchedule, click the Contributors icon on the right, and make sure all required team members are assigned to your piece of content:

Now, you can pass comments and trade files back and forth:

This ensures no notes get lost and helps manage version control.

Publish!

If you’re using CoSchedule with the WordPress integration, your post will automatically publish at your specified date and time. If you have social media campaigns and email newsletters promoting your content, you can create and manage those in CoSchedule, too.

For those using spreadsheets, you’ll need to make sure everything is lined up in your Excel or Google Sheets calendar, your social scheduling tool, and email platform.

Managing Your Content Marketing Editorial Calendar

So, you’ve decided to take the plunge and start using an editorial calendar for your content marketing.

You’ve made the right call.

Not only will you find yourself producing better content, but you’ll also become more consistent with your publishing. In turn, it should lead to a steady increase in traffic.

As you go, there are seven things that you are going to need to keep an eye on at all times.

1. What’s Happening This Week? What’s Happening Next Week?

If you are doing it right, you should have an answer to these questions at all times. How does your calendar make this easier?

2. Does Your Team Know What To Do?

Tools like CoSchedule allow you to assign tasks to each member on your team, making communication easier than ever. Everyone should know what they are supposed to do, and when they are supposed to do it.

3. Is There Healthy Communication?

Discussion about a new piece of content and how to make it better should be a normal part of the process. You should have something in place that allows you to have discussions, and share thoughts with your team.

4. What About The Assets?

Images and graphics can be important elements for great content marketing. Who will be responsible for them, and how will they be assigned? Again, CoSchedule makes this pretty easy with simple tasks that can be assigned to each team member.

5. Implementing Editorial Review

At our office, we use a peer review process to improve the quality of our work. Gathering feedback from our peers is a low-cost way to constantly improve the content that we create. Your calendar and editorial plan should accommodate for a step like this.

6. Reschedule As Needed

One tip for users of a paper editorial calendar is to use colored sticky-notes rather that just writing on the paper calendar itself. This gives you the same drag-and-drop flexibility that you will find in a tool like CoSchedule.

Keep Your Social Media In Check Too

While it is often missed, promoting your content on social channels is also very important. It is really the best way to spread your content online. CoSchedule makes this easy, allowing you to schedule your blog posts and your social media messages on the same calendar interface.

No matter what tool you choose, you need to select something that will set you up for success. I often find that those who take the time to plan, edit, and execute their editorial calendar are far more likely to succeed, and build the traffic that they need for the long run.

3.3 Originate content for a content marketing campaign.

our content marketing strategy influences how you reach your audience.

If you don’t have a content strategy, now’s the time to create one.

Many businesses feel overwhelmed about where to begin:

• What content should you produce?
• How often?
• And where should you post it?

We’re going to answer those questions today.

The important thing to remember is that content serves as a magnet. It draws people to your business, which gives you the opportunity to convert them.

Without a content marketing plan, you can’t expect people to simply stumble upon your website.

In this post, we’ll teach you how to create content that converts, then use your newfound knowledge to reel in prospective customers.

What is Content Marketing Strategy and Why Is it Important?

Content marketing strategy is the set of steps you take to research, create, publish, and promote information that’s of value to your audience. Content is nothing more than text, audio, or video that helps people solve problems.

The key ingredient every content marketing strategy needs is quality. Lots of content floats around the Internet. Some of it is useless, but there’s plenty of great content, too.

You have to do better than your competition. Otherwise, your content won’t be visible in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Writing for the Content Marketing Institute, Julia McCoy notes that a solid content marketing strategy can generate three times more leads than paid advertising.

Lead generation is one of the most important metrics businesses track. The more leads you bring in, the more opportunities you get to make sales.

Think of your content marketing strategy as the lure for prospective customers. Your offer is the hook. Instead of throwing your money at potential prospects, focus on drawing them in with solid content.

How to Know if You Really Need to Develop a Content Marketing Strategy

Very few businesses won’t benefit from a content marketing strategy. Ask yourself whether your prospective customers struggle with problems or goals. If the answer is “yes,” you need a content marketing plan.

Let’s say that you sell a consumer product. You want more people to buy it.

Instead of paying for advertising — or in addition to it — you write articles that appeal to your target audience. The goal is to help them with their problems or goals for free.

Because of those articles, prospects find your website. They read your content, respect it, and continue to come back. When they need a product like yours, your brand is top of mind.

Without a content marketing strategy, though, you’re just guessing. A strategy allows you to create the right content at the right time.

Why Creating a Content Marketing Strategy is So Important to Get More Conversions

Consumers convert when they’re ready. It’s that simple. But a content marketing strategy enables you to be there at the moment a prospect decides to buy.

Strategy often separates the content marketing winners from those who never manage to reach their audiences.

With a strategy in place, you’ll know the following:

• Which keywords to target
• The voice to use in your content
• When to mention your product
• How to deliver a slam-dunk call to action

You don’t just want people to read your content. You want them to take the next step.

To convince them, show that you’re an authority in your space. Offer more generous content than your competitors. And devise a content marketing strategy that helps you reach people when they need you most.

How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy That Converts: A Step-By-Step Guide

You know you need a content marketing strategy, but you might not know where to start.

We’ve created a step-by-step guide you can follow to make sure you’re reaching as much of your audience as possible.

Step 1: Research Target Keywords

Many marketers erroneously believe that keywords are so 2010. That’s not the case.

When someone types a search string into Google, they use keywords even if they’re not aware of it. You have to figure out what keywords will appeal to searchers.

Ubersuggest is a great tool for finding keywords to target. Start with a simple keyword, then find long-tail keywords to add to your list.

Plenty of other free keyword research tools exist, as well.

You can target both competitive and non-competitive keywords. Focus on longer-tail variations to get targeted traffic to your site.

For instance, a keyword like “running shoes” will target a wide range of people. The keyword “running shoes for bad knees” will narrow down your audience, which is a good thing when it comes to attracting and converting qualified leads.

Step 2: Find Related Keywords

You don’t want to rely exclusively on a single keyword. To help Google understand your content, mix in related keywords.

Ubersuggest can help. Just keep typing in keywords related to your topic and writing down related keywords that would make sense to your audience.

Google has to parse tons of information, so you want to do as much as you can to help. Many keywords have dual meanings, for instance, so adding related keywords will help Google understand what type of search intent to target.

Step 3: Design a Spreadsheet For Each Topic

Create a master spreadsheet you can use as a template. That way, you can copy it for each piece of content you create.

The spreadsheet should include the target keyword, related keywords, and any other information you need to know before you begin content creation.

As long as you have a spreadsheet, you can share your ideas with other people on your team, get feedback, and publish content so it fits your schedule. Don’t skip this step if you want your content marketing strategy to be organized.

Step 4: Outline the Content You’ll Create

An outline helps you organize your ideas and structure your article so it provides maximum impact, both for SEO and for readers. It also helps you decide what subtopics you want to cover and prevents you from forgetting ideas before you start creating content.

The outline should go in your spreadsheet. If necessary, label each subtopic in the outline with the appropriate heading tag and other useful information. For instance, under each subtopic, you could include statistics you want to mention or links to include.

Step 5: Create a Draft of Your Content

Each piece of content starts in draft form. You can use Microsoft Office, Google Docs, or any other program with which you’re comfortable. Alternatively, write your drafts in WordPress or your preferred content management system.

After you write your draft, let it sit for a day or two before you revise and edit. Alternatively, send it to a trusted editor who can catch mistakes and point out jumps in logic and other issues.

Step 6: Design a Publication and Promotion Schedule

You can decide how often you want to publish your content. Consistency matters more than frequency.

For instance, if you publish new content every Monday, your readers will know when to check back and read your latest offering. You might publish three times per week, every weekday, or even every day.

Try to publish content on consistent days and at consistent times. Being off by a few hours probably won’t hurt you, but organization is key for the success of your content marketing strategy.

You must also schedule content promotion. Posting about your new content on social media and emailing people you mention in each article can have a drastic impact on how many people your content reaches.

Facebook allows you to schedule content in advance. You can also use tools like Buffer to make promotion easier.

Step 7: Conduct Influencer Outreach

When you mention people or brands in your content, reach out to them and ask them to share your content. Many of them won’t follow up, but it’s a numbers game. The more people you contact, the more shares you’ll receive.

You can also get in touch with people who might find your content interesting and who have large online followings. Influencers can make generic content go viral, so if you have a fantastic piece of content, you want to give it every chance of being seen by people in your target audience.

There’s nothing wrong with asking for a share. Just don’t pester influencers. Focus on building relationships and helping them. In the video below, Crazy Egg co-founder Neil Patel talks about influencer marketing and the best ways to go about it.

When you ask an influencer to do something for you, ask what you can do to help them in return.

Step 8: Set Aside Time for Internal Linking

Internal linking helps your content rank better in the SERPs and keeps people on the page. You don’t want website visitors to click away after reading your article. Instead, you want them to dive deeper into your site.

Obviously, if you’re building a content marketing strategy from scratch, you don’t have existing content. As you add new content, go back to old articles and add relevant links to newer pieces.

If you have the premium version of the Yoast plugin, you’ll get automatic suggestions for internal links. This can speed up the process considerably.

However, remember that high-quality internal links are paramount. Optimize your anchor text (the words that get linked) for the target article. For instance, don’t use meaningless phrases like “click here.” Instead, incorporate internal links naturally using anchor text with relevant keywords.

Developing a Content Marketing Strategy: Checklist

Now that we’ve covered the eight steps required to build a content marketing strategy, where do you start? Having a handy checklist can help make this process easier and more efficient.

Here’s a content marketing strategy checklist to get you started:

• Keyword Research: Make sure you have an extensive list of keywords related to your products, services, or brand. Update this list constantly to include new keyword ideas so you never run out of content.
• Content Goals: What do you want to achieve by publishing content? Each piece of content can have a separate goal. For instance, one might be to establish topic authority, while another is to convert leads.
• Content Length: How long do you want your articles to be? Long-form content often gets better traction in the SERPs because it’s considered more thorough. However, if the topic doesn’t warrant 5,000 words, keep the content shorter.
• Style Guide: Create a style guide so that each piece of content has a consistent voice, tone, and appearance. Include details like spelling and capitalization of brand terms, how many images to use for each article, and how many subheadings to use.
• Pillar Pages: You might want to create pillar pages. These are high-level pieces of content that target your most desired keywords. Link to your pillar pages consistently throughout your articles.
• Non-Text Content: Consider creating videos, infographics, and interactive content to work alongside your text-based content. You can embed these pieces in your articles to make them more engaging.
• Writing and Revising: Develop a system for creating and proofing content so it reflects your best work. You can assign anyone on your team for these tasks or outsource them if necessary.
• Target Audience: Every piece of content should be aimed at a particular segment of your target market.
• Promotion: Determine how you will promote your content. Your content marketing strategy for promotion can include email marketing, influencer outreach, and more.

Feel free to refer to this content marketing strategy checklist as often as necessary so you stay on track. You can also revise your strategy to reflect new goals or to reach a new audience.

3 High-Converting Content Marketing Strategy Examples

If you’re just starting to develop your content marketing strategy, examples, can help. They show you how your own content might look and provide inspiration for your future campaigns.

The following are three content marketing strategy examples to get you started.

1. Backlinko

Brian Dean of Backlinko went against nearly every content marketing trope in existence. Instead of writing lots of short, succinct articles, he decided to publish extensive, keyword-rich articles.

To date, he only has a few dozen articles on his blog, but he gets massive traffic. He’s also one of the most-referenced bloggers in the marketing sphere.

How did he do it? Through email outreach. He spends tons of time promoting his content by asking for links and shares.

You can read about his skyscraper content marketing strategy and how he boosts his SEO through sheer determination. While you don’t have to take your own strategy to this extreme, you can benefit from understanding how his strategy works.

2. Zappos

As one of the most successful companies in the world, Zappos already has a long reach. It’s no slouch in the content marketing department, though, and uses its blog to attract a huge audience.

You’ll notice that Zappos doesn’t just write articles about how to pick the perfect pair of shoes. Instead, the company covers a wide range of topics to appeal to its target audience.

From local color pieces to tips on travel, you’ll find tons of information on the Zappos blog. The ecommerce brand even writes about how to make your shoes and clothing last longer, which seems counterintuitive, but the information is endearing and fosters customer trust.

3. Hubengage

Hubengage is an app that helps promote employee motivation and engagement. On its blog, Hubengage publishes articles on how to make employees happier. The company also publishes content on its competition and on use cases.

You can benefit from studying Hubengage’s content marketing strategy because it’s diverse but always attuned to its audience. The company also offers an excellent example of how to incorporate promotional posts into your content marketing strategy.

Conclusion

A content marketing strategy doesn’t just spring into existence. It takes time and effort to create.

Use our guide to developing a content marketing strategy, then start testing your content. Crazy Egg offers user behavior tools that show you how visitors interact with your content so you can make adjustments as necessary.

The more you know about how your content performs, the better you can perfect your content marketing strategy. Run A/B tests to refine your landing pages and home page or to test different CTAs on your blog posts.

As your brand evolves, establish new tests. You can incorporate that data into future content creation decisions.

Content marketing can help your business grow, but only if you make data-based decisions and learn from other brands. Focus on getting your content marketing engine started, then step back and make small adjustments to increase conversions.

3.4 Curate content for a content marketing campaign.

Ironically, taking credit away from other influencers in your industry is the last thing you want to do when you’re curating content!

If you play your cards right and understand the fundamentals of curating content, forget about just growing your brand.

Armed with the knowledge and tools below, you’ll be able to maximize the success of your marketing efforts and become a legitimate online authority.

But before we dive down that rabbit hole, we’ve got some groundwork to cover.

If you’re new to the content marketing industry, these next few sections are a must-read.

Trust me: You’re going to want to get familiar with the basics before we start sinking our teeth into this.

If you’re an industry veteran, then feel free to skip around to whatever section you need help with below.

That being said, even if you’re already familiar with content curation, you should come back and read the entire article if you want to pick up on some of my personal insights.

Here’s my list of everything you need to know to start curating content and growing your brand in the process.

• What is content curation and why should I do it?

• How do I curate content properly?

• General ideology of effective content curation

• 5 examples of proper curated content

• 5 tools you can use to start curating content today

• How often should you be curating content?

• Where should you be sharing your curated content?

• Curation on blogs versus social media

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get to the fun stuff!

What is content curation and why should I do it?

It’d be easy to just drop a definition here and move on. But there’s a difference between knowing the textbook definition and understanding what quality content curation looks like.

As far as definitions go, here’s what we’ll be working with (just to make sure we’re on the same page).

Content curation is, at its core, the presentation of relevant information, initially relying on the collection of other people’s high-quality content.

Any content that ends up being part of your marketing campaign — whether it’s basic, complex, or somewhere in between — needs to provide tangible value to your readers.

And content curation can help businesses overcome quite a few hurdles, as shown below.

The content you curate should always be held to the same standard as your original content.

Relevant, high-quality information is what your audience needs, and there are some serious perks that come with being associated with lots of value-rich content.

But my definition of effective content curation goes beyond just collecting other’s people content and throwing it up on your blog or social media accounts.

To make the most out of this process, you need to focus on the presentation of that content.

Or more specifically, how you can use that content to strengthen the reputation of your own brand.

Think of it this way.

Could you present your audience with valuable content that you’ve found online? Sure. That could certainly help with branding.

But you know what’s even better than that?

Taking that content you’ve found and leveraging it to create new content that offers a uniquely personal perspective.

Just look at what Search Engine Land did with this news of a potential Google algorithm update.

Why is this better?

Because with that little bit of extra work, you can now have your cake and eat it too.

Let me explain.

I’ll be the first to admit that creating original, compelling content consistently can be a tall order for anyone — industry veteran or not.

The occasional bout of writer’s block alone can stop you dead in your tracks. If you’ve been struggling with that lately, you’re not alone.

Content curation is such an effective solution to this problem because it handles the trickiest part of creating original content: Inspiration.

Plus, you also end up strengthening your position as an online authority.

The curated content is clearly labeled and referenced, ensuring that the creators get credit for their amazing work.

And your blog becomes the place where your audience gets access to the latest industry data, courtesy of you and your marketing strategy.

Still not convinced?

All right, let’s try something really quickly.

Quick! I want 5 articles ideas on social media. And they have to be relevant to the status of the digital media marketing landscape today.

Not that easy, right?

Okay, this time imagine that you just found a list of 25 interesting marketing statistics for the last 12 months, like this one from Contently.

It’s going to be a lot easier to come up with 5 ideas if you’re armed with that list, isn’t it?

And that’s my point.

You could absolutely stop at just sharing the content you find.

How do I curate content properly?

So now that we’ve established the massive upside of curating content properly, there’s really only one question left.

What does curating content properly actually look like?

Like most things in the world of digital media marketing, there’s a short answer and a long answer.

The short answer is that, to curate content properly, there are only 4 general guidelines.

• Figure out which topics to cover.
• Categorize and organize the content you find.
• Decide how you can build on the value of that content.
• Figure out the best way to share it with your audience.

The long answer gets a bit trickier, but let’s take a second to focus on these guidelines.

If you remember nothing else from this article, keep these guidelines in mind.

Seriously.

Ignoring even one of these fundamentals can spell disaster for your content curation strategy.

Okay, disclaimer over. Let’s dive in.

First things first, it’s going to be pretty hard to curate content if you don’t know what topics you should be covering.

With such a wealth of information, deciding where to get started can seem a bit overwhelming at first.

So, what topics should you be covering?

Fortunately, this typically ends up being the easiest part of the process.

People seem to constantly get hung up on the issue of trying to decide what qualifies as an appropriate online source.

My answer to this is pretty simple. If you think it’s a reliable source, your audience is probably going to think so too.

There are a variety of ways to ensure that a source is reliable. Fact-checking doesn’t take very long if you’ve got access to a little thing called the Internet.

People trust sites like Buffer because they’ve built a reputation around having reliable data.

If you’re completely stumped, scroll through the pages of the top 3-5 influencers in your industry.

You can either curate their content or explore their content and see where they’re curating content from.

Which brings us to our next question. How do you decide which pieces of content make the final cut?

Here’s the checklist that I use for content curation.

• Does my audience need to solve this problem?
• Is there enough data here to support further analysis and discussion?
• Do I trust this information and where it came from?
• If I expand on this content, will it strengthen my brand?
• Do I have a unique perspective that hasn’t been fully explored yet?

If the answer to all of these questions is yes, then you’re looking at a topic that’s worth covering.

In many ways, this content should aim to accomplish the same goals that the rest of your content does.

Which is why the next step in learning how to curate content properly is to decide how you can enhance the value of that content.

This part is about more than adding a few more stats to an article about the same topic and calling it a day.

The content on your site should provide your audience with a unique experience that they can’t get anywhere else.

Maybe you could create a useful infographic, like the one you see in this Crazy Eggarticle.

Or maybe you create an original video, like the one you can see in this Engadget article.

This is the cornerstone of increasing the quality of your traffic and decreasing things like your bounce rate.

The raw data might be available on other sites, but your analysis and conclusions should all be completely original.

Remember, your curated content is an expansion of the content that came before it. Add value not just with more data, but with a personal editorial perspective.

So, how do you provide value? By finding information that’s relevant to your audience and using it to create a piece of content that’s custom-tailored to help them.

It’s really that simple.

And finally, you need to decide how to share this content with your audience.

There’s no shortage of ways to promote your content. The real issue is figuring out which one of those methods is going to be the best vehicle for your curated content.

In typical digital media marketing style, your best option is going to be determined by your brand’s specific goals.

There are plenty of popular options for sharing your curated content.

• Social media
• Newsletters
• Blogs
• Widgets
• RSS feeds

To be fair, all of these are solid options that you should absolutely consider experimenting with.

But for the sake of keeping things as simple and focused as possible, right now we’re going to concentrate on the easiest method that’s likely to get you the results you want: Sharing on social.

I’ve long been a huge fan of promotion on social media, particularly when you don’t have a massive marketing budget.

Heck, even if you’ve got a decent marketing budget, you should be using social as a marketing tool.

And if you don’t think I’m being serious, take one look at my Twitter page, and you’ll realize just how much I believe in the power of social.

On the surface level, you can start collecting information from credible sources and post your findings here.

It’s what plenty of brands and influencers do, and with good reason.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with developing a reputation as an industry-savvy insider who’s up to date with the latest industry insights and developments.

The only thing that worries me about content curation on social is that it seems like brands are leaving money on the table.

By thinking that this is their only option when it comes to content curation on social, they end up stunting their own growth as online authorities.

If you look past the surface, you can see that content curation on social media offers two major opportunities for brands.

One of the easiest aspects of social media that most businesses haven’t taken full advantage of is the massive potential for meaningful engagement through the promotion of curated content.

Sure, they post links and retweet every now and then, but how often are they actually starting a dialogue with their audiences?

Here’s an example of something simple your brand can do to communicate directly with your audience.

Take a look at Jay Baer’s Twitter page and notice what he says to a fan of his e-book.

 

That’s it. Nothing fancy or excessive.

Just a genuine, human expression of appreciation.

That’s really all it takes.

Think about it. How often do most brands check related groups and ensure that their content is in line with solving the average community member’s problems?

You’re curating content to reinforce your online presence and to be seen as an authority in your industry, right?

If you’re hoping to earn the respect and loyalty of your audience, nothing is going to speed up that process like showing them that you care about what they have to say.

If you retweet an announcement about a major algorithm change on Google and 5 people comment, you should be responding to 5 comments.

If 10 people comment, you respond to 10 comments.

If your brand gets mentioned, don’t be afraid to retweet it, like Gary Vaynerchukdoes here.

On social media, every follower has the potential to become a lifelong fan of your business. It’s really just a matter of how much effort you’re willing to put in to inspire that kind of loyalty.

And the best part? You get another chance to convince them every time you post.

It might not be sexy, but it gets results.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll take effective over fancy any day of the week.

But that’s not the only place where brands could step up their marketing game.

Too often, those of us who’ve been in the marketing industry for a long time tend to look at individual social media channels as separate, unique ecosystems.

And to a certain extent, they are. Facebook and Twitter might both be social media channels, but they’re far from identical.

Twitter has an official guide on to choose a hashtag, which you can see below and find on the official Twitter blog.

Facebook, on the other hand, needs an in-depth breakdown just to understand its ad-targeting options, which Wordstream put together.

The same thing goes for Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and any other social media platform you can think of off the top of your head.

Their differences are the things that keep us up at night. We want to know exactly how to maneuver Facebook and Twitter and maximize our marketing potential in the process.

There’s just one small problem. This siloed approach makes it difficult to keep the big picture in mind.

No two social media platforms are the same. But they’re all just different paths to the same destination.

Any social media platform that wants to stay in business understands the importance of constantly improving the user experience.

Interestingly enough, that also happens to be one of the fundamentals of an effective social media marketing campaign.

To put it simply, increasing your value in the eyes of the consumer means actually offering more value.

Granted, it might take some time for you actually see the returns on that via content marketing, but eventually, the value you’ve offered will translate into traffic and engagement.

Posting on social media with completely original content is great. It definitely offers people some value.

But honestly? They could probably find pieces of content of similar value on your competition’s Facebook pages.

I’m not saying this to discourage you, but to inspire you to find new ways to offer more value than your competitors.

Oh, they write a new article every other day, too? Cool. But do they post about major industry events on a daily basis like TechCrunch?

Do they incorporate cutting-edge analytics into their thought leadership articles?

Are they giving meaning to that list of 25 interesting social media statistics that was just released?

I didn’t think so.

Offer people as much content as you can, make sure that it’s legitimately valuable, and it’s only a matter of time before you become an online authority.

When you embrace the dialogue-driven nature of social media and turn your profiles into the one-stop shop for industry-relevant content, that’s when your brand can start to grow.

Conclusion

I’ll be honest. Content curation might be easy to pick up, but it can take quite some time to master.

The challenges of finding relevant content combined with figuring out how you can add value beyond what’s already been presented can be tough for anyone.

And yet, I still believe that content curation is the key to taking your digital media marketing game to the next level.

There’s just no other option that has the potential to be this impactful to your overall online presence and marketing campaign with such a low barrier to entry.

3.5 Publish content in line with content marketing campaign plans.

3.6 Manage a content marketing campaign.

Did you know that 63% of businesses don’t have a documented content marketing strategy? That’s according to the latest research from the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs.

It’s no surprise that those companies who DO have a strategy are most likely to feel that their content marketing efforts are successful.

Without a strategy, success or failure is just a matter of luck – and you risk all your efforts going to waste.

Recommended Resource: Need to jumpstart your content marketing results? Get more traffic and conversions with our Ultimate Guide to Content Marketing in 2018.

That’s likely why a similar percentage (64%) say that learning how to build a content strategy is one of their greatest educational needs.

If you’re in that group, and have been wondering how to create a content strategy for your business, we’re here to help.

We’ve successfully used content marketing to grow our own traffic and boost conversions since OptinMonster first launched in 2013, and we want to share with you what we’ve learned along the way.

This guide will walk you through 11 simple steps to developing and executing a content marketing plan that’ll help you grow your business without wasting time and money.

Here are the steps for easy reference:

1. Step 1. Set Your Mission and Your Goals
2. Step 2. Establish Your KPIs
3. Step 3. Know Your Audience
4. Step 4. Assess Your Current Position
5. Step 5. Figure Out the Best Content Channels
6. Step 6. Decide on Content Types
7. Step 7. Identify and Allocate Resources
8. Step 8. Create a Content Calendar
9. Step 9. Create Content
10. Step 10. Distribute and Market
11. Step 11. Measure Results

Step 1. Set Your Mission and Your Goals

A good starting point for your content strategy plan is to set out a content marketing mission statement. This is a brief statement that makes it easier to focus on what’s important – and what’s not – in creating your content so your content marketing strategy stays on track.

A content marketing mission statement outlines:

• Your target audience
• The content you’ll use to reach them
• The benefit they’ll get

Here’s an example from CIO.com’s about page.

It defines the audience (CIOs and business technology executives). It highlights the benefit (insights on career development). And it gives examples of what its content covers (certification, digital transformation, skills development and hiring practices).

To create a mission for your own business, try this formula:

We provide [target audience] with [type of content] to help them [business goals].

While the mission statement covers what your audience will get from your content marketing strategy, you also need to think about what your business will get from it. That’s where your business goals come in.

Typical goals include:

• Improving revenue as a result of your content marketing strategy
• Making more sales and getting more high quality leads, which will help you meet your revenue goals.
• Getting more traffic to your site, as the more traffic there is, the greater the possibilities for meeting your other goals.
• Improving the perception of your business, so you gain influence and authority, and are seen as a thought leader.
• SEO success, which leads to more traffic.
• Reduced marketing costs, as your content becomes more effective.
• Social media engagement, which can help with both traffic and authority.

Once you know your goals, it’s time to move to the next step.

Step 2. Establish Your KPIs

The best way to achieve goals is to make them specific and measurable. That means setting key performance indicators (KPIs) for your content marketing strategy.

The KPIs will help you know when you have achieved your goals by providing milestones you can check off. They’ll include what you plan to achieve in terms of revenue, sales, traffic, SEO, traffic and different aspects of digital marketing like email marketing and social media metrics.

Typically, these will have specific numbers attached to them. For example, you might want to:

• Hit a certain revenue target within the month, quarter, or year.
• Get more signups for your lead magnet as a sign that you’re getting more high quality leads
• Get a certain number of new email subscribers
• See an increase in site traffic and in engagement with your onsite content
• Improve the search ranking of some of your key pages to help boost traffic
• Get a certain number of mentions, shares and comments for your pillar content
• Be invited to participate in certain key industry events

You’ll also want to pay attention to marketing expenditure, tracking your spend on different campaigns, and keeping an eye on the cost of acquiring leads and making sales.

Learn more about KPIs for your content marketing strategy in our guide to content marketing ROI.

Step 3. Know Your Audience

As mentioned earlier, for a successful content marketing strategy, you’ll need to be clear about who your audience are so you can create the right content to reach them. There are three actions you need to take.

Collect Demographic Data

The first step is to collect demographics on your visitors, email subscribers, and social media followers.

Web analytics, social media analytics and email subscriber analytics will give you the data you need on your audience’s:

• Age
• Gender
• Education
• Income

You’ll also get insight into their key interests. To find this information in Google Analytics, go to Audience » Interests » Overview. You’ll see the market segments your web visitors fit into.

Learn more about using Google Analytics in our in-depth guide.

Social media sites offer similar data. For example, you can get demographic information on your Facebook fans via Facebook Page Insights:

And you can use Twitter analytics to get demographic data on your Twitter followers:

Get Customer Feedback

To learn even more about your target audience, try collecting feedback from your current customers. This’ll give you insights into:

• How they feel about the content you’re currently producing
• What their most urgent needs are
• How you can address their problems with your content

Getting the right customer feedback can help you:

• Understand your readers’ and subscribers’ priorities
• Decide on the best places to reach your customers (see step 9)
• Flesh out your buyer personas, which we’ll talk about next

Create Buyer Personas

When you have demographic data and customer feedback, you can create or flesh out buyer personas. Buyer personas, also known as customer avatars, describe your ideal readers and customers so that you can target content better.

The best customer avatars include information on your customers’ pain points, challenges, sources of information, and behavioral motivators.

When you know all this, you’ll have a better understanding of:

• The kind of content your audience will respond to
• How it will help them
• What will make them care about it

Learn more about customer avatars in our guide to creating buyer personas. It includes templates like this one from Digital Marketer:

Step 4. Assess Your Current Position

Many businesses already have content out there. This will include content that’s on your blog, as well as social media content, podcasts, videos, and so on.

That’s why the next step is to figure out whether that content is helping you to meet your goals.

(If you’re just getting started and have zero content, you can skip to Step 5 – Figure Out the Best Content Channels.)

To do that, you’ll need to carry out a content audit. That means:

• Logging all the pieces of content, such as blog posts, guest posts, and so on
• Assessing their usefulness or success
• Identifying the gaps

You may also want to look at how your content compares with that of your competitors, and see how any new content will fit in the market.

Let’s look at one example of how this would work for your content marketing strategy.

How to Log Your Content

If you want to log all your site or blog content, Screaming Frog is an excellent starting point. It’s a URL crawler that will:

• List URLs
• Analyze page titles and descriptions
• Find duplicate pages
• Create sitemaps.

The free version crawls up to 500 URLs. SEER Interactive has an excellent, in-depth guide to Screaming Frog. As a bonus, you can also use this tool for competitive research, carrying out the same kind of analysis on your competitors’ content.

You can also log your content with the Content Audit tool from SEMRush. To do this, set up a project and select the section of your site you want to audit, such as your blog. Once you select the URLs, press the Start Content Audit Button.

You’ll get a complete analysis of your content, including:

• Content titles and descriptions
• Content length
• Backlinks
• Social shares

Export the data to create a simple spreadsheet that contains all the URLs.

Next, it’s time to assess the usefulness of the content. You’ll be looking for metrics like:

• Whether there are a lot of inbound links to the content
• What the search engine ranking is for keywords associated with that piece of content
• If the content is widely shared

You’ll get some of this information from the SEMRush report above, but can also find more by using other SEMRush tools, such as the site audit and position tracking tools.

This’ll tell you:

• Which pieces of content are so effective that you don’t need to change them
• Which ones need some improvement or updating to meet your goals
• Which ones need to be removed or replaced

Identify Content Gaps

Finally, work out where there are gaps you can exploit. These might include:

• Keywords related to your niche that you’re not targeting with your content
• Questions your target audience is asking that you’re not answering
• Content that’s starting to rank well but could be improved, say to target Google’s answer boxes. These are the boxes that appear above search results and provide the answers to a specific question.

You can use Ahrefs to carry out a content gap analysis.

To do this, go to Organic search » Content gap. Add the domains for your main competitors under Show keywords that the following rank for. Add your own domain under But the following target does not rank for. Press Show keywords.

You’ll see a list of competitor keywords you can target with your own new content.

You can carry out a similar analysis in SEMRush.

Interested in more tools that can help in this area? Check out our list of the top 25 competitor research tools out there.

Step 5. Figure Out the Best Content Channels

As you work through this process, you’ll start to get a sense of where your audience is hanging out, and where you already have a successful online presence. It’s best to focus on what’s working and expand from there, rather than try to do everything at once.

But to be absolutely sure, you’ll need to take another look web analytics. When you’re in Google Analytics, go to Acquisition » Social » Overview to see the main social networks where your content is being shared. For example, in our screenshot, most of the social activity takes place on YouTube.

You can also use Buzzsumo to find similar data. Go to their Content Analysistool and type your domain name into the onscreen search box. Press enter and you’ll see charts showing:

• Shares by network
• Shares by content type
• Shares by content length
• Top content in the past year

You can also refine your search terms for more detail.

With this information, you can easily decide which networks to target to get social media engagement and shares for your content.

Step 6. Decide on Content Types

Next, think about the types of content you need to create. There are some content types that every content marketing strategy will include.

Most successful content marketing strategies rely on having a central core of content published on your own site (or homebase) which can then be repurposed and shared on other sites (outposts).

So blog posts are an essential part of your content marketing mix, and they still deliver strong results. Ideally, your blog posts will be actionable, valuable, and shareable, and may include a range of article types.

How to Map Content to Social with Buzzsumo

You can use the Buzzsumo tool mentioned above to map the types of blog posts you want to create to the potential for social shares to boost engagement and reach.

For example, OptinMonster readers really like how-to articles and lists. Click on a content type and a network to see a list of your most shared articles for that metric.

Of course, creating a successful content marketing strategy isn’t just about navel-gazing to get stats on your own site. It’s also about seeing what other successful content is out there that you can use for inspiration. Buzzsumo can help with this, too.

Using the same tool, type your topic into the search box. You’ll see sharing statistics from across the web. For example, one chart suggests that long form content on content marketing is very popular:

There’s also data on the most shared domains publishing on this topic, and the top pieces of content shared relating to it.

Other Buzzsumo features allow you to track backlinks, trending content, and questions people ask, and the standard Buzzsumo search includes sharing data for videos.

Other Content Types

What other content should be included in your content strategy plan? As our own research shows, video marketing should be an essential part of any marketing, as it’s proven to engage your visitors to keep them on site longer, improve lead generation, and reduce abandonment.

You’ll also want to include other types of visual content to improve engagement.

Consider creating infographics with tools like Piktochart and Canva, and using Canva and similar tools to create customized graphics and memes for social sharing, like Grammarly does.

Other content types to include for improve lead generation include lead magnets like webinars, ebooks, checklists, worksheets, and more.

It’s also worth thinking about podcasting as a content delivery mechanism, as more than 40% of Americans now listen to podcasts. Here’s a list of marketing podcasts for inspiration.

The next step is to figure out what you need to create that content.

Step 7. Identify and Allocate Resources

Now that you know what type of content you’re planning to create, who it’s for, and where you’re planning to share it, it’s important to make sure you have everything you need to deliver on your content marketing strategy. That involves answering questions like:

• Who’s in charge of producing and maintaining content?
• What human, physical or digital tools and resources do you need to create the content?
• What will your publishing workflow look like, including content scheduling?

Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

Who’s in Charge of Content Production?

This question is about allocating roles. You’ll need to think about who’s in overall charge, as well as who is responsible for delivering individual content items.

This will depend on the size of your company and content team, and on whether you’re doing everything in-house, or farming out content production.

One example of how this might look would be:

• The CEO or chief marketing officer has overall final approval over content and content strategy.
• Your content marketing manager will be in charge of delivering on your content marketing strategy on a day to day basis, and will work with the content team.
• Individuals will create content, according to their expertise.

What Tools and Resources Do You Need?

Next, figure out how you’re actually going to create the content. Your content producers might include:

• In-house content creators
• Specialists in video creation, podcasting, or graphic design
• Freelancers

One way to find great freelancers quickly is to return to your Buzzsumo search results, and see who’s written the top content. There’s no harm in approaching them to see if they’re willing to contribute to your content team. You can also find great freelance content producers through networks like Contently, NDash, ClearVoice and similar.

You’ll also need equipment for podcasting and creating professional videos, and you’ll need to arrange for hosting on sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Spreakerand Blubrry.

Check out our list of video marketing tips to get started.

Content Workflow

Next, work out what your content production process is going to be. For example, for a typical blog post, you might have to:

• Create an outline and have it approved
• Write the post
• Create accompanying images
• Send the post to the editor
• Make any changes
• Upload
• Publish

There’s just one more thing to do before you get started on researching and creating pieces of content: creating a content calendar, so you know what’ll be published when. We’ll look at that in the next step.

Step 8. Create a Content Calendar

As part of your content strategy, you’ll need to know exactly when you want to publish your content on each of the platforms you want to use.

Lack of planning is a key content marketing mistake, so it’s essential to use a content calendar to get all your content scheduled. There are several ways to do this.

For example, you can use Google Calendar and simply put the due dates for each piece of content there. That works pretty well, especially if you’re not publishing a lot of content.

That’s the simplest approach, but if you’re publishing a lot of content, and have to manage a content team and the production workflow you’ve decided on, then you’ll likely want some more features.

Options for managing this include productivity and task management tools like Asana (shown below), or a purpose built editorial calendar tool like CoSchedule. Both of these will allow you to schedule different parts of the content creation process.

One way to find content to add to the calendar is to do some initial research to find the topics your audience will respond to.

Find the Questions Your Customers Ask

We mentioned earlier the need to create content around what your audience wants. One way to find that out is to use Buzzsumo’s Question Analyzer or Answer the Public.

Type a topic into the Answer the Public search box, and you’ll get a list of questions people have actually searched for on Google.

Pick a question that seems relevant to your audience, decide on the type of content, such as a blog post, and add a title to your calendar. Repeat the process till you have planned out content for the next few months.

Step 9. Create Content

As you’ve seen, there’s a lot of prep work in your content marketing strategy before you actually create a piece of content. But now it’s time to do just that. We’re going to use a blog post as our example, but these tips will work for almost any type of content creation.

With the research you’ve already done, you’ll have an idea what type of blog post to create. For example, we know that list posts and how-tos are popular with our readers.

Now it’s time to pick a title from the content calendar and start working on it.

Research Your Content

When you’re ready to write, you’ll need to find out :

• What’s already out there
• How your new content can add value for your audience

This’ll mean doing a Google search, checking out the top content for your topic, and seeing how you can improve on it. That’s called the skyscraper technique.

Original research also does well, so consider this as an option if you’re collecting the right kind of data.

Include keyword research to identify the key terms to use for better SEO and improved search ranking. We cover this process in detail in our keyword research 101 guide.

Create the Content

Finally, start writing or creating your content. At this point, you’ll have to think about how to reflect your brand’s personality in the content you write.

You may want to be super-professional, very casual, or something in between. And you’ll have to manage the balance between showing your expertise and not patronising your audience. Here’s Sprout Social’s advice on creating consistency with your brand voice, and keep in mind important SEO ranking factors to optimize your content. Take a look at these successful content marketing examples for inspiration.

Step 10. Distribute and Market

The next key part of your content strategy is distribution and marketing. That’s because you won’t get the results you want unless these are handled correctly. For example, you will likely:

• Set a schedule for sharing your content on social media, both immediately, and through a drip campaign via a tool like Missinglettr.
• Use email marketing to distribute your content to subscribers.
• Notify any influencers mentioned in your content to spread the word even wider.

OptinMonster is also a great tool to use for promoting your content, both on your site and via your email newsletter. For example, Olyplant used OptinMonster to increase pageviews by 157%.

OptinMonster includes:

• A wide array of targeting features including page-level targeting, onsite retargeting, and geo-location targeting
• The ability to grab visitors’ attention with targeted content just before they leave your site with Exit-Intent® Technology
• Several ways to trigger content marketing campaigns, by referrer, device, activity, and more
• Integrations with the major email marketing services

You can also use OptinMonster to:

• Deliver your lead magnet
• Direct new visitors to the most important parts of your site
• Engage visitors by showing them new content every time they land on your site

OptinMonster customers have successfully used our marketing campaign software to triple their email lists and to get 3806% more conversions with gated content.

Step 11. Measure Results

Finally, it’s time to assess the success of your content marketing strategy. To do this, you’ll return to those KPIs you set at the start of the content strategy plan, and see what’s changed, and whether you’re hitting your targets.

To do this, you can:

• Check Google Analytics as described above to see how your content is performing
• Measure social sharing activity via Buzzsumo and other social analytics tools
• Look at OptinMonster’s conversion analytics dashboard to assess the success of your marketing campaigns

Other tools for tracking content marketing success include Google Alerts and Mention. Both of these will let you see if your content is being mentioned and shared, helping you hit those KPIs for awareness and engagement.

Tools like SEMRush will help you to assess KPIs for the search rank of your content. And you’ll be able to track email signups through the analytics in your email marketing software.

By monitoring your progress, you’ll be able to tweak your content marketing strategy at regular intervals, so it’s always up to date.

3.7 Evaluate the success of a content marketing campaign against the aims and objectives of the
brief.

Whenever a company runs a PR campaign, it invests considerable money and efforts in it. It, therefore, becomes necessary to measure the success of that PR campaign. Besides, measuring the effectiveness and the impact of a campaign will also help you identify the loopholes in it, which can be studied for improving future campaigns.

Unfortunately, measuring the success of a campaign is a highly-debated issue as there isn’t a single dedicated method to calculate its impact. Instead, digital marketers have started using different marketing metrics for proper assessment of a campaign.

So, how do you measure the success of a PR campaign?

Here is the list of metrics that you need to consider while measuring the impact and success of a PR campaign.

1. Sales Stats

2. Social Media Reach

3. Engagement on Social Media

4. Media Impressions

5. Brand Mentions

6. Social Shares

7. Website Traffic

8. Number of Backlinks

9. Keyword Rankings

10. Lead Generation

Also, the data of the above-listed metrics needs to be collected initially before the campaign starts and compared with the end results to measure the correct impact of the digital PR campaign.

Here are different ways to track the impact of your campaign, using these metrics.

1. Sales Stats

For a product-based or B2C company, sales is the most important factor. While PR may not give an instant boost to sales, it will certainly show some change. In fact, a well-executed digital PR campaign can generate significant sales over time. If there is no change in sales, you need to audit your PR strategy again.

Factors to Consider When Measuring Sales

There may be several socio-economic factors which affect sales. Factors specifically related to your sales must be considered in your campaign review.

Location or Territory

• Calculating the change in sales volume by location or territory allows you to identify new sales opportunities.
• Revise your PR strategy in the areas where sales figures haven’t shown a positive change.
• Focus marketing and sales efforts on lucrative locations or territories.

Age Group

• Age group is also an important factor to measure your sales, especially if your target audience belongs to a particular age group.
• It enables you to verify if your digital PR campaign has successfully connected with your target audience.

Time Frame

• Find out how much sales was generated by your PR campaign in a given time frame. For example, you can calculate the sales after a few days, weeks, or months after the commencement of your digital PR campaign.
• Identify the issues that are hampering sales performance.

Type of Sales Channel

• One of the key factors to be considered when measuring sales is the type of sales channel, particularly for B2C companies.
• Make sure to break down your sales data by types of channel. For example, you can check if your consumers preferred using the online store or buy from your retail partners after the camping was launched.

2. Social Media Reach

In the modern technology-driven world, social media influence is growing rapidly. According to Pew Research, 79% of Internet users (68% of all U.S. adults) were active Facebook subscribers in 2016, while 32% of Internet users were on Instagram and 24% were using Twitter last year.

If you want to know how many of them have seen your post or message, social media reach is your best bet. It refers to the number of followers you acquire on various social media channels. People will follow your social media profile and pages only if it is entertaining and shares valuable content with the target audience.

Benefits of Calculating Social Media Reach

• It enables a digital PR agency to understand the context of its content and how far it can circulate on social media.
• It also enables you to measure the audience growth rate.
• It can help a PR agency understand the latest algorithm of a social media platform and design the campaign accordingly for maximum effect.

How to Measure This

The easiest ways to measure social media reach is to compare the number of followers on various social media channels before the start of the campaign to the number at the end of the campaign. However, most leading social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube now offer inbuilt tools to calculate your reach.

How to Calculate Social Media Reach on Facebook

 

• Go to your company’s Facebook Page, select Insights > Posts, click on Reach: Organic/Paid.
• To calculate the total organic reach for your digital PR campaign, add the organic reach for each post published in last 30 days.
• To calculate average monthly reach for the posts, divide this sum by the number of posts published during the same timeframe.
• Divide the average monthly reach by the number of Facebook fans your page has to calculate the % average monthly organic reach for the page.

3. Engagement on Social Media

Though social media reach metrics can tell you how big the audience for your PR campaign is, it can’t tell you everything. It is also important to know whether or not people are engaging with your social media posts and updates. Engagement is measured by the actions taken by users on the posts.

Key Indicators of Engagement

• A positive or a negative mention on social media
• If a consumer opens or reads an email or a newsletter
• Retweets, likes, and shares on a social media channel
• If a consumer clicks on an online advertisement
• If a consumer sees an online advertisement

Benefits of Using Engagement Metrics

• It helps a digital PR agency to identify if their message or post is resonating with the target audience. If not, you need to recreate your content.
• It also gives you a glimpse into how your brand, product or service is perceived by potential users.

How to Measure Engagement

Using Meltwater to measure audience engagement

Connect your Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+ accounts to Meltwater Engage and you get an overview of your entire social community across channels from a single platform. Apart from analysing the effectiveness of your social communication, you can also identify influential people by topic and location, measure the efficiency of your social media team.

Every social network offers different engagement touch points, which is why you may have to calculate engagement differently for each social media channel. Fortunately, several social media management tools can be used to calculate engagement metrics for multiple social media accounts. Hootsuite is one such a tool that offers a host of features at affordable prices.

• Hootsuite lets you manage your Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn profiles.
• It also has support for FourSquare, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, Vimeo, and several other platforms via third-party apps.

Using Hootsuite to measure audience engagement

• Head over to the Hootsuite website and create your account. You can sign up using your social media account (Twitter, Facebook, and Google+) or your email.
• Fill out the details and choose a service plan. The limited free plan for individuals allows you to add only three social media accounts.

• After successful registration, it will give you the option to either add more of your profiles or go straight to the dashboard. Go to the blank dashboard and select I Want to Explore on My Own Option.
• The wise guide on the right-hand side showcases useful links that you can explore anytime. On the left-side, you will see the main Menu.

• Click on your profile picture to add your social media accounts. Just click on the Add a Social Network button to add an account.

• You can connect your Twitter, Google+, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and WordPress accounts. Select the account you want to connect. Once you have added all social media accounts, you can start monitoring them.

• Hootsuite lets you send messages across all your social media accounts. To compose a message, click on the bar at the top. On the left-hand side click on Add Social Network button, you can select the account to which you want to send the message; and you can enter your message in dialog box on the right-hand side of this button. You can also upload images, add links, and set the time of posting.

• You can set up completely customized streams to stay on top of important things on your social media accounts. Click on the chat box icon in the sidebar. Next, select the social media account that you want to monitor.

• Click on the Analytics button in the main menu to generate analysis and reports. You can use basic Twitter profile overview, Facebook Page overview, and LinkedIn insights report formats, which are available for free. Alternatively, you can create a customized report at an extra cost.

• Hootsuite offers a handy tool called Publisher that can pull content from the Internet, based on keywords. You can enter up to three keywords and share the collected content links on your social media accounts at a designated time.

• The app directory is a unique feature that lets you add various apps to your Hootsuite dashboard. You can add Google Drive, YouTube, Dropbox, OneDrive, Tumblr, DailyMotion, MailCimp, Gmail, and SoundCloud apps among others.

4. Media Impressions

Media impression is one of the most common metrics often used by companies providing digital PR services. It is the number of times the audience (people to whom your content/advertisement has reached) may have seen your content. For example, if you receive a news feed twice on your Facebook page, it will be counted as two impressions. In simple words, it is the total number of clippings multiplied by the total number of circulations.

Benefits of Calculating Media Impressions

Though both, Social Media Reach and Impressions measure the visibility of content, the latter can help you understand how frequently users can view your posts, messages or advertisement on a social media platform.

How to measure the impact of a PR campaign by monitoring media impressions?

Whether or not impressions count for anything is a matter of debate. Most marketers believe that media impressions can’t be used to calculate the impact of a PR campaign. However, when used in combination with other metrics such as social media reach and engagement, this metric can prove instrumental in determining the impact of your campaign.

5. Brand Mentions

A well-managed PR campaign can easily result in an increase in the number of brand mentions on other blogs as well as social media. However, 96% of the people that discuss brands online do not follow those brands’ owned profiles. Therefore, companies need to monitor those unbranded channels to know what people are saying about their brand online.

Benefits of Monitoring Online Brand Mentions

• Listening to social conversations can help you connect with your most active target audience.
• If they are satisfied with your products or services, you can connect with them to increase brand awareness.
• On the other hand, if they are criticizing your brand, you can take appropriate action to minimize the negative publicity.

Tools for Monitoring Brand Mentions:

Meltwater

Meltwater offers comprehensive media and social media monitoring.

• Type in the keyword of the brand or topic you would like to monitor in the search box and hit enter.
• You can choose results based on a particular region or country, time frame, and source.
• The results will show you articles from social sources such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Product Reviews, Forums, Comments, Blogs and  YouTube.
• Right within the platform, you can also get real-time insight on social share counts below each article.

Social Mention

Social Mention is a free online social media monitoring tool.

• Just type the name of your brand in the search box and hit enter.
• You can choose results from a particular location, time frame, and source for better results.
• The result will show top keywords, users, hash tags, strength, sentiment, passion, reach and sources.

Mention

Mention monitors the Web, including the major social media channels, and sends alert whenever a target keyword or a brand name shows up in an online conversation.

• You can receive alerts via email or view them directly in the application.
• You can also share them with your team members as PDF or CVS documents and assign tasks to them to deal with the alert.
• After a free 14-day trial period, you can choose from a variety of paid plans.

Hootsuite

The add stream feature in Hootsuite can be used to monitor conversations on leading social media platforms.

• Add a stream
• Select a target keyword
• Select the social media account
• Add the keyword and you are all set

Talkwalker

Talkwalker is also a free tool just like Mention.

• You can get alerts for conversations mentioned on all resources, including blogs and social media platforms.
• You can filter the results by result type, language, frequency, and quantity.

6. Social Shares

Though a digital PR agency gets coverage on a famous online publication, their efforts are useless if the content published on that site isn’t getting enough shares and likes. It shows that either the audience did not like it or you probably missed your target audience. By measuring the social share metrics of your article, you can get an idea of the popularity of your content. It can also help you devise a better PR strategy in the future.

So, how do you measure social share metrics of your campaign?  Tools such as Meltwater and ShareCount can be used to calculate the number of times your article is shared.

How to use Meltwater Impact Reports

Copy and paste the URL of press releases, blog posts, or any content to instantly view pickup results, which publications generated the most audience engagement, trends and relevant key phrases.

You can also track the web traffic generated by your content with Google Analytics integration.

How to Use Share Count

Just copy-paste the URL of your content into the search box and hit enter. You can see the number of likes, shares, and comments for five major social media platforms including Facebook, Google+1, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon. The free plan includes 10,000 daily queries and paid plans start at $40/mo with 200,000 URL daily queries.

7. Website Traffic

For any PR agency, the biggest task is measuring the increase in Web traffic for their client’s site. In fact, it’s an important factor that determines the success of a PR campaign. Besides, it enables you to verify if your digital PR services are reaching your target audience by evaluating various demographics of traffic such as location, device, and age group, among others.

Whether or not your website attracts more traffic depends largely upon the quality of content. Various stats and studies have time and again proved that a content that is actionable in nature tends to generate higher engagement and attract more traffic compared to simple content.

Actionable content is the demand for modern PR campaigns.

So, how to measure the success of a PR campaign by calculating the website traffic? Thanks to Google analytics, tracking the change in Web traffic has become much easier.

Using Google Analytics to calculate website traffic

• The first thing you need to do is identify which social media sites send the most traffic to your website. Go to Acquisition -> All Traffic -> Source/Medium menu. Here, you will be able to see a list of all websites that send traffic to your site.
• You can check this data from the last thirty days. Collect this data at regular intervals to determine if there is an increase in website traffic.
• Next, go to Audience > Behavior > Frequency and Recency menu. Here, you can see the total number of visitors on your website in one month. It shows the number of people that visited your site once, twice, thrice or more in the last 30 days.
• Go to Audience > Behavior > Engagement menu. Here, you can see how long people have stayed on your site, i.e. rate of engagement. If the number of people staying longer on your site is higher, it means they like your content.

8. Number of Backlinks

Though associated with SEO, backlinks do matter. Measuring the number of backlinks generated during a PR campaign can help you determine the popularity of your content. The increase in the number of backlinks indicates that people consider your content valuable, useful, and relevant.

Using Ahrefs to calculate the backlinks data

• Ahrefs is one of the best backlink analysis tools out there. It started off as a backlink-checker tool, but now you can also review your keyword ranking positions, and perform keyword research and content analysis using this tool.
• Head over to the Ahrefs website and sign up for a free trial for two weeks. For personal users, plans start from $79 per month. Add a new domain name or website URL to the dashboard for continuous monitoring.
• After successfully adding the domain name, go to the site explorer tool. It will show you a detailed report for a domain name.
• The Backlinks and Referring Domains data show any gains or losses in backlinks or referring domains over the last four weeks.
• You can set up email alerts for new and lost backlinks, Web mentions, and keywords rankings.
• The link-intersect tool enables you find out who is linking with your competitors, but not with you. Just add the domain name of the target competitors in the tool bar and click the Show Link Opportunities button.

9. Keyword Rankings

Did you know that keyword ranking also plays a crucial role in determining the outcome of your PR campaign? Improved keyword rankings can lead to better organic search results, which in turn, can help you retain more customers for a longer time.

So, how do you measure the success of a PR campaign using this metric?

Though there are several keyword ranking tools, Advanced Web Ranking is my personal favorite.

Key Features of Advanced Web Ranking

• You can download a trial version of the software for 30 days.
• Trial version includes all the features of a paid version.
• It offers a great variety of features at a modest price. In fact, you can pay a one-time fee and use it for an unlimited period of time.

Using Advanced Web Ranking to Measure Keyword Ranking

• Once you have successfully logged in, go to the keywords menu in the settings and click the Add button. Now click Type Keyword button and enter the target keywords for a project.
• Next, add the search engines by selecting the ones in the list. AWR currently supports the top-three search engines, including Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
• You can also perform a variety of keyword functions in this menu including set priority, set a color, organize in categories, translate your keywords, check their spelling or research new ideas.
• Use the Import/Export button in the keyword menu to import keywords from other programs. You can import keywords from Google Analytics, a file or a website.
• If you wish to view the rankings of a specific website for all the keywords it is optimized for, go to the Keyword Rankings tool in the Reports menu.
• You can set up daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, and on-demand updates for your projects. It shows the position of your website for each keyword.

10. Lead Generation

The importance of lead generation can’t be overemphasized, especially for B2B businesses. Leads refer to the people showing clear-cut interest in your services. If there is an increase in the number of inquiries, it means your campaign was successful. The potential leads may interact with your sales team through phone calls, emails or even social media.

Make sure to maintain a separate sheet for leads generated from each resource to get a detailed report of the overall improvement in lead generation.
Compare the data collected before the start of your campaign with that collected after its conclusion.

However, merely measuring the volume of leads generated will not be enough for proper assessment of your lead generation efforts. You also need to track and monitor other important metrics to gauge the success of your campaign.

A. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

This is the ratio of people who clicked on a specific link to the total number of recipients of that particular link. High CTR indicates improvement in lead generation. Low CTR indicates that either you are targeting the wrong audience or your content is not engaging enough. Below is a simple formula to calculate click-through rate for a campaign.

CTR = Number of clicks/Number of media impressions

B. Conversion Rate

This is the ratio of people who have completed sales transaction to the total number of website visitors. It is an important lead generation metric. In fact, almost 57% of B2B marketers believe conversion rate is the most useful metric for analyzing landing page performance, i.e. efficiency of lead generation.

Conversion Rate = Number of customers who have completed a transaction or made a purchase/Total number of website or URL visitors

Conclusion

The importance of strong public relations can’t be stressed enough in the presence of burgeoning social media influence. Companies have to come up with innovative ideas to acquire new consumers and retain the existing ones. But, running PR campaigns frequently is not enough. Considering the significant investment of resources and efforts involved in running a PR campaign, it becomes necessary to evaluate its effect and impact on the target audience. With the emergence of digital marketing, however, measuring the success of a PR campaign has become more challenging. Hopefully, the above ten ideas can help you evaluate how successful your campaign was.

Reference

11 Steps to Create a Content Marketing Strategy to Grow Your Business

Content Unleashed: The Ultimate Guide to Promoting Your Published Content

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