Yes, after much convincing, you have decided that your business requires blogging, and it is the best way to drive traffic to your website. However, that is just the starting point. What next can you do? What content marketing strategy will you employ?

For most people, here is what they do – buy a domain, select a theme, come up with great content ideas and hire a professional content writing service or do the writing themselves. Such individuals do these without thinking through what they want to achieve or what their goals are.

After some time, what began strongly fades off rapidly. If you are such an individual, it means you do not have a message, a goal. Additionally, you don’t know how to measure your progress. The reality is that you lack a consistent content marketing strategy.

Today, an essential component of any company marketing strategy is content marketing. It doesn’t matter if you aim to start a blog for your business, or you are redefining your old content strategy, it is important to have a plan.

In this post, we have gathered important questions that will aid you in transforming your business and content strategy as well.

#1 What objectives do you have for your content marketing strategy?

Any serious marketer must start with this question. What do you intend to achieve in your content strategy? Undoubtedly, some businesses are similar to yours and putting every effort to reach the same audience or customers as you do. Your voice won’t be heard if you don’t have a clear strategy.

The starting point for any content marketing strategy is setting measurable objectives and goals. In achieving this, you must look at your company’s objectives and in what ways content marketing will fulfil such objectives. Write down the results you expect and the resources you are willing to invest.

The starting point for any content marketing strategy is setting measurable objectives and goals

For instance, “I will post three articles each week with a target of 500 visitors per post.” In setting your goals, it is important to be realistic. Remember, it is a process, and you must be patient.

#2 How will your content marketing strategy influence your business?

Nothing is more dreadful to a digital marketer than writing a wonderful article and sharing it on Social Media, only to discover that nothing happens – the article was like an empty grave, without any visitor.

To ensure your content marketing strategy influences your business, you must ascertain your specific content goals and align them with your company’s vision. Consider the role your content will play in promoting your brand or business and look for ways to translate these roles into measurable actions.

#3 Who is your target audience?

Similarly, to have a successful content marketing strategy, you must define your target audience. You can create appealing content to your audience if you know and understand their needs. There is one thing common with companies that produce great content – they understand their target audience.

They look beyond demographic information such as income, geography, gender, or age to build a complex buyer profile. You need to conduct extensive surveys, research, and interview to understand the need and behaviour of your customers.

Furthermore, you should integrate this information to create a profile that enables you to create content that your audience can read and take necessary action.

It is important to seek a highly competent content writing service if you aren’t confident in building a complex profile for your audience.

#4 Does your content solve your audience problems?

To be frank, people visit your website not because they want to see how beautiful your website is or what theme you are using. The truth is they have a problem that requires a solution. Will your website provide that solution? Do you have relevant information to solve their problem?

There are numerous ways to get into the heads of your audience and discover what is bugging them. For beginners, there are tools such as Google Trends or Google AdWords Keyword Planner to find trending topics. Better still, you can visit social media networks, forums, and read comments to gain an insight into issues your audiences are facing.

#5 What type of content is relevant to your audience?

So far, you must be convinced of the value that content marketing adds to your marketing efforts. However, to make this effort count, you have to focus on topics that are relevant to your audience and business.

Subsequently, there has to be a shared value experience where the goals of your customer overlap with your business goals. Interestingly, writing about soccer may sound exciting, but if you are not in the sports niche, it will not make any difference.

Besides picking the topic, the format of your content is also essential. There are various content formats to use for your audience. These include reviews, interviews, opinion posts, infographics, slide shares, videos, eBooks, quotes, case studies, how-to articles, and so on.

You do not have to focus on one particular format. Different content types work differently for different brands. Find what works for your audience and stick to it.

#6 What channels should you use to share your content?

What will happen if you write amazing content, but it wasn’t shared? However, the choice of a social media channel to use is directly proportional to the frequency of shares you get.

Your business’ profile is an indicator of where your audience chooses to read your content. For instance, if you are a tech company, LinkedIn and Twitter should be your playground; however, for a fashion retailer, Pinterest and Instagram is your domain.

Besides deciding the particular social media channel to use, another important thing to consider is how to get your audience to share your content. Well, it is as easy as ABC – just ask them to share.

Don’t be afraid to ask something in exchange for the wonderful and useful information you provide to solve their problem. Another important tip, which is proven, is adding visible sharing buttons.

Furthermore, you need to figure out the right time to publish and share your content. Once you know your audience, it will be easier to find the best time to publish your article.

For instance, statistics have shown that men are more likely to read articles or blogs at night when compared to women. Therefore, if your blog is targeted to men, it is wise to publish it during the evening.

#7 Who will produce or create that masterpiece content?

In this era of information overload, your blog must stand out from the crowd. There is no means of doing this, except by creating high-quality contents. Furthermore, your content must appeal and entice your audience. With this, your search engine ranking will grow, as you will attract more traffic to your blog.

It is not easy to produce good content ideas, but with hard work, you can get to that place. Content marketing can be time-consuming, but doing it rightly comes with an incredible reward. SpredMax Content Services has the expertise to make everything right for your content marketing strategy.

Most times, unexperienced content marketers don’t understand the amount of work required to craft a single blog post. However, at SpredMax, we ensure that each blog post is well-researched, optimized, and with the right image before sending to our clients. These take hours to produce a single piece that will sway your audience to take necessary actions.

SpredMax Content Creation Process: Research, writing, optimizing, editing, and choosing the right stock photo

You can outsource your blog posts, especially if you have other responsibilities. SpredMax is a professional content writing service that produces fresh and unique content that is not only relevant to your industry but also your audience.

#8 Is your content optimized?

A misconception most people have about content marketing is that immediately you kick start, your blog traffic will skyrocket. Well, that is a lie because it requires months of planning and hard work to create a content strategy that attracts visitors to your blog or website.

One of the biggest challenges you stand to face in your content marketing strategy is writing for people and optimizing for Google at the same time. In this situation, you will have to consider the keyword density and placement, social buttons placement to get clicks from search engines and call-to-action optimization.

It can be frustrating keeping all these in mind and trying to write to your audience naturally and engagingly, which is why you need to work with professional copywriting services with expertise in your niche if you lack the confidence to produce SEO contents.

These professional copywriters have the workforce, expertise, talent, and apply different tools to create original content that will improve your search engine ranking.

One of the biggest challenges you stand to face in your content marketing strategy is writing for people and optimizing for Google at the same time

#9 How to measure your content marketing strategy success?

Now you have realized the importance of content marketing for your business. You have defined your goals and mission. You have studied your audience closely and have amazing topics to wow your audience. Your first post has been published, and the traffic is coming slow and steady. However, you are confronted with the question: is my effort worth it?

It is necessary for you to measure your content marketing strategy. There is no better way of doing that than measuring your metrics. However, it is easier said than done but worth giving a shot. Your content metrics should focus on:

• Consumption metrics – measured in downloads and page views
• Sharing metrics – measured in the number of social media shares and likes
• Lead generation metrics – measured in the number of visitors converted into leads
• Sales metrics – measured in the number of leads converted into customers

If you still don’t know what metrics to track, it is better to look at your content marketing objectives as it will help you determine the relevant data. Better still, you can allow the company in charge of your content marketing to do that.

Over to you – we have compiled essential nine questions in this post that will help you revolutionize your content marketing strategy and business. Ensure you follow them judiciously and take your business to the next level. We do love to hear your thoughts. If you feel there are other important questions left out in this post, ensure to drop it on the comment box.