Can you believe the first quarter of the year is almost over? As a business person you know that this is a time for evaluation and measuring success, but it is also a time for setting new goals and updating your content strategy.
Why do I need new goals and strategy?
New goals help businesses grow instead of remaining stagnant. In the same way, setting new goals for your content marketing is essential for achieving bigger and better results. Naturally, your objectives will change as the environment (the market) changes. You need to review your goals and see if they are still relevant. This is done by researching the trends in your industry, the current mood of your audience and the content marketing activities your direct competitors engage in.
What my new goals should be?
Your new goals and objectives will be unique to your business and niche, however, universally they should be SMART. We have spoken about SMART objectives previously in an article about creating a content marketing plan. However, just to remind you, this means that your goals should be:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Timely
It's not always easy to create objectives that fall into that frame, so here's a specific example of a SMART content marketing goal.
Overall goal: I want to produce an e-book as a freebie to my audience.
Specific - I will produce an e-book about increasing converting traffic to a business' website and it will consist of 100 pages.
Measurable - I will write one chapter or 10 pages per week.
Achievable - I will research publishing/self-publishing opportunities and reorganise my diary in a way to accommodate my writing schedule.
Relevant - E-books sit at the top of the content marketing pyramid. The vast majority of entrepreneurs are interested in the topic I've chosen and providing my expert advice for free in the form of an e-book will lead to more paying clients for my business.
Timely - The e-book will be published in 16 weeks.
How to build a strategy to achieve my new goals?
Now that you have set your new goals and objectives, it's time to build a strategy to help you achieve them. I'm going to give you the main steps you need to follow to build any content strategy, not just in relation the example of a SMART goal you just read above.
Step 1. Set a time frame - Give yourself a realistic deadline, considering all the processes you'll have to go through and allowing room for unforeseen circumstances that can slow you down. At the same time, don't give yourself to much space for completion of the goal because this will harm your productivity.
Step 2. Outline the actions - What specific actions do you need to take to achieve your content marketing goals? Generally, they involve the following:
Create Pen Portraits - detailed profiles of your targeted audience.
Update your keyword list - keywords and phrases change periodically, so you can't expect the piece of content that was optimised with keywords from a year ago to stay on top. The content you create for your new goals will have to include a new set of keywords.
Decide on the types of content you will include - you need to know what types of content your audience prefers in relation to your new goals and objectives. It could be video, podcasts, blogs, social media updates, e-books, webinars, etc.
Commit to an optimal frequency of producing content - create a content calendar to simplify the working process. If your goals require several types of content to be included in your strategy, decide how often you will be producing each and make every effort to follow your calendar without a skip.
Step 3. Assign Responsibilities - If you are blessed with the time and talent to create your own content that's great! However, if you lack one of these (or both) you should be thinking of outsourcing to a professional content writer. Depending on your goal, you may also need a social media manager who will be able to distribute the content and engage with your audience.
Step 4. Name and find resources - What do you need to achieve your goals? It can be anything from specific objects and equipment to people and time. Make the necessary arrangement to put these resources in place.
If you have any questions about setting goals and building a content strategy, ask me in the comments section below or email me directly using the contact form on the website. Prefer social media? MBC is on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and Instagram. Follow us, ask your questions, grow your business!
