HAVE you been enjoying the recent Spring sunshine as well as the showers? If so, you may been hit by the feeling of freshness and regrowth around you that can be very infectious at this lovely and promising time of year.
With a few simple and well-planned steps, you can apply this feeling of freshness and new growth to your business, and with a vigorous spring-clean your content marketing may start to see the results of that new growth too.
1. How are you doing?
There’s never a good time to run a content audit, and at the same time now is always a good time. Stepping back and taking stock of the work you have been producing, identifying your successes and identifying your failures will all help you to build a better picture of what you need to do next to succeed.
By looking at your evidence – whether that be traffic, time spent on page, social shares, keyword and search data – you can understand, then reset your course based on hard data.
For some more details on how to get started, check out this earlier blog post that outlines how you can get the most value from a content marketing audit.
2. Are you doing the right things?
Based on what your content audit turns up, have you been spending time on the right activities that help drive your business? Online is moving so fast and in such different directions, what you set out to do twelve, six or even three months ago may no longer be the most useful plan of action.
Recalibrate your strategy based on successes, and using your more recent industry and niche knowledge, set a new course of direction that can be looked at in its turn over the coming months.
Simply by taking the time to document your strategy you will be putting yourself in a better position to succeed, as having a living document that you can refer back to will help to keep you on the right course.
3. How is your planning?
All too often when running a business, responding to the immediate needs and environment can overtake and drown out any overarching strategy and direction you were planning to take. The key to combating this is rigorous and comprehensive planning.
Time spent on planning will pay off when you can execute against a well-thought out plan, and you can work with renewed focus, consistency and commitment knowing that the time spent in planning was well worth the investment.
With so much content marketing, you will need to put in long-term consistent effort in building your message, building your audience, and extending your reach; without a plan the amount of time and effort can seem daunting and overwhelming.
Start with an effective editorial calendar and see how much more productive you will become.
4. Who needs to hear you?
Is your message getting out to the right audience? And are you engaging that audience with your targeted content? When you audit what you have done, look not just at the scale of your audience, but more importantly try to get a picture of your engaged audience, and where you are getting the best response and reaction to your business messages.
Your content should be relevant to your target audience, and while it should focus on what you can do for them, you should also take time to put some personality into your content, reflecting what it would be like for those potential people to do business with you.
Look at your subscriber list to see where you could add more value to existing subscribers, for example rewarding loyalty and connection, even in small ways. And let the make up of your list inform you in ways that you could look to expand it meaningfully.
5. How will you measure this?
Take some time to set up a dashboard, which could be as simple or as complex as your own particular situation dictates. Look at historical data, look at what your business is trying to achieve, then set some concrete and achievable goals that you can work towards – over the next 30 days, over the next 90 days.
Then make sure that you set time aside each week to track and review your progress against those goals. That way you will be in a good position to understand your progress and be able to celebrate your successes and development as you go along, and you may also see some new opportunities to pursue along the way.
Taking these steps will enable you to spring-clean your content marketing and, with new focus, to make good progress against your business goals.
If you are unsure where to start, or how to go about taking some of the steps along the way, please contact us to discuss how we can help accelerate this process for you and help you towards real and growing business success. You can reach us by email on info@marketingondmeand.co.uk or by telephone on +44 1491 614404.
Get in touch today and see how we can help; in the meantime don’t neglect to spend some time enjoying the lovely Spring weather!
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