Struggling with Content Overload? Five Helpful Reminders to Get Your Content Marketing Plan Back on Track.

How do the words “con­tent mar­ket­ing” make you feel? Over­whelmed? Excit­ed? Or, maybe, a bit lost? No mat­ter where you are in your con­tent mar­ket­ing jour­ney, one thing is for sure —it isn’t going away any time soon, and for good rea­son. A strong con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is essen­tial for any mar­keter when it comes to cre­at­ing val­ue with your key audi­ence and ulti­mate­ly, dri­ving action for your busi­ness or organization.

Today, more and more of our con­ver­sa­tions with clients revolve around the top­ic of con­tent mar­ket­ing, and more specif­i­cal­ly, how we can help them cre­ate a strate­gic con­tent mar­ket­ing plan that is not only effec­tive, but also man­age­able. There’s no deny­ing it—getting start­ed on a con­tent mar­ket­ing plan can be over­whelm­ing. From defin­ing your key audi­ences to allo­cat­ing resources to exe­cut­ing a cam­paign across a seem­ing­ly end­less array of plat­forms, for­mats and devices, it becomes a lot to con­sid­er. But here’s the good news: By pri­or­i­tiz­ing your key audi­ences and focus­ing your efforts on telling the right sto­ries on the right plat­forms at the right time, you can be successful.

If you are strug­gling with how to man­age your company’s con­tent mar­ket­ing plan, here are five help­ful reminders to help you pri­or­i­tize your efforts and get back on track: 

1. If you aim to delight the mass­es, you will fail. Because con­tent mar­ket­ing is all about cre­at­ing val­ue to a clear­ly defined audi­ence, draft­ing your strat­e­gy in hopes it will appeal to the mass­es and go “viral” will only leave you dis­ap­point­ed. Instead, think about the small­est audi­ence pos­si­ble – per­haps even just one per­son – and what piece of con­tent you can cre­ate to build long-term val­ue among this trust­ed and loy­al tribe.
2. Remem­ber the pow­er of three. Cre­at­ing smart con­tent takes time. To be effec­tive and effi­cient with the con­tent you cre­ate, think about three dif­fer­ent ways you can use or repur­pose the con­tent. This can be reusing pieces of it on anoth­er plat­form such as a blog or new social chan­nel, or it can be repur­pos­ing some­thing into anoth­er for­mat, such as a video, a tweet­able quote, or SlideShare presentation.
3. Reuse the good stuff! We often think that once we’ve cre­at­ed this won­der­ful piece of con­tent that our loy­al audi­ence has engaged with, we are done with it – it’s time to move on and cre­ate some­thing new, right? Wrong! Don’t be afraid to reuse or repur­pose an old piece of con­tent that was suc­cess­ful or well-received. Chances are, not every­one you are try­ing to reach saw it the first time around. Give your­self per­mis­sion to use it again!
4. Serve up con­tent where your cus­tomers are in the pur­chas­ing cycle. Remem­ber to cre­ate dif­fer­ent types of con­tent based on where your audi­ence might be in the pur­chas­ing cycle. This should include basic “hygiene con­tent” that takes care of an every­day cus­tomer need, “hub con­tent” that tells a deep­er sto­ry or pro­vides more in-depth infor­ma­tion that con­nects peo­ple to your brand, and “hero con­tent” that is designed to be shared and cre­ate broad aware­ness through wide­spread dis­tri­b­u­tion and sharing.
5. Your brand isn’t about you, it’s how oth­ers expe­ri­ence you. Today, mar­keters don’t get to tell peo­ple how they should feel about their brand, prod­uct or ser­vice. Your cus­tomers get to decide that for them­selves based on the type of con­tent and inter­ac­tions they have with you both online and off. Don’t use con­tent to sim­ply talk about your­self. Instead, talk about your prod­uct or ser­vice in a way that is tai­lored to your audience’s needs and inter­ests. Use this as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­vey your brand’s val­ues and per­son­al­i­ty with­out being over­ly pro­mo­tion­al. Cre­ate con­tent that tells your sto­ry in a way that allows your cus­tomers to feel good about doing busi­ness with you.

While there is no sim­ple and straight­for­ward way to cre­ate an out-of-this world con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, the good news is, if you keep you cus­tomer in mind at all times and serve up the infor­ma­tion they want in a way that they want to receive it, you will succeed.

We love hav­ing inter­nal con­ver­sa­tions at Bell­mont Part­ners about best con­tent mar­ket­ing prac­tices to share with our clients. In fact, our team just fin­ished read­ing The Con­tent Code: Six Essen­tial Strate­gies for Ignit­ing Your Con­tent, Your Mar­ket­ing and Your Busi­ness by Mark Schae­fer, which pro­vid­ed some great insights and case stud­ies on craft­ing sound con­tent mar­ket­ing plans. What oth­er books or resources do you use? Who are some of the oth­er con­tent mar­ket­ing experts you fol­low? Let us know in the com­ments – we’d love to hear from you!