How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy for Social Media Channels and Blogs

1. Define your goals.

Think about what you want to achieve and what the goals of the activities of your channels are. Understanding your goals will help you determine what content you should create as well as control the effects of your work. Use the SMART concept to correctly set the goals.

SMART is the concept of creating goals, the acronym SMART means that goals should be:

• Specific 
• Measurable 
• Achievable 
• Relevant
• Time-bound  

2. Identify your audience.

First of all specify, what is your mission (as the mission, we can define the specific reason for the existence of your channels). Defining it will help you realise what you want to achieve and who your desired followers are. Thanks to that, you will be able to identify what information your audience is looking for. Your task will be to create content around what your audience is interested in.

3. Analyze what your competitors do.

Once you know who your audience is, it is good to take a look at what your competitors are offering. Analyze their content marketing strategy for social media channels and take advantage. This will allow you to create unique content. Remember about using a broad research framework, check news portals, bloggers, and company websites and channels. For you, the competitor is anyone who tries to get the attention of your audience.

At this step, you can also consider how you will stand out from your competition.

4. Choose topics for your publication.

To be effective, you need to publish content consistently and regularly. Finding interesting topics for months or even years may be a challenge.

In the process of selecting publication topics, you can:

• use research and surveys,
• analyze pages and blog posts with Google Analytics,
• follow comments and reactions. 

5. Decide on content types.

Choose the types of content that help you achieve your goals. If you have already run your channels, maybe you will add some new content types.

6. Build a content distribution plan for channels.

A distribution plan is a very important element of content marketing strategy for social media channels and blogs. It won’t matter how good your content is if it doesn’t reach your audience.

That is why you should specify:

• goals of particular channels,
• the type of content that the audience is looking for in a given channel,
• frequency of publications,
• style of the publication.

7. Figure out the best channels

Write down your channels and rate them taking into account the effectiveness (measured as the number of views, likes, comments, etc.) and compliance with the goals. You can prepare a matrix based on these two dimensions. It will help you review which channels are interesting and support the achievement of your goals and which of them should be improved. You may also identify channels that are not worth spending time on because they are not effective or they do not meet their goals.

8. Identify your resources

The most important resources are people. Maybe you work alone or maybe you collaborate with photographers, graphic designers, movie makers, assistants. Consider who is responsible for producing and maintaining content, what your publishing workflow looks like, and what digital tools you will need.

9. Create a Content Calendar

Lack of planning is one of the biggest mistakes made by people who do not prepare a content marketing strategy for social media channels and blogs. You should decide exactly when you will publish your content on each of the channels.

First of all, determine how much content you can create at a given time. Then, create a content calendar for your channels for the coming weeks.

10. Set KPI’s

Last but not least, you will need to establish specific and measurable key performance indicators (KPI’s) for your content marketing strategy for social media channels. It will help you measure the achievement of your goals. Back to your goals and specify indicators. 

Popular KPI’s are:

• bounce rate,
• average time spent on the site,
• click pattern,
• the number of reactions, clicks or comments.

To check if you have prepared the strategy correctly, ask yourself 3 control questions:

• Why am I creating the content?
• What content is my audience looking for?
• How can I create content to meet my goals?

If you can answer these questions easily, you probably have prepared a good content marketing strategy for social media channels. Well done! It is time to put it into practice!

However, if you find it difficult, analyze all the steps again (especially the first two steps). Good luck!

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