Presenting your content marketing strategy

Halos,

It’s been some week for me…I don’t know about you.

Maybe, someday I’ll share it here.

Today, I have a lot to share, so I’ll dive straight in.

Here’s a content strategy template you can swipe right away 😉

One of us had reached out and asked if I had a content strategy template I could share, so I thought to share it with everyone.

Here goes:

Introduction

I start off with an introduction to the “why.”

What’s your business goal?

Do you plan to educate or inspire your ideal customer profile?

Content Marketing Goals

Next, what are the overall strategic priorities of your marketing team?

List that out and show how content marketing can help accomplish these goals.

For example:

• Content marketing can increase awareness by driving traffic to the website and blog.

How We Will Measure Our Goals

Some examples of key performance metrics (KPIs) you can track include:

• Number of blog posts published

• Unique visits

• Time on site

• Email signups

• Email list health (open rate and click rate)

Remember, your KPIs are tied to your content marketing goals.

For example:

If your goal is to grow an email list of subscribers to drive brand recognition, your KPIs might be:

• 3000 subscribers by December 2021

• 7% month-over-month list growth

• 30% open rate for your bi-weekly email newsletter

How We Can Stand Out

What’s your content tilt?

Your content tilt is your sweet spot. It’s that topic/angle you can write or talk about with minimal or no competition.

Who Are Your Desired Audience/Personas

I assume that you already knocked out your buyer persona research and have that under lock and key.

Here’s a previous piece on building great buyer personas if you missed it.

At this stage of your plan, detail out your buyer personas.

Content Inventory

What current content assets do you have that can be repurposed?

It’s tempting to jump straight into creating fresh content. But there’s Merlin-level magic in repurposing old content.

ProTip: Just make sure it’s evergreen content. And if it isn’t, update it.

What Are Our Content Themes

Here, depending on your audience and what stage of the funnel you’ll be focusing on — you’ll list out the overall areas your content will focus on and the types of content you could create.

I would set it up this way:

Theme A

• Blog post idea/title

• Podcast interview

• Email newsletter

And so on!

Content Production

This is important.

How do you plan to produce content?

What’s your current resource stack like?

An ideal team you should aim to build over time should include the following skillsets:

• The content creators (writer, graphic designer)

• The content optimizer (copy editor, SEO)

• The content promoter

You also need to plan for subject matter experts and contributors (or content buds as Brittany Ryan of Pointed Copywriting calls them).

You also need to create a content production process. 

Early on, you can get away with this, but as you scale your team, this can come back to bite you in the ass hard.

So, knock together a solid workflow, and stick to it as much as possible.

For example:

Create content brief>>Approve brief>>Write a draft in Google Docs>>Edits and feedback in Google Docs>>Graphic design>>Final approval>>Optimize>>Publish>>Promote.

Surely, I don’t need to tell you to include an editorial calendar in your process, right? 🙍🏾‍♂️

Finally, Content Promotion

Yes, you need to plan for promotion. A sample plan could be:

For every new blog post:

• Send email to newsletter subscribers

• Share on relevant social media accounts

• Tag or share with relevant influencers — especially if it’s an expert roundup

• Share using content distro platforms

• Share on your company Slack channels

Round up with a “Plan on a Page” — this slide needs to summarize your strategy into one page.

More like a recap.

How to create great ideas

Borrow great ideas and recombine them - creativity is connectivity.

Not Enough Writers — Announcement 🚨🚨🚨

Whether you're a blogger, journo, or copywriter — if you can't knock together a great pitch, you might never catch your potential client's attention.

In Brittany Ryan’s words:

“It's legit WILD how a month of intentional prospecting can set you up for a steady client stream *for years*.”Based on this writing truth, we’ll be hosting a series of learning sessions focused on the art of pitching starting this Saturday.In each session, we'll have content marketing and writing experts share insights, best practices, and tips on pitching as a content marketer/writer.Kicking this off will be Brittany Ryan. She's the founder and content chief at Pointed Copywriting and she'll be sharing her knowledge on pitching this Saturday.

Don't forget to invite friends whom you think can benefit to sign up.

Here’s the sign-up link!!!

Content Writing Jobs (Remote/Freelance)

• Copywriter, Brex | Apply here

• Freelance Content Writer, Cozymeals | Apply here

• Scientific Writer, Scorr Marketing | Apply here

• Writer + Comms Specialist, Xoogler SaaS Startup | Apply here

All the best folks. And please share with any of your friends/colleagues who might find this useful 🙏🏾

My biggest takeaway this week 🚀

If something could make your life easier, it might be valuable to someone else too.

What I’m thinking about?

You can increase the possibility of good luck by taking action.

Gratitude Corner

To Brittany Ryan for the value bombs I know she’s going to drop tomorrow.

To everyone who’s signed up with Not Enough Writers.

Thanks for reading this far. I am grateful!

Stay safe and sane.

Dozie

P.S: If you like this newsletter and want to support it, please could you share on LinkedIn or forward this newsletter to a friend with an invitation to subscribe right here👇🏾