Originally written by Robyn Bloch & Francois Karstel | Revised & Updated by Carina Claassens

A good content marketing strategy is complex; it requires a blog, a website, a comprehensive social media plan, landing pages, lead nurturing, a pay-per-click campaign and a report on all of this. A good way to manage this intricate process is to outsource your content marketing.

A bare bones strategy - something to start your content marketing strategy, and a place to grow from - would include the following:

A Blog

The blog needs to have, at a minimum, two articles added to it a week. Proper blog management allows for an article to be added each day – which will guarantee an influx of traffic to your site. Remember: Don’t publish an article just for the sake of publishing. Your content needs to be industry relevant and interesting.

To write an article a concept must be brainstormed, then that idea must be researched. Once you have something concrete, the actual article needs to be written, checked and approved. It then needs to be formatted, appropriate pictures sourced and, finally, it can be published. But it doesn’t end there; after it has been published all comments must be monitored and replied to.

A fairly short, simple article will take about two hours to get to the publishing phase. But keep in mind that the more time you dedicate to the article, the better it will be. Blog articles can, and ideally should, gain you credibility. It is through your articles that you show that you are a leading expert in your field. Thus, the more time allocated to creating well written, well researched articles, the better it is for your company. Read more.

A Social Media Strategy

You will achieve very little through your blog if it is not properly promoted. Several different social platforms come in handy for getting your blog out there.

Through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube you can actively promote all the content on your blog. Once you get into the swing of things you’ll find that it’s a relatively easy (but time consuming) way of gaining exposure. Social media accounts need to be updated regularly, and rehashing the same thing over and over won’t work. You need to be clever about the way you schedule posts; what do you write, what do you link, when do you post and on which platform?

It’s a good idea to compile a comprehensive list of all your sharable content which you can use as a “calendar” of what to schedule next. All articles, infographics and videos will be strategically spread out ensuring that your social media platforms are always fresh and interesting.

A common misconception is that the same article shouldn’t be shared more than once. Think about this – out of all the users on, let’s say Twitter, not even 1% will see your Tweet. The more often you Tweet the more exposure a specific piece of content will have. Just don’t share the same article minute on minute, this will come across as spammy and you’ll lose followers.

Managing your social media platforms is, in reality, a full time job but scheduling applications make it less tedious. If you can’t afford to spend day in and day out on social media, make sure to manage your time properly to not lose your presence. Read more.

A Pay-Per-Click Campaign

Setting a budget for a PPC campaign is completely up to you. The campaign should ideally drive a lot of traffic to your site so the money and time spent on it will be well invested. The important thing is that you conduct proper research into what your target market is searching for when they browse the net. Not much time has to be spent on managing your PPC campaign but, like anything else, the more time spent on it the better the outcome should be. More time spent on a PPC campaign means the words can be better monitored and adjusted. Read more.

Landing Pages

In both your blog and your website you should have call-to-actions. These are banners or links that click through to a landing page. The landing pages will contain something of interest for the perspective client, an eBook, for instance. In order to access the eBook the client must fill in a form giving some details. This is where your lead nurturing campaign can start. Landing pages are an important aspect of any website and a lot of research and testing should be done, and ample time should be spent on perfecting them. Read more.

Company Website and Blog Integration

While implementing all of these strategies, it is important to carefully maintain a complex integration between the blog, the website and all your social media pages and platforms. This means connecting and interconnecting each to the next. The blog needs to have keywords that link back to the website. The website needs to refer to articles in the blog. Each of your social media pages needs to link to the next and each must be carefully monitored to make sure that the traffic is being driven correctly and strategically.

Report

And finally, you need a report on all of the above. The report collates all the data for the month and points to how to better optimise the process. It shows what articles were most successful, for instance, or which social media platform is directing the most traffic to your website or blog. It is crucial to carefully monitor this information. The agency should interpret the data for you so that you can make informed choices about how you want to focus your content marketing strategy. This way you can redirect your budget to the areas that are most successful in your campaign. It takes around one hour to produce a report with interpreted data.

Content Marketing Snowballs

Content marketing has a cumulative effect. Over time, your position gets better; you have a growing database of subscribers, followers and Facebook likes. You have a growing archive of knowledge-rich articles. Thus none of what you implement with your campaign is ever “lost” or completed. It simply adds to your company’s online visibility and credibility.

Sound Idea Digital specialises in Social Media. For more information, contact 012 66 44 227 or email to info@soundidea.co.za

Carina Claassens is a Writer for Sound Idea Digital l carina@soundidea.co.za l @soundidea | Sound Idea Digital l www.soundidea.co.za

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