As 2015 begins to come to a close, it's time to evaluate your current content marketing plan to see how it performed during the past year and how it can be revised to be even more successful in 2016. To keep it fresh, your plan needs to devise new compelling content that will continue to bring in new referrals to your firm. This is a great time to assess what your audience likes and give them more of it.
Here are some points to consider when rethinking and reworking your content marketing plan:- Assess your well-liked content: Use Google Analytics or an inbound marketing software such as HubSpot to evaluate your most popular content and develop an editorial plan to follow up on well-liked topics. Look at your popular posts and update them with additional food for thought, new studies and statistics, and graphics. Weave in valuable words of wisdom from industry experts who have something to say about your subject matter and establish your position as an authority. Creating infographics and slideshows to retell popular content will prove to be beneficial for tapping into new audiences who prefer visual content.
- Grow your understanding of your client's problems and develop content from them: A rich source of ideas for your content marketing can be found in the problems and "pain points" that drive your clients to use your products and services. Discover past posts that address prospect’s “pain points” and turn the content into an online webinar or create a compilation post. Use those problems as a content source for your blog, social media pages, and your website. For example, an architectural services firm could create content about subjects that are common issues among clients, such as understanding when an architect is needed on a project, calculating the cost of architectural services, or finding the perfect match.
- Develop and write content that speaks to your ideal client personas: Develop a persona for your client, an "ideal" personality with a typical set of needs and problems who would be well served by your products and services. Be patient. Identifying the ideal client persona will take time and requires taking on some not-so-ideal clients. Periodically check in throughout the year and reflect on the characteristics of what makes an ideal client to sharpen your message. Write and publish useful, focused content that will benefit clients with the same traits as the ideal client persona you create. Ultimately, you will attract the audiences that will prove beneficial for long-term business.
- Use industry events and key occasions as content triggers: Within your industry, there should be several important events that occur throughout the year, such as conventions and meetings; regulatory changes; and product introductions and retirements. All of these events can form the basis of a blog post, Facebook update, Twitter tweet or website article. Industry events and developments that are particularly relevant to your clients will attract their interest and encourage them to contact you for more information.
- Establish criteria for success: Understand what you want your content marketing strategy to accomplish and how you will measure success or failure. Criteria could include a certain number of new leads, clicks on a website link, or sign-ups for an online newsletter.
Hopefully, these tips will inspire you to give your content marketing plan another look and rethink how you communicate with your audience and nurture prospective clients. Without giving us the secret sauce, tell us about how you like to attract audiences in the comments section. We love it when readers share their ideas!
If you need more inspiration to get started, contact Colosi Marketing today for more information on how to rework your content marketing plan for the new year.
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