Chances are you’ve seen different marketing companies talk about content marketing and content strategy. They might create social media posts, write articles about how content is king, and tell you they can build a content strategy that works.
But what does all that mean? Content marketing as a whole is more than just writing a blog post or publishing something on social media.
For content marketing to work, there needs to be a strategy behind it. Without one, it’s like throwing darts with a blindfold on, hoping you hit the board. Maybe the digital content will do something; maybe it won’t.
So what’s the difference between content strategy and content marketing?
The simple answer is that content strategy is the blueprint you develop to roll out your content. Content marketing is a vital part of digital marketing and how you use that content to generate leads and grow your business.
While that’s a high-level overview, let’s define these terms some more so you can better understand how content strategy and content marketing work together.
What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a broad term, but essentially it is when you use content to engage a target audience and drive some action. Content marketing can be used to support outbound and inbound marketing efforts.
Content marketing is the larger concept of using quality content to market your business to customers and leads.
Popular Types of Content
There are so many different types of content you can create to use in your marketing campaign. Whether the campaign takes place offline, online on your website, or a mix of both, the kind of content you can use and share is nearly limitless. It all depends on the strategy you’ve developed.
With that being said, here are a few types of content that are proven ways to help your content marketing efforts be a success.
eBooks
eBooks are a type of long-form content. These are often gated behind a form that the lead must complete first. Think of these like a digital brochure or book that’s focused on a specific topic.
With the right SEO strategy in place, these can be a powerful lead magnet.
Blog Posts
Blog posts are articles you publish on your website. Blog posts can be used for sharing information about your products or services, educating consumers, and helping increase your website’s SEO efforts.
Blog posts are a useful way to share great content and get returning visitors to your website. You should be blogging aimlessly, and instead should be following a blogging strategy.
Case Studies
People love social proof. If you sell a higher ticket item or service, people may want to make sure it’s worth it. Case studies are how you can highlight the successes other customers have had.
Like eBooks, this type of content can be gated to aid with lead generation efforts. These are especially useful as the lead moves down your sales funnel.
Infographics
Infographics are a creative way to share a lot of information quickly and visually. Infographics allow you to highlight key points and stats related to the topic in an accessible format.
Email and Newsletters
Emails and newsletters compile resources into an email for quick and direct access. Email marketing is highly successful and a useful way to connect with people and share information about promotions, company news, resources, and more.
What is Content Strategy?
Now that you understand what content marketing is, let’s dive into content strategy and how to build a plan. Content strategy is your game plan. It’s the roadmap you create before you start building out an effective content marketing campaign.
Simply put, your content strategy helps define the who, what, where, why, and how of any successful campaign.
Your content strategy includes everything from what type of content needs to be created to how and when you’ll share it with the world.
What’s the Goal?
When you’re developing a content strategy, start by defining the goal. What do you want your campaign to accomplish?
It could be generating more brand awareness and increasing traffic to your website. Maybe it’s getting a certain number of people to register for your webinar or event.
By first outlining your goals and what you want the content to do, then you can move on to figuring out how exactly you’ll make that happen.
What Content Needs to be Created?
Once you’ve got your goals in place, take a look at your assets. Every marketing campaign will be different. In some cases, you may be able to reuse or repurpose existing content.
Other times, you may need to create some fresh content to include in your campaign.
During this stage of your content strategy development, build a list of what pieces of content you want to use.
Who Will Create the Content?
Now you have a business goal in mind, and you know what pieces of content you want to use. If you need to create or repurpose content, decide who will be in charge of that. Is there someone in-house you can assign that task to? Or do you have a content marketing partner that you can assign it to?
Part of developing a content strategy is understanding who will be involved in the campaign and what tasks they’ll need to complete for you to make it a success.
When and Where Will It Be Shared?
At this point, you know your goals, what content you need, and who will be creating it. You are ready to define what channels you use to share the content.
Decide when and where your content needs to be shared, and the marketing funnels your leads will take back to your company. Email marketings, social media marketing, and even traditional advertising are a few of the many ways to roll your content out.
Every business is different and will have different marketing channels available to communicate with leads and customers. This is the part of your planning where you need to set milestones and build a clear timeline for the campaign.
How Do You Know If It’s Successful?
Last but not least, how will you measure the success of the campaign. It doesn’t make sense to put all this effort into building a plan and creating assets if you can’t measure if they’re working. In the first stage of this process, you defined a goal.
Let’s say you want to increase website traffic. What does that mean exactly? Is it a 20% increase in monthly web traffic or 200% increase?
By defining your key performance indicators, you’ll be able to better define what success looks like. One way to make this easier is by creating S.M.A.R.T. goals. That means your business goal is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.
If your goal is to increase average monthly website traffic by 50% next quarter, that’s a S.M.A.R.T. goal. You’ve clearly defined how much you want traffic to increase. It’s something realistic that you can measure and attain. And most importantly all, it has a date to hit the goal by.
Need Help With Content Strategy or Marketing?
If you’re looking to improve your content marketing strategy and connect with more people, we’d love to help.
Our content marketing managed services help you develop a content marketing plan to organically increase your website traffic. You’ll work with a dedicated content strategist, writers, and editors to develop and implement and adjust a comprehensive blogging strategy.
If you’ve already a plan in place and just need help writing the content, we do that too! Our okgrow services allow you to purchase professionally written and edited content to help fulfill your content marketing needs.
