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The content marketing cycle can be broken down into four phases: Generating ideas, writing, publishing, and promoting. While these phases may seem straightforward, many businesses need help with one or more of them.
If you want to improve your content marketing strategy and capitalize on the full potential of your content, you must understand how to execute each phase of the process effectively. The following blog post will discuss the four stages of content marketing in detail and explain how to perform each step correctly to generate the best possible results.
Content Marketing: What Is It?
Content marketing is creating content to attract and retain customers or potential customers. It includes blog posts, white papers, articles, videos, images, etc., explicitly made to persuade people to take action on your product or service.
While content marketing may seem like an expense up-front that only yields benefit months after it has been published for people to consume – this is not the case.
Content marketing works because when someone views a piece of content, they naturally look for more information related to the topic they found interesting or helpful, resulting in higher conversion rates. After all, they are already interested in your product before you present it.
There’s a lot that goes into content marketing. Even after you have created it, much work is still involved in getting it in front of your target audience.
Content Marketing: Why Do You Need It?
Content Marketing is one of the most potent ways to reach your target audience. This is why you need to include it in your strategy. Another reason why you need content marketing is because of social media. You can easily share your content with your followers to ensure they see it.
To increase your website’s traffic for free, check out social media giants like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Google+. These sites, like social media, are now integral to our daily routines.
By sharing posts from others (with permission) or creating great original posts that people will love, you can increase traffic on your website for free and build good relationships with others. Knowing what topics are trending when coming up with ideas is essential.
Content Marketing: How Do You Benefit From It?
Understanding the benefits of content marketing will be more beneficial to you. Content marketing is about pushing your products or services through blogs and articles. Research shows that content marketing works quite well. Think about the numbers:
- According to Pew Research, almost a quarter (24%) of Americans said they were online all the time in 2018, with 77% saying they are online at least once a day.
- A survey by Dragon360 found that 51% of respondents said that reading blogs affected their buying decision. Sixty-one percent said they are likelier to buy from a business that can deliver unique content.
- Marketers who used content marketing had a 24% higher ROI on ad campaigns than non-users.
The use of content marketing as a kind of advertising is sluggish in its effects but cheap in cost. Creating and distributing material can be done slowly yet inexpensively. You don’t need an expensive budget to use this marketing strategy.
Content marketing can reach more people than other forms of advertising; it’s possible to get hundreds or thousands of potential customers. You can also target a specific group of consumers which will help you better advertise to them.
Plus, if you’re savvy enough, you can use social media to expand your content marketing campaign. Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn help promote new content and past pieces.
Phase 1 – Generating Ideas
Idea generation can be the most challenging phase of content marketing. It is a constant process that needs to happen if you want your blog to stay relevant.
You should always have a plan in place for what you are going to write about next. Whether an editorial calendar or an idea notebook, setting yourself up with some system can help keep your ideas fresh and new. With an idea notebook, brainstorm different topics and list them as either potential, need more research, or write now. That way, you’ll always have things to write about.
One great way to generate potential ideas is through keyword research. If you’re unsure where to start, there are plenty of free tools online, like Google Adwords Keyword Tool, that will provide you with several possible keywords related to your niche topic based on specific criteria such as location, language, and search volume (number of monthly searches).
Once you find one good keyword, head to another site like Moz’s Keyword Difficulty Tool, which tells you how hard it will rank high on Google based on factors such as competitiveness and the level required for research.
Phase 2 – Writing Your Blog
In this phase, you’ll sit down to create a blog post. Your first step is to know the goal of your post. It’s essential to be clear on what you want your reader to walk away with after reading it.
This will help shape the tone and content of the blog post. Next, outline your ideas before writing them in complete sentences or paragraphs. This will keep you on track while writing and clarify any areas that may need more work or clarification. Next, write out your entire blog post and make sure there are no errors before publishing it.
You should then add images where appropriate to enhance the visuals for your readers. Finally, share your blog post with others who might find it interesting!
Phase two includes:
- Knowing your goal for the blog post.
- Outlining ideas before writing them out in whole sentences or paragraphs.
- Completing a draft of the entire blog post without errors.
- Adding appropriate images where possible.
Phase 3 – Publishing
Publishing is the third phase of the content marketing cycle. It’s a critical stage where you can either succeed or get stuck.
With publication, you’re aiming to get your work into as many eyes as possible. Timing is crucial, and people have various preferences for how they take in information, but these are only two of the many considerations. For example, some people like reading blogs on their phones, while others prefer reading them on their laptops.
Additionally, how often you publish can make a difference in who sees your content. If you’re only posting once a week versus daily, more people will see it if they come back each day instead of once per week.
When all four phases work together in harmony, your website will grow with traffic because new and old visitors will come back again and again to consume your high-quality content!
Phase 4 – Promoting the Content
Promoting your content is as important as coming up with the idea or writing it. One way to promote your content is to share it on social media.
Be specific about what you want people to do, such as liking a post or subscribing to your mailing list. You can also use paid ads on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
Paid ads are one of the best ways for a business to reach its target demographic because they’re able to target particular demographics based on location and interests. One should always begin on a small scale and expand from there. From there, so you only spend a little money at a time.
To start, run 5-10 paid ads daily targeting people in different cities or states. Set a budget between $5-$20 per ad and see how many likes, comments, shares, follows, and subscriptions you get in return before increasing your budget.
Another way to market your content is through influencer marketing which involves reaching out to someone who has an established following on social media (a celebrity, for example) and ask them if they would be willing to post something about your company/product/service onto their account in exchange for some compensation like cash or free products.
They then have a large following who will see this new update by this famous person and might decide to follow along with them! A downside to this strategy is that often these influencers only take offers from companies or brands they already know and love.
A final way to promote your content is through email newsletters, where you send updates straight to your audience members’ inboxes.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the four phases of the content marketing cycle are generating ideas, writing, publishing, and promoting. It’s essential to cover all these steps to grow a business effectively.
You can’t just focus on one phase, or it won’t work. To create a successful blog post or piece of content, you need to generate new ideas, think about what people want to read, and write something they’ll want to share with others (thus getting your message out there).
You also need to publish your blog post on the right platform so that it is found by readers who might be interested in your topic. And finally, promote your blog post as much as possible so that it reaches as many people as possible- but don’t spam!
