Content Marketing Fundamentals
The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as: a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.
Content is the foundation for your digital marketing strategy. It is the best way to tell your brand story, connect with your audience, and create value that is also an asset. It is the best long-term marketing strategy you can implement, driving traffic, building brand reputation, creating conversation and increasing revenue.
Create a Plan
Content Marketing is more than scheduling social media posts. It is about connecting to your audience, creating meaningful engagement, and growing your business. Your content plan should be aligned with your sales funnel core stages: awareness, consideration, conversion, and decision.
- Map out your cornerstone content, plan our micro-content
- Plan out the conversion goal and call-to-action before you start creating content
- Plan and schedule once you have mapped out your content
- Measure and track results from your content
Map Your Strategy
Isn’t a content marketing strategy and content plan the same thing? Content strategy lays the groundwork for what you need to include in your plan, followed by content production. Your content plan is made of building blocks chosen based on the goals outlined in your content strategy.
- Set Your Content Goal/Objective: Example: Grow email list by 500 subscribers
- Content Types: What type of content will you create to support your goal/objective? Set 3 primary content types, then define micro-content from each piece.
- Micro-Content: List the platforms and types of micro-content you will create. Example: images, quotes, video clips, etc.
- Create Content Campaign: Example: August is Back to School
Measure What Works
The strategy of content marketing ROI is that you can measure what is working and focus your efforts. Measure which content is driving the most traffic, where your traffic is coming from, and whether your content is converting to subscribers or sales. 
