9 Questions to Ask Before You Do Any Content Marketing

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With millions of websites publishing new content every single day, finding yourself a place beneath the spotlight can be quite difficult. This is where content marketing comes in.

By definition, content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, consistent, and relevant content, allowing you to increase profits and savings and gain a more loyal customer base.

However, having a content marketing strategy just for the sake of it won’t do you any good. To make it effective, you’ll need to know the ins and outs of who you are as a business and what you do.

With that said, in this article, we are going to show you a few questions you need to ask yourself before you do any content marketing. So, let’s get started.

1. Will You Need to Focus on SEO As Well?

Depending on the type of content you publish, you may need to consider Search Engine Optimization. After all, if you want to generate traffic, you will need to rank high in the search results. We asked for an opinion of experts from an NYC web design agency and compiled a list of digital marketing strategies you might use for your company. Search engine optimization (SEO), social media promotions, content marketing tactics, and so on are examples of these.

However, you can start by doing keyword research. Find something relevant both to you and to potential visitors as well.

Afterward, use the keywords you found wisely. They need to be placed organically and consistently throughout your content. Otherwise, search engine robots will notice that, and your website will be negatively impacted as a result.

2. Why Do You Need Content Marketing?

Figuring out what you aim to accomplish from your content marketing strategy is crucial since this will determine your project’s course. Are you looking to increase the number of your customers? Maybe you want to generate more traffic? Or you’ve just launched a new product and you want to post content about it.

These answers will help you prioritize what you need to do, easing the development of your content marketing strategy in the long run.

3. Who Is Your Target Audience?

Knowing who your target audience is and understanding it is also a critical part of your content marketing strategy. After all, the content you publish is meant to be read by consumers. With that said, if your content is not created with the audience in mind, then that content is pretty much useless.

In order to be effective, you’ll need to know the audience you are targeting thoroughly. Figure out how much time they typically spend when viewing your content, what type of devices they use, their preferred content formats, the social media platforms they use the most, etc.

To understand your audience better, consider building a buyer persona. Imagine who your ideal customer would be. How does he behave? What does he want? What sparks his interest the most? Does he find your content useful?

4. What Are Your Competitors Doing?

As we’ve previously mentioned, millions of websites are posting new content every single day. Therefore, standing out from the crowd can become quite a difficult task at times. To bring something new to the table and see where there is room for improvement, you will need to take a look at your competition.

Analyze the most successful competitors and find out what made them succeed. See where they are stronger than you and use that information to improve your business. Also, take a look at their weaknesses and see if you could do certain things better than them. Doing this is great for differentiating yourself from the competition.

5. When Will You See the Results?

Although an effective content marketing strategy will build user engagement and ultimately drive profitable customer action, keep in mind that you won’t see positive results in an instant. It’s, in fact, a long-term process.

After all, you will need to engage with your audience, get good backlinks and build your website’s authority, which will, of course, take some time, 3-6 months, to be more specific.

6. How Can You Analyze Performance?

Posting high-quality content will always benefit your website. However, how can you actually judge whether your content marketing strategy is working well or not? Well, Google Analytics is great for identifying which posts are doing well and which ones are not.

Your content marketing might not bring you outstanding performance in the beginning. However, that’s not a reason to stop working on it. As we’ve previously said, content marketing is a long-term process.

Test new ideas and look for improvement areas constantly. This way, your content marketing strategy will yield better results.

7. How Often Should You Post?

Would you like to post content daily? Weekly? Or maybe twice a month? Although posting as often as you can is the ideal case, that also means that you may sacrifice quality from time to time, which is not good.

After all, there’s no point in marketing your content if what you post is of poor quality. With that said, you need to find a sweet spot. Think about the time it takes for you and your team to create valuable, high-quality content.

After that, think about your audience. How often do people want you to post content? If you post too often, you might get to annoy some users, leading them to abandon your content altogether.

Yet, if you post too rarely, the chances are that people might get to forget about you.

8. How Do I Promote the Content?

As we have mentioned earlier, the point of content marketing is to build engagement with your user base. However, you will need to get people to see your content in the first place, meaning that you will need to promote it. So, how do you do that?

Well, the answer lies within your target audience. For example, if most of your audience is mainly using Twitter, then sharing your content on the said social media platform will be the most effective choice. In other words, put an emphasis on getting to know the audience you are targeting.

9. What Is Your Current Situation?

And finally, you’ll have to assess your current situation. Maybe you’ve never worked on content before or are already posting content, but you want to achieve better results.

If you’ve never worked on content before, you’ll have to figure out what type of content you would like to post in the first place. If you’re already posting content, get to know your strengths and weaknesses. Find out about what points you should highlight and where there is room for improvement. Do you have a good content team? If so, how much workload can they take?

Final Words

All in all, there are plenty of things to take into consideration when planning a content marketing strategy. Not only that, but many mistakes can be made. However, by answering the questions we listed above, you’ll hopefully get a better idea of how to develop your content marketing strategy.