Marketing is forever changing. What is working this week, might wreak havock your entire strategy the next. However, with all the changing trends and fads, one thing will remain the same even in 2019: content is vital.

But, here’s the thing: if you want to experience the benefits of content, then you  need a great content strategy to fuel your endeavor. Without it, you’re just putting content into the digital space, without knowing what to expect.

If you want to create an effective strategy, you’ll need three significant components: a budget, an editorial calendar, and a tracking system.

1. The Budget

The reason you start with the budget is to know how far you can take your content strategy, meaning how many things you truly afford to do. The sum of money you afford to allocate to the content strategy will point out the number of things you can do, or the quality of those things (though you should never cheap out on quality).

So, think of the total sum you can give to the content strategy from the overall marketing budget. Try to take into account the following things:

  • Website cost – hosting, design, improvement, etc.
  • Content creation process – it usually involves hiring copywriters and editors or a dedicated content writing service.
  • Tools for topic and keyword research;
  • Tools for monitoring and analyzing results.

These are the basic things you should account for when developing your strategy. It’s also possible to hire a marketing agency to help you with the last two components if your budget allows it.

2. Editorial Calendar

The next portion of the strategy is all about promoting the content. This is where you should decide things like:

  • Article volume (how many articles you want in total throughout the plan);
  • Posting frequency (how many new articles you post a week);
  • Promotional channels (what other platforms, besides your website, will you use to promote your content);
  • Promotional frequency (how often do you promote the content through these channels).

The calendar is a staple for any good content strategy. It is, perhaps, more crucial than the content itself. Unless you know how to distribute the articles, you won’t see any meaningful results in terms of ROI.

The thing most people struggle with is how often they should use the additional promoting channels. Everyone knows how to use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, or e-mail newsletters to promote their content, but how often remains a mystery sometimes.

And that’s because there is no right frequency. In truth, you’ll have to wing it at first and see what works for you. And, that gets us to the final part of the content strategy:

3. Tracking Results

It’s nearly impossible to predict how a content strategy will perform, even if it’s designed by the pros. Marketing is a very volatile industry, and there’s no way to truly know what the public will respond to and how. That said, there is one way to maximize a content strategy’s success rate, and that’s through good old fashion monitoring.

So once you go live and start implementing the steps of your content strategy, you’ll need to pay attention to:

  • Website traffic – do you have more visitors now?
  • Social engagement – how is your social media following responding to your content, in terms of likes, shares, follows, retweets, etc.?
  • Conversion rate – are your visitors buying/downloading/signing up more?

Keeping a close eye on these metrics is crucial for any marketing strategy, and content is no exception. If you are not getting the results you’re expecting, then something’s wrong. Maybe you’re posting too much, or not enough. Maybe your publishing hours aren’t fit for your audience. Either way, these metrics can generally point you toward the problem, and you can adjust your strategy for better results.

Back to You

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your content strategy won’t be either. Take the time and think about these three steps and how to apply them to your business, because the benefits of a good content strategy are worth it.