Content needs to align – and it needs to help your organization while it helps your audience. Think of content as the missing puzzle piece – but you need all the other pieces too!
You may not have all the info or data you need to make decisions on goals and objectives – that’s probably true for your whole marketing plan. So make your best educated guesses based on all you DO know, what you can find out, what fits your bigger plans – and then test it.
Ask yourself or your team (if you’re lucky to have one!) some serious questions before you get started – you'll be more successful :
If you’re a nonprofit, for example, are you trying to build community? [and what does that really mean for you??]
Are you building your nonprofit organization's brand?
Are you fundraising?
Are you trying to attract new volunteers?
Think about the specifics of what you're shooting for in your organization and with your outreach and marketing efforts – then you can start thinking about what certain content platforms or pieces should aim to do for you.
Engage
Educate
Inform
Entertain
Yes, all of those are potential goals for your content marketing strategy and may apply to different channels even (e.g. social media vs. a blog vs. video site). You will need to drill down a bit further and decide what ‘engagement’ looks like for you and your audience.
3 ‘how-to’ posts w/ links and ~ 800 words per month? One 8 minute ‘how-to’ video? Only curating tweets that come from educational sources related to educating your audience about your given topic? Giving mini-courses on an aspect of your core topic(s)? Producing 1 purely educational video per month or per quarter?
And think about how you might know (or figure out) if your audience is actually becoming ‘educated’ about your topic
For example:
On your website you are mostly informing potential customers or users, collecting information about them and their preferences.
On your blog you will post articles and videos with an educational goal.
On Twitter and Facebook you are engaging in community-building, having conversations, delivering customer service. And maybe you post video interviews or thought pieces on Vimeo to build your credibility and thought leadership.
Get specific – and appropriate – for each channel and how your audience/prospects use that channel. Make sure your tone of voice, personality, style and the content you share fits the parameters of that platform. Then keep up your focus as you use each platform. If it’s not working so well in 3 months, change.
Eventually you may want to make, earn or raise money with your content – but that’s not the first goal of content marketing.
I want all of my solopreneur pals to feel confident and mighty in their marketing - sharing what makes their work special and so vital to their clients. No B.S. or fluff here. I do the digging and research for you, translate "marketing-ese" into simpler terms, and help you avoid marketing headaches.