As search engines continue to become more sophisticated and adept at identifying one and two-dimensional strategies, more and more brands are faced with the need to diversify their strategies. Not only is quality content crucial to any brand for its long-term success, but the ways in which that content is marketed are also important. Because of this, determining the basis for any content marketing plan from the get-go is absolutely necessary. Not all brands will embark upon the same journey, but we will provide information and suggestions below to help anyone begin drafting the framework for what their content marketing plans should entail in order to be successful.

Goals, Goals, Goals

Before any content marketing plan can be adequately planned, the goals of the effort must be known. Are you wanting to increase simple traffic, boost clicks, increase sales or all of the above? Everybody wants their brands to do better, but that concept can vary from brand to brand. By knowing what the goals are ahead of time, shaping strategies in order to achieve them become a lot easier. With this, you will spend time promoting only the strategies that directly relate to your plan’s goals.

Understanding Its Evolution

Even the best content marketing plan will become obsolete sooner or later. What you are pinging today to an audience that generates success may result in pinging noise to no one one year from now. While it is impossible to predict the future, understanding how your plan’s goals and strategies will need to shift ahead of time can make it possible to adapt to any scenario. The best content marketing plans out there are the ones that know how to adapt to changing times – or at the very least, have the ability to do so. Do not formulate a plan that is bulky and restricts the brand from changing course when it is needed.

Establishing Content Purpose

On one hand, the purpose of your content is to achieve the goals you have formulated prior. What is the purpose of the content for the readers and viewers? In order to enact a content marketing strategy that resonates with readers, you will need to understand what they desire most from this content. While content should be discoverable via search engines, a large part of your marketing success will come from the content being shared via social media, email and beyond. In order for this to happen, the content must resonate with readers. By discovering what makes readers “tick”, you’ll discover what purposes they wish to discover in your content. Once this is known, execution of the idea becomes very easy.

Promote, Promote, Promote

With your goals outlined, content purpose for readers discovered and an adaptable plan ready to go, all that is left is to deploy the quality content across a variety of mediums. Email is a popular format through which content marketing remains viable, but it is not a medium that you can chronically use. Social media can be used consistently but its value may be less than that of email. Organic discovery through search engines has inherent value but is more difficult to achieve than the others. In short, all of these mediums have value, must be used and must be cultivated, but use each with the understanding of their value and their caveats (or risk pinging noise to uninterested or exhausted audiences).