Now Down to the Specifics of Content Development and Writing

You have your strategies and plans, and you have an excellent conceptual understanding of content marketing. You are now ready implement.

1. Set up your business blog, with a good platform.

WordPress is excellent and will allow you to add all of the tools and plug-ins you will ever want. You can set up interaction with readers; you can give readers the opportunity to share your content on social media; you can post any of all of a post on social media yourself. Other tools will allow you to add tags and to determine if your content is at a good reading level; you will get immediate feedback on a post’s SEO strength, and suggestions for improvement in that regard. And it operates like Word in many ways – pointing out spelling and grammar errors, and allowing you to bold, underline and bullet. You can upload all kinds of media and videos as well. And, aside from some of the plug-ins, it’s free!

2.Make sure your social media profiles are really well done and that they are updated constantly with new stuff and links to your site.

Your posts must be engaging and fun – you can add pictures of your team “playing” at work; you can feature your customers; you can hold contests and surveys. This is such an important way to spread your brand, you simply cannot neglect it even for a day.

3. Your blog content must be really engaging too.

Titles and first lines are absolutely critical if you want people to read past them. Make certain your content is always new and fresh; be certain that you break up content into sub-headings and that you use bulleted lists whenever possible. While you may be writing at about an 8th grade reading level (this is recommended), your content must be free of grammar errors. If you have concerns about this, there are editing services you can use. Media and graphics are critical too. You want it to be so good that readers will want to share it. “Good” is defined as really solving a problem you know your potential customers have; it is being humorous; it is telling a great story (readers love stories); it is sharing a video of your latest activity related to the cause you have taken up – maybe you are tutoring inner city kids; maybe you are sponsoring several children in a third-world country; maybe you are supplying product to the underprivileged. Maybe you are featuring a new and unique use of your product(s) or a new product you have just added. Perhaps you are providing some shocking statistics. Whatever you create must be done well.

4. Post at least twice a week.

Followers will come to expect and to look forward to your posts – don’t disappoint. A neglected blog means a loss of traffic, and usually that traffic is lost permanently.

5. Format you content for all devices (this goes for you website too)

Get an expert for this, because it is not just a matter of responsive design anymore – it’s a matter re-purposing content for mobile devices.

6. Do the analytics:

Unless you know where your visitors are coming from; unless you know when and from where they access your site or blog or social media pages; unless you know how long they stay, what devices they are using when, what they are reading and where they bounce, you cannot improve your marketing strategies or your content. Google Analytics can give you great data on all of this. Use it!