How to Build a Content Marketing Strategy Youll Actually Use (Template)

How to Build a Content Marketing Strategy Youll Actually Use (Template) Does it feel like youve spent tons of time creating a thoughtful content marketing strategy, only to have it fall to pieces in a month or two because of shifting priorities? This is the problem with most content marketing strategies they arent flexible. After all, it’s impossible to know in January what your organization’s situation will look like in June. So, your team needs to be agile. And your strategy needs to be adaptable. In this post, we’ll cover exactly how to create a content marketing strategy that will: Keep your team focused and organized, so you can plan your work, then work your plan. Ensure your content is aligned with real goals that’ll make an actual impact on your business. Stay flexible and adjust according to what’s working (and what isn’t). Plus, well touch on how makes it easy to plan and execute your entire content marketing strategy with the best marketing suite on the Internet. Start With Your Free Content Marketing Strategy Template Best of all, we won’t just tell you what to do. We’ll actually show you how to document your content marketing strategy. And well even give the template youll need to get it done completely free! Download it quick below, and then well move onto planning your strategy.How To Build A Content Marketing Strategy You'll Actually Use Table of Contents: What is Content Marketing Strategy? Why Should My Business Do Content Marketing? Which Content Marketing Tools Do I Need? Ten Steps To Creating Your Content Marketing Strategy Assemble Your Content Marketing Team Establish Your Mission Statement Establish Your Content Marketing Goals Audience and Persona Development Determine Content Types Choosing Content Promotion Channels Writing and Designing Your Content Define Your Content Creation Process Create Your Content Promotion Strategy Make a Plan to Measure Your ResultsWhat is Content Marketing Strategy A content marketing strategy is: â€Å"An in-depth marketing plan that highlights the topics, processes, and standards that each piece of content a marketing team creates must meet.† How do you define content marketing strategy? Why Should My Business Create a Content Marketing Strategy? Creating a content marketing strategy is vital to the success of your overall content marketing. Why? Because it gives your content team the direction they need to create remarkable content, measure your success (and failures) and stick to the plan you’ve designed. Still don’t believe a documented strategy works? According to our own data, marketers who document their strategy are 538%  more likely to report success. According to data from @, marketers who document their strategy are 538% more likely to...And that’s just the beginning. Check out this infographic for more statistics and data to help convince you to add content marketing to your overall marketing strategy: Sources: 1-2. https://.com/marketing-statistics 3-4. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blogging-frequency-benchmarks 5-9. https://.com/marketing-statistics 10-12. oracle.com/webfolder/mediaeloqua/documents/Content+Marketing+Kapost+Eloqua+ebook.pdf 13-14. http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2017/10/know-like-trust-content/ 15.   https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics Some of the statistics and data from the infographic above can help you begin to fill in the content marketing strategy template that you downloaded earlier. Which Content Marketing Tools Do I Need? The fact of the matter is, content marketing can be a bear to handle. Using the right tools can help your team stay on track and organized. The question is, which tools does your team need? Content Management System A content management system is a must for managing and publishing content. WordPress is one of the most popular options out there, especially for creating company blogs. However, here are some other options you may consider: ExpressionEngine. Great for managing content on small websites. Drupal. Another option similar to WordPress, but with a less blogging-heavy focus. Sitecore. A powerful feature-rich enterprise solution. Joomla.  A free and open-source content management system for publishing web content. Squarespace. A software as a service provider for website building and hosting. Wix. A cloud-based web development platform Analytics Platform Analytics platforms make it easy to gather data and measure performance for your content and social media marketing efforts. Google Analytics is one obvious option here. However, there are tons more out there you might want to consider, too. They include: Matomo (formerly Piwik). This is an open-source alternative to Google Analytics. Open Web Analytics. Similar to Piwik. Clicky. Another option that's popular with bloggers. Adobe Analytics. An enterprise analytics solution. Angelfish Actual Metrics. A more affordable, alternative to Adobe. Chartbeat. Analytics for Editors. CoreMetric. Used by e-commerce websites. Content Marketing Editorial Calendar Calendars are essential for planning ahead, managing deadlines, and giving your team full visibility on all the content you're publishing. We recommend The Content Organizer (as you may have guessed) as the top choice for a content marketing platform. Here's a quick look at what we're all about: Social Media Scheduling Tool Social media is an important part of any content marketing strategy. That's both for promoting content  and creating awesome native social content. 's Social Organizer makes it easy to create and schedule social media posts for each of the top networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google+). Plus, here are some other cool things you might not know about: With ReQueue, you can reshare your best posts automatically. And with Best Time Scheduling, you can make sure every post publishes at the ideal time, too. Plus, with our WordPress + social integrations, you can create and share content all in one place. even has a monitoring tool to help you stay on top of all your social media conversations. Every time we create a piece of content, we use each of the features above to spread it to our audience (and beyond). SEO Tools To get your content found in organic search and measure its performance, you'll need a solid set of SEO tools. Here's what we use at : Ahrefs. This platform is awesome for keyword research, link analysis, rank tracking, site auditing, and more. Moz. This platform is similar to Ahrefs and offers powerful functionality. Google Keyword Planner. It's more of a PPC tool, but still useful for keyword research in a pinch. Google Search Console: This free tool is vital for monitoring the health of your website. Marketing Project Management Tools Keeping a content marketing team in line can feel like herding cats. That's where project management tools come into play. Tools like Wrike and Asana are popular options. Here at , we use the Work Organizer to: Wrangle tasks  with Task Templates (which are reusable project checklists). Measure team productivity with Team Performance Reports. Discussions (built-in comment threads right inside our marketing calendar) to make communication and project management super easy. See and track daily tasks of the whole team with the Team Management Dashboard. Overall, what separates is that it's built specifically for marketing teams. That's why we use it ourselves (and the results speak for themselves). Once you have your tools selected, record them in your template: Which content marketing tools do you use to plan and execute your strategy? Ten Steps to Building Your Content Marketing Strategy The next ten steps are going to walk you through how to fill in the template you downloaded earlier and create your content marketing strategy. Step One: Assemble Your Content Marketing Team The first step in your content marketing strategy process is to document the team that will be working on the content from start to finish. Each team may look a little different, but some familiar roles are: Each member of your content team has a vital role to play. Remember that the role a person plays on a content marketing team may not necessarily match up to their title. Record your team members, their role and their responsibilities in your template: Recommended Reading: How To Structure Your Marketing Team To Create The Best Content Step Two: Establish Your Mission Statement The first part of the template that you need to fill out is the mission statement of your company. Your mission statement should be the promise that your organization wants to fulfill for your audience. Here’s a template to help you get started: The mission of [Insert Organization Name] is to provide our customers with [service one] and [service two] through [action one], [action two] and [action three].