The complete guide to building content marketing strategies from A to Z - Part One

Most marketers write and produce good content, but it does not produce results! Why? Because this content is produced in vain and according to need, and it lacks a clear, intelligent strategy that can move this content from one place to another and place it in an effective context that makes this content achieve the desired results and goals.

In order to win and succeed in marketing and provide a distinctive customer experience, all you need is the best marketing techniques combined with a smart content marketing strategy, which is what we are about to do now. Content strategy is much bigger than content marketing. In addition to having good marketable content, there must be a smart strategy. Content strategy is the smartest first step in your digital transformation journey, because it represents the backbone and infrastructure of the digital marketing strategy as a whole.

In this article/guide, we will review together, in non-boring detail, how you can build an effective content marketing strategy that will move your project from one point to a greater point, and the index will be as follows: research and identification. Planning. Promotion.

Measurement. Contents of the topic Toggle First: Search and select. 1- Determine the goals of the company or project for marketing in general and content marketing as part of it. 2- Define the personalities of the targeted customers - Personas First: the audience “who”.

Second: Trends “What” Third: Media and media “Where” Fourth: Competition “How” Identifying customer personas Problems that we can help him solve: Finding new ideas for blog posts, publishing blog posts on a large scale and enabling them to reach the largest possible number, finding ways and solutions to write blog posts faster. Objectives: The extent to which the project objectives or the solutions it provides are compatible with the objectives of the audience First: research and identification.

1- Determine the goals of the company or project for marketing in general and content marketing as part of it. Why do you care about marketing through content? What do you or your company aspire to achieve by building this strategy?

Increase brand awareness?

Helping the sales team get qualified visitors to buy? Strengthening the relationship between you and your current clients?

Enrich the educational content you provide to your visitors?

Improving your site's visibility on search engines? Increase conversion rates? Or even otherwise.

Based on these goals, the types of content that you can use to achieve them will be determined, as well as the metrics that will determine the success or otherwise of this strategy in accordance with these goals. These goals will represent an essential part of the basic marketing goals of your company or project. Make sure to make these goals SMART - that is: Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic, as well as time-bound. As an example of this: General or comprehensive marketing goals for an SEO site in Arabic, for example (for example only) include building to make the site a basic reference in topics related to search engine optimization and digital marketing in general, including building mailing lists and increasing visits to the site.

So, content can help you achieve these goals by: Providing the opportunity for those with expertise in this field to share their knowledge and experience with readers. Increase the number of visits to the site so that people can view the content and then subscribe to the mailing list. The most important part after setting these goals is to determine the metrics that you will use to measure your progress towards achieving these goals. When you see that the number of visits increases and the number of subscribers to the mailing list as well, you will be sure that you are moving forward towards achieving these goals. These basic metrics will include: New visits - Unique Visits Time on site Visit sources - Referral sources Email signup rate Email open rate As it appears, these goals seem general. And not specific, for example if we set specific goals: For the primary goal: to appear as a primary reference and source of expertise: Goal #1: 10,000 views of the blog on a monthly basis until the month of August, for example.

Goal #2: Rank on the first page of a search engine for three or more content-related words through August. Goal #3: The site will appear as a featured site on more than 25 external sites. For the primary goal: Increase the number of active mailing list subscribers: Goal #1: Reach 5,000 mailing list subscribers by May.

Goal #2: 10% monthly growth rate in mailing list subscribers. Goal #3: 40% monthly newsletter open rate. Etc... These are just practical examples so that you can easily apply this part.

2- Defining the personalities of the target customers - Personas is considered the most important part of the strategy in general, and it is a crucial part that you can only do. As a marketer, you must have a detailed mental picture of your target customers and everything related to them, so that you can build and promote the right content for them. These details include their goals, problems, ages, lifestyle, etc. Personas, as a term, are virtual characters that represent your potential customers, based on real data about their behavior on the Internet, their obstacles, problems, etc. However, before defining the Personas, how can I fully research the target audience?

Ok, let's get started then. This stage of strategy preparation essentially requires that you know who your audience is, what they are searching for, where you can find it, and finally how to deliver your message to them in the best possible way. This is the natural user research model with regard to digital marketing as well as content marketing, as it is no different from it: First: the audience “who”.

This part is considered the most important in the audience research process, because it is the basic key to clearly understanding the audience’s behavior, and it is also the basis for creating personas and developing the buyer’s journey. This analysis will show you how your audience seeks information, how they evaluate brands and products, how they are influenced by different influences throughout their purchasing journey, and how they make the purchase in the first place.

How do you do it? There are many things that can help you with this analysis, including: 1- Keyword research: Identifying keywords and all search terms that are generated by the industry or field audience you are targeting is crucial in understanding how your audience searches for products and services. These words must be defined in conjunction with the buyer’s journey, which begins with awareness, then interest, through decision, and finally with action.

Action- 2-User Generated Content: Researching forums and social media platforms will give you a better understanding of the audience’s needs and the points they struggle with. Analyze and research their ratings, comments, opinions, etc.. I believe that this point will not be applicable to companies that deal with companies like them - B2B - very effectively, unlike companies that deal with consumers - B2C. 3- Interviewing clients and conducting questionnaires: Conducting interviews with clients will help you understand the nature of your target audience, its needs and goals.

But do not rely on this method alone. The information you have must be from more than one source and using more than one method. 4- Interview experts: If you can meet an expert in the industry or field that targets the same audience as you, so that you can ask him about his previous experiences, point of view, advice, etc., that would be great. These statistics and tips will help you build your content marketing strategy.

5- Data and statistics: Your site’s statistics that are already present, whether on Google Analytics, for example, or elsewhere, are not only a major key to measuring the extent of success, but also to creating a content marketing strategy based on data and statistics - Date Driven - as they will show you where the audience is located, and how they interact with your site, etc.. You can use tools such as Buzzsumo, LinkedIn, and Google Analytics to complete this stage of audience research. Second: “What” trends. In this part of audience research, we will go beyond keyword research and search volume. We will address a good understanding of the surrounding market and how to gain a voice in the conversation and be part of the equation.

The goal of this stage is to determine the form and way in which your content will appear, simply by analyzing and reviewing examples of successful content in your surroundings, whether in your company or competing companies, so that you can obtain accurate information about the types of content that can spread virally as well as that are appropriate for your audience. How do you do it? 1- Analyzing responses: The goal of this method is to dive deeply into the details of your target audience’s interaction with the content. What content do they prefer?

Hard Advanced or Simple Traditional? What types of calls to actions drive audiences to interact with content? etc..

2- Identifying the trend: In most cases, you can use common trends used in a field to know the information being shared, the types of content, the most effective sharing channels, and the basic features that push the audience to interact with the content. By obtaining this data, you will have accurate data that you can use to build and create effective and widely shareable content. 3- Identify the topic: What topics are searched for the most or are shared the most. This method will help you identify highly customized long-tail keywords more efficiently and easily.

4-Common sources: How is information shared in this field, and what are the most important references and basic sources that the public relies on, and what is the reason for their popularity? 5- Expert quotations and opinions: This process will take place with the same mechanism as in the previous point, but with different questions and topics focused on during the interview. You can use tools like Buzzsumo and Google Trends at this stage of your research.

Third: Media and Media “Ayna” At this stage, you will determine the best means of advertising and promotion that you can use, as well as the most important influencers in your field. You should not only collect information about the target audience but also about the mechanism that will enable you to find this audience. Identifying influential people and the best promotional tools will help you build content writing strategies and promotion strategies as well. The goal of this stage is to understand how you can use it to create the best content suitable for the target audience, as well as expand the content’s circulation in the best possible way.

How do you do it? 1- Analyzing industry publications: Creating a database about successful publications and references in your field will not only help you in analyzing media outlets, but will also be imperative and crucial in building a content promotion strategy after its creation. These posts will give you an overview of the most popular topic in your field and the most important to your target audience.

2- Analyzing the content of experts and influencers: By taking advantage of groups, networks, and lists that contain a large number of field experts, you will be able to collect a lot of data and information about the field you are about to enter, and this data will lead, in one way or another, to understanding what the most successful content is and why it is superior. 3- Analyzing interaction on social media networks: Knowing what is popular on social media networks can help you form the basic features of your content strategy, and multiple content analysis tools can help you analyze interaction on social media as well as determine the content that gets the largest number of interaction. You can use tools such as Buzzsumo, Share tally, and Followerwonk to complete this stage of your research.

Fourth: Competition “How” This quantity or standard is a combination of quantitative and qualitative data to understand the story that each competitor is trying to tell or tell, and then determine how these stories affect your audience and how they resonate with them. This stage is an essential process for understanding the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks of content marketing, by taking the pulse of the competition in your field. It is also a key process in identifying key opportunities that your competitors may not have noticed.

How do you do it? 1- Content inventory: Taking inventory and summarizing the content on your competitors’ websites will give you an overview of how the work is being produced. This includes cutting up these sites, or what is called scraping, and then building a manual list of the pages, sources, and basic contents of these sites individually.

2- Emotion analysis: This type of analysis goes beyond analyzing interaction and association or even audience comments, as this analysis enables you to better understand the emotional and mental connections that your audience forms towards the content. This analysis is concerned with inventorying the content in terms of format, tone, and emotion, as well as the depth of reading. 3- Review and audit the site structure and navigation menus: Here you will address the topic from a user experience perspective and how navigation menus and different user experience elements can affect the overall purchasing experience, as well as how you can make this journey as simple and consistent as possible.

4- Local SEO evaluation: Reviewing and evaluating local SEO, or what is known as Local SEO, allows you to narrow the gap between your products or services and the opportunities in your surroundings. Although these opportunities change from one brand to another and from one project to another, paying attention to local search engine optimization will help you a lot in increasing the rate of conversions, visits, etc. You can use tools such as Screaming Frog, SEMrush, and Google Keywords Planner to complete this stage of the research.

By completing the previous research process at various stages, you will possess fertile ground and accurate and clear information that you can rely on in the various stages of the upcoming strategy. Defining Customer Personas Now, you have all the information necessary to start creating and preparing content suitable for your audience, but you must first put this information in a simple template so that you can understand it easily. Customer personas will also be divided in the same way as the search process: who, how, what and where.

You will specify the following: Hypothetical job title and photo and their role in the company: What is his job? Or what is his job title?

How does his day at work usually go?

What skills are required for this job? What tools and sources does he use? Personal or demographic information and details: Age, Gender, Marital Status, Degree of Education, Salary or Income, Residential Area Goals: What are his basic and non-basic goals?

How will you help him achieve these goals? Challenges: What are the core and non-core challenges you face?

How will you help him overcome these challenges?

Values ​​and concerns: What are his basic principles and values ​​in life? What are his common concerns during the purchasing process? Some other information, such as: Hobbies Blogs and websites that he follows His news sources It is assumed that you obtained all of this information and more through the previous research process in its various stages, and here is an example of that: Name: Ahmed Mohamed Primary job: Digital content planner - Content Strategist  

Level of seniority or professionalism: Answers the marketing executive’s questions directly. How does his day usually go: He starts his day by checking e-mail, following up on new developments in his field through sites such as Feedly, and also checking articles saved on Pocket, for example. He and his team begin a brainstorming session to determine the marketing strategies as a whole and how the content will impact these strategies.

Comes up with content ideas and prepares a weekly content schedule. Research and write a new article for the blog, access social media sites to share old posts and interact with people, as well as search for new ideas for writing content.

Problems that we can help him solve: finding new ideas for blog posts, publishing blog posts on a large scale and enabling them to reach the largest possible number, finding ways and solutions to write blog posts faster. Objectives: Obtaining visits and shares on social networks for the content he writes Producing content with an appropriate frequency Continuing to follow new trends The most important thing for him: Submitting a distinguished report containing large numbers of visits and shares on social networks to his manager at work.

Where to go for information: Sites like Copyblogger.com

And Quicksprout.com and also Inbound.org. What's their common objection to what we offer: Content that is too long or not easily actionable, lack of consistent publishing, not sure where to find new content. The extent to which the project objectives or the solutions it provides are compatible with the audience objectives. After defining the objectives and challenges of the target audience, as well as knowing the objectives of your company, you can now compare the solutions you provide and the objectives they are looking for so that you can find the point of intersection between them, and from here you have pulled the trigger.

References: Quick Guide for Content Marketing Research-Ebook #Content Marketing