The Go-to Strategy of A Content Marketing Strategist

You have probably seen or heard the word ‘content marketing’ on multiple occasions; whether in your marketing class, an influencer’s story, LinkedIn, a company’s meeting... The word is frequently used so it can be difficult sometimes to understand its exact meaning, but it is not as complicated as it sounds.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is mainly creating and delivering valuable and pertinent content to attract and retain a well-defined audience. Social media posts, ebooks, webinars, blog posts, vlogs, videos are all examples of content marketing. It is taking over traditional marketing and the majority of the companies are including it in their strategies. It is a more efficient, faster, less expensive way to reach people; to reach your right audience who is in today's world very influenced by the Internet, Instagram, blogs, articles, and pretty much any news channel.

So it is beneficial to both the company and the customers since it offers a superior customer experience and a better understanding of the product or service you are re providing considering the tons of information present out there. Also, it will probably offer the company a better understanding of the audience which will result in more leads, sales, engagement...

So it is definitely something that should be part of your business plan.

Who is a content marketing strategist?

People would have different opinions whether a content marketing strategist is someone who necessarily has a degree in business or marketing or could be someone who is simply interested in the field or previously worked on entry jobs in marketing. But, they would all agree that knowing the basics and fundamentals of marketing, digital marketing, social media, SEO... is necessary.

What is a content and marketing strategist do?

Content marketing is a whole long process so the person behind it has a lot of responsibilities:

• Identify the goals and objectives the strategy aims to reach.
• Define the target audience and choose the type of content that attracts them the most.
• Create the content.
• Analyze the results and see whether it comes out as expected or needs to be fixed.

Thereby, the content marketing strategist should have a set of skills that would help them do the job and deliver better results:

• Strong written and oral communication
• Leadership
• Strategy planning tactics
• Analytical thinking
• Creative mindset
• Time management

So if you are a creative thinker, a natural storyteller, and have an innate passion for defining wonderful content and product experiences, a content marketing strategist might be the right job for you.

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What should you know as a content marketing strategist?

Knowing where your customers are is important

You want to be always in front of your potential customers so defining where they are the most present and their expectations is crucial: are they waiting for a Youtube video? Are they coming for your blog? Are they active on Instagram? Do they enjoy twitter? Figure it out!

Be organized

Regardless of how much you want to post in a week or the exact type of content you want to post at different times on a day, pre-schedule everything, use tools for an organization so they send out the exact time, and that way you do not worry about the quote you planned to post in the morning and you forgot or the emails you were supposed to answer.

Add value

Do not post for the sake of posting so you can just be there. Figure out what your customers are exactly looking for, what questions do they have. Make sure to always add value and deliver pertinent content so they do not get bored and stop following you.

Track your results

As much as the first steps of the process are important, you have to know whether people are liking it? Is there enough engagement? Are you reaching your pre-set goals? If yes, good for you, you are on the right path. If no, make adjustments, correct your mistakes and track again.

What does a content marketing strategist need?

Going the traditional way may work but with the right tools a content marketing strategist can strengthen the strategy and take it to the next level.

So here are list of tools that every content marketing strategist needs.

1- Answer the public:

       If you ever wonder what your customers are exactly looking for, try this. With this website, you do not have to wonder what your customers want to know anymore: you type a keyword related to your topic, you search and it will generate commonly asked questions people mostly ask and it will guide on the content that performs best and resonates more with people.

2- Asana:

        Once you have ideas on the type of content you should create, the next thing you want to do is make a clear and organized schedule. Asana is a management tool that will help you manage tasks, workflows, and clients. It can be very helpful because sometimes keeping track and being on top of everything can be a nightmare. It has various features even on the free version and if you are working with a team, it allows you to allocate tasks to people and keep the communication flowing.

3- SparkToro:

           As mentioned before, knowing your audience and their expectations is very important. Without having to go through a heavy research and long surveys that will consume time, SparkToro helps in getting a better idea of what your audience listens to, watches, reads and follows. In general, what exactly do they expect? And what are the things that they engage with better? It provides different types of statistics and analytics that will definitely give you a better lead and will make your strategy more forward.  

4- Grammarly:

           If the content you are creating is an article, a blog, a caption for your social media post, a long tweet and you have to write, you do not have to worry anymore about grammatical and spelling errors that in the midst of the work you usually do not pay attention to. If you just want a spelling and grammar checker, the free version would suffice but the paid one offers better writing suggestions.

5- Photopea:

            Now taking the more visual content, as a content marketing strategist you would probably need an online photo editor. Photopea is a very close online alternative to Photoshop; it has many similar basic and advanced features so it can offer what Photoshop has with other pros: It opens fast, easy to use, you do not need any prior knowledge and it is free.

6- VSDC:

           Even if you are not professional in terms of creating creative videos, having a video editing software is vital so you can do some editing  to make the video more enjoyable to watch, more professional and slick. VSDC has what every online video editor has and more: dozens of eye-catching special effects, you can add text, graphs, charts., colour correction. It is also affordable and easy to use.

7- Ninja outreach:

         After getting your content distributed through the right channels, you have to think about promoting it and with the word promotion, the word influencers comes directly in mind. Ninja Outreach provides a list of potential influencers that can be aligned with your industry or share your values. Choose the ones who have active followers, the ones who are creative and create eye-catching content and this method will be extremely effective.

8- Repurpose House:

           Doing your research and creating content can be very exhausting and may take hours to do. Unfortunately, the results are never promised and you may risk failing to catch your audience’s attention because of a wrong channel, wrong format, wrong keywords... you never know. Repurpose House takes a piece of content you created and breaks it into different formats to show you the full potential of your content and to assure more engagement.

As a content marketing strategist, you got to respect the 4 E’s of content creation: Educate, Engage, Entertain, Empower. You balance this and you got an audience who is waiting for you and a successful strategy.

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