The Essential Guide to Evolving Content Marketing Strategies

Having a content marketing strategy is your guidebook to ensuring that your clients’ audiences are captivated through the media that you produce across social media channels.

You’ll need to update your strategy periodically to evaluate its effectiveness. An important component of effectivity is ensuring that you’re tapping into relevant trends, finding tools that will save you time and using new technologies that further simplify the process.

Developing a content marketing strategy will help you stay on your toes so you don’t have to stay glued to your phone. Here are some of our tips on how to keep your content creation strategies up to date.

Trends Can Be Your Friend

New trends emerge weekly, and these tend to receive plenty of engagement in their beginning stages before they gain more traction and eventually peak. As a content marketer, trends can be a great tool for building engagement and a sense of community amongst a larger audience.

Finding trends to incorporate into your content marketing strategy can look different depending on each client. Here are some ways to find trends to incorporate:

Follow relevant hashtags and see what’s performing well for the top companies in your client’s industry.

For video content, locate a trending audio and find creative ways to make it relevant to your client’s brand. Don’t be afraid to think outside of the box as you approach content creation and consider which trends to tap in to – even if something that is trending may seem to be irrelevant to your brands, finding a way to tie it in to what your client’s offer is often the perfect way to pique the interest of potential customers. They will recognize the trend that you are participating in and from there, they gain exposure to your client’s work.

Consider trend analysis tools. They help content marketers analyze the best performing content and campaigns within a given industry.

Determine which ephemeral trends might have monumental quality. While some trends are fun in the moment, others don’t age well. You’ll want to consider how it will be perceived in the future and how that might impact customers’ perception of your clients.

Best Tools, Best Practices

There is a world of tools at your disposal so that you can implement your content marketing strategy more efficiently than ever. From designing graphics for your clients to coming up with clever captions, there are thousands of tools which can help you meet your clients’ needs.

Canva and Adobe’s Creative Suite are a few of the more widely known and used tools that are great for visual content creation, but these only scratch the tip of the tools that social platforms and websites are integrating into their platforms as well as the myriad of applications and software that all claim to have the power of completing your content marketing needs.

Here are some of our tips for deciding which tools to invest in:

• Define your goals and objectives. If your goals are to boost brand awareness, generate leads or increase engagement, then you’ll want to find tools that will primarily help you accomplish these goals. It’s easy to fall into the trap of purchasing a system that does 20 things for the price of one but be sure to invest in a product whose tools you will actually use versus the product that might emblazon its features.

• Streamline your tools. Many applications and tools have a variety of capabilities, and they can make your content creation process a simplified succession, from brainstorming to posting.

• When it comes to analytics, using a social media platform’s built-in tools is your best option for audience insights and real-time data. For periodic evaluations and for long-term performance metrics, invest in a service that will allow you to customize your data and choose which metrics to highlight for your reports so that you can see the data that matters most to your clients,

• Stay up to date with industry news by subscribing to email lists from experts. Another good practice to include is listening to at least one podcast episode per week that highlights news, tools and technology in the content marketing world.

The Future of Content Marketing

Content marketing is the saving grace of the marketing world. While some people are worried that it will die out due to the wide stream spread and acceptance of technologies like artificial intelligence, the human component of this industry is what gives it the advantage – after all, artificial intelligence receives its information from human-generated media.

While you don’t need to be afraid of technology replacing humans, it’s a good idea to be aware of each new technology’s potential as a tool. Carefully analyze technologies that seem to be taking prominence in the world of content marketing and use them to your advantage rather than perceiving them as a threat.

Continuous learning is key to staying ahead. Following industry thought leaders and keeping an eye on emerging applications will help you stay prepared for what’s to come. Of course, you don’t need to act on every mention of an emerging tool, trend, technology or application. Do some solid research and evaluate your client’s long-term priorities and goals so you can discern what makes the most sense to invest in and what you may be better off leaving behind.

Staying Ahead of the Curve

Keeping up with the trends of content marketing is like riding a wave. While things can ebb and flow, catching the tide is an incredible opportunity for you to add more value to your existing strategies.

If you’re a marketer who is ready to take your social media strategy to the next level and achieve long-term success contact our team.