Don’t be intimidated if you’re new to the world of content marketing. We’re here to guide you. To help you get started, we’ve written this article to give you an idea of the 6 key steps you need to undertake to create a successful content marketing strategy.

1. Set your goals

Having the right goals can mean the difference between success and failure. Identify what you hope to achieve and make sure they are feasible targets. Be focused about your goals; having vague goals, or too many of them, will end up pulling you in different directions.

A solid plan of action should then accompany your goals. Break it down into milestones and set time frames to make it easier to achieve. You’ll get extra motivation every time you cross something off your list.

2. Know your audience

Knowing your audience can’t ever be underestimated. It’s one of the pillars of a successful content marketing strategy. Without clearly identifying your audience, you’ll end up pitching the wrong content to them, or the right content to the wrong audience.

Invest the time to draw up an audience persona and write down their demographics, traits and buying habits. It will enable you to craft more specific content and marketing for your audience, making it easier for them to relate to you and trust your brand.

3. Identify your content platforms

There are a lot of platforms you can choose to publish your content on. Of course, having your own website should be at the top of your list. A solid social media presence is also very important. When you’ve defined your audience persona, you should have a better idea of the platforms they prefer, and you can then focus your content marketing on those.

4. Decide on content types

Once you know which platforms your audience prefers to hang out in, then it’s time to decide on the types of content you should be publishing. In addition to blog posts and articles, you can repurpose your content into many other formats such as videos, infographics, podcasts, and more.

5. Create content

This is the challenging, but not undoable, part. There is no escaping the fact that creating content is going to take time. If you’re building your business all by yourself, expect to spend a significant amount of time in researching and creating content.

You can always consider outsourcing, but getting a really good content writer isn’t cheap. If you can afford it, great; you’ll get back your free time.

6. Promote and market

Your content is not going to get discovered on its own. You’ll need to go out there and promote your content! You can make it easy for your audience by adding social media sharing buttons on your site. Then go ahead and ask them to share it with their own networks!