How quickly does the video load, and how long does it play? The process includes these five steps: Use this content marketing template to develop a roadmap: Your strategy starts with an inventory of your current position. You may find it helps to map out a person’s experience with your company or one of your products. The stages are: Your content map, which coordinates the persona with the stages of decision-making, will guide the tactical messaging for each piece of content you create.Â. The bottom line is that anyone in your company should be able to tell the story that your content illustrates. Base your content marketing strategy on this map between persona and product. Content marketing can help your business break through the noise of traditional marketing channels. Plus, you’ll be able to prioritize your efforts so your hard work generates the greatest results. Either the person producing the content can produce the related posts and tweets, or you can devote separate staff to handle promotions. Several companies, such as Brandwatch and CallMiner can create the required tracking to create the algorithms and reports that provide insight into how your brand is perceived.Â. Dig a little deeper by describing their roles in content creation and distribution. Content can’t support every company goal, nor should it. Get started tracking your KPIs with the free worksheet below. Take a look at what’s popular - is it top 10 posts, top categories, top authors, or another content type? Business goals encompass the entire company. In addition to deciding and prioritizing your content, you also need to decide who will produce it, review it, publish it, monitor it and update it — and then make sure everyone knows who’s responsible at each stage. Introduce the problem, explain the conflict, and offer a resolution. Content marketing goals help the company achieve some of the overall marketing goals. That means there are few hard-and-fast rules for search engine optimization. There are a couple of good sources of information for your brand analysis. While you may be able to plan a year’s worth of content at a time, you may find that executing on the vision is not practical. Interview stakeholders in your organization to find out where you have buy-in for  marketing initiatives and identify potential roadblocks. You will know what you want to continue promoting.Â. Identify the key stakeholders, their titles, and departments. {J^ܾ.®8,J)ýZû­L§ádðò* £#ü Ç£°;¿7‹èèŽx~“î$¼ñܕžO*1:9,}ûú] güUí¨ŒW,cp›Ì± ­ÉeØÕ@rt×¢mÅ By working across departments to build your migration plan, you reinforce the value of content marketing to your entire company. Remember, your content strategy is not a linear journey for many people - they may engage with your content in fits and starts until they are ready to make a purchase. Your company’s goals are your goals. Â. Make sure a second set of eyes reviews your content to ensure it meets your storytelling guidelines, follows a logical structure and flow, and avoids grammar and typographical errors. But you can also review your content later to see if it has the anticipated impact. The content strategy template walks you through researching and writing up the three key elements of a content strategy: what content looks like now, what it should look like, and the ecosystem in which content is created. Now it’s a matter of communicating the return on the investment. 10 Free Content Strategy & Editorial Calendar TemplatesPlanning Template Excel. You will also find examples for visualizing your plans in different ways — such as by marketing function, customer segment, product, and geography. Content marketing plan template consists of typical ready-made tasks. This template gives you a pre-defined structure of your marketing project. Content today Whether the writers and designers produce their work into your content management system (CMS) or someone else gathers the assets and publishes them, a team member needs to get the work in a form that your audience will find. Other factors that can affect your content include how well it aligns with your brand and messaging, and whether it is easy to access across platforms (from smartphone to tablet to computer). What experience will your content offer your customers, and at which stage of their journey? Typically, spend 70 percent of your time and money on efforts that already are successful. What I love: Lots of big, beautiful examples and fillable forms that you can emulate your content marketing strategy on. Another type of calendar favored by social media pros is the editorial content calendar. Bookmark this calendar template page, and share it with your social media team—it's about to make your workload a lot more manageable. Do you need an e-commerce engine? How does that address your customers’ wants and needs? An audit will also identify old or outdated content, which can either be updated or removed from your site. You can set up the social media content calendar template for whatever channels you use, like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Overall marketing goals support many of the revenue and product goals of the company. Use the information from your audit to map out your existing workflow, taxonomy, and metrics.Â. When you start creating content, this description of what you’re selling and how it meets the needs of your audience will guide what you write. Do your graphics have a professional polish to them? It will walk you step-by-step through setting goals, defining your audience, telling your story, allocating your budget, and more. Â, Once you’ve done your research and identified the story you want to tell about your product, it’s time to plan the specifics of your content and how it will connect to your users. Governance guidelines set the standards for your content and ensure a consistent experience for your audience. Learn about our premium resource and portfolio management platform, 10,000ft by Smartsheet. The popularity of content marketing has soared in recent years. Who is your target audience? A brand analysis compares your market position, voice, and values. Your content marketing strategy rests at the intersection of speaking to your customers about their pain points and how your product solves their problem. A persona is a detailed description of your typical customer or a collection of customers. Consider using the following tactics: Outline your promotion plan with content distribution checklist. From basic concepts to more in-depth SWOT analyses, KPI objectives, content-mapping, and comprehensive timelines, this Excel document based template has something for every business—even if it is gated. First, it must be localized so that the information is culturally and professionally relevant to your audience based on the personas you develop. Yes, I’d like to try Smartsheet for free. You’ll also discover the places, or watering holes, where people go for information. To answer this, ask: What are your business, marketing, and revenue goals? A gap analysis reveals how your customers see you (and your competitors) online. Gather this information in collaboration with your sales and marketing staff. You’ll also need to tackle the technical aspects of publishing your content. But if you’ve created an overarching story that speaks to your mission, strategy and goals, then any piece of content should tell part of that story. The personas you created describe your potential customers and their pain points. What story do you want to tell them?  What is the unique value and approach that your content can provide? This template is designed to help you set annual strategy and show the success metrics for each goal. Interview the stakeholders to identify their expectations for content strategy, the ways they prefer communication as you move forward, and their influence on your strategy and execution. Before you create a content strategy to reach your audience, you have to clearly identify it. Regardless of the title, this person is responsible for defining the story behind your content, ensuring you deliver a consistent message, and supervising the creation and measurement of the team’s work. What could hinder the success of content marketing? What are the benefits to the company of successful content marketing? Read The Definitive Guide to Stakeholder Management for tips on how to develop a plan to keep them engaged in the process.Â, Dig deep into the creation of your strategy. Our world-class consulting team is here to help your organization realize the lasting advantage of Smartsheet. Similar to a gap analysis, a brand analysis can highlight how the perception of your company stacks up to your competitors. Use our persona worksheet to create as many customer profiles as you need. Identify the elements that draw traffic. Will you wall off some content in a members-only section? It doesn’t matter if you need Excel templates for budgeting the next fiscal year, tracking your business inventory, planning out meals, or creating a fantasy football draft sheet, there are plenty of Microsoft Excel templates for you. LinkedIn is a … Content strategy can follow a similar outline. How do they let you know what they like and don’t like? It is useful, for example, when you need to provide a strategic overview of your marketing strategy to executives or advisory boards. The roadmap will help you prioritize your efforts and assign resources in a way that keeps you and your team focused and successful. A jump in 24 hours may not mean much, or it could mean you have killer content. 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