Is anyone reading your content?

Is your content really working for your business?

Do you spend a lot of time writing blogs and website content to boost sales?

That’s great. But, if your target market doesn’t see your content, you just waste time and effort.

It’s one thing to create good content. It’s another thing to actually use your content to sell your products and services.

That’s why it’s important to have a strategy behind each piece of content you write. And while this may seem time-consuming, it doesn’t have to be difficult.

Keep Your Content Strategy Simple.

Instead of stressing out over a content marketing strategy, focus on what’s important, and ask yourself a few questions…

• What are you trying to accomplish?
• What content will help you achieve that goal?
• How are you going to get that particular content out to your target market?
• When are you going to publish this content?

When you have these answers, you can create your mini-plan for a singular piece of content.

For example, let’s say you want to reach people buying a new home before year-end and to contact you for assistance. To start, decide what kind of questions they may have right now, and prepare content that answers those questions. For example, maybe you write a blog with the title, “5 Ways to Save Thousands if You Buy a Home Now”?

Once you know what your content is, you’ll want to ensure that the right people see it.

Can you reach them via an email, Facebook ad, social media post, press release, and/or some other way?

Just posting your content on your website is not enough.

Make a list of the ways you can reach your audience. Then, decide on the best time to communicate with them via the methods you’ve chosen.

Also, what do you want people to do once they read your content?

Be sure to add a call-to-action at the end of your content. Do you want them to call you, go to a specific page on your website, email you, or something else?

When you’re ready with the information above, decide how you are going to track results.

You can create specific links using http://ow.ly/url/shorten-url or www.bitly.com. Here, you simply copy the web address for your content into these free, online services and get a unique link you can track.

Other forms of tracking include: creating a unique phone number for customers to call, watching a specific Web page on Google Analytics and preparing a unique email address for responses. By tracking results, you’ll know if people actually see your content and how they react to it. Then, you can make appropriate changes and respond accordingly.

Try this process with a single piece of content first.

Start with this process for one piece of content, and see how it goes. Then, you’ll be able to develop more content for the weeks and months ahead… with a specific plan for each.

Content marketing doesn’t need to be difficult.

It’s about having a plan for your content to get the right message, to the right people, at the right time and tracking results.

Ready to start? Give it a try, and let me know how it goes.

And if you need help with your SEO content marketing strategy, please see more here or contact me here.

Author Melanie Rembrandt helps business owners boost sales, awareness and credibility with a killer combination of targeted, SEO copywriting, content-marketing strategy, public relations, and social media. Do you want to save time and money and get great results? Contact her and her team at Rembrandt Communications®, LLC, www.rembrandtwrites.com.