A content strategy is crucial for any business that wants to generate leads through digital marketing. Without good content, your blog, website and social media accounts will fail to engage either the search engines or your prospects.
Let's start by examining what sort of content businesses can use as part of a content marketing strategy. Many businesses don't realise they're already sitting on plenty of content that can be adapted for digital marketing purposes.
Turning the material into articles for your business blog and announcing it on social networks such as Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook.
Creating a white paper that is available for download through your website, in exchange for the recipients' contact details.
Writing articles for publication and syndication through respected article marketing websites.
Writing guest pieces for other business blogs that are relevant to your industry. Lots of blogs and sites will publish your content (as long as the quality is high) with a back-link to your website.
Spinning any news-worthy angle into a press release and sending it to journalists in your industry.
Sending a monthly e-newsletter to your database of customers and prospects containing highlights from your corporate blog and any attention-grabbing company news.
It's a good idea to plan your content strategy in the same way you would plan a traditional marketing strategy: decide how much content you're going to produce; when and where you're going to publish it; and how you're going to measure the results.