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Is your content marketing coming up short? Doesn’t quite have the energy and strength you’d like to see (or that you remember from a few years ago, when you were more diligent)?
Don’t worry – MarketingProfs recently shared this infographic from TopRank Marketing that lays out the basics of an fitness plan to whip your content marketing back into shape. And I’ve added links to more specific exercises to include for each of the 10 steps listed. No running shoes required.
Want a little more detail for your content marketing training plan? After all, it’s important to understand each exercise and its intended result as much as possible to avoid injury and maximize results.
Here’s where you will find more about each step:
1. Warm Up With Customer Data: We call that “doing the data-work,” and I covered the importance in this installment of my 15 Lessons From 15 Years blog series: First You Have To Do The Data Work.
2. Strengthen Your Core With Strategy: Here are 10 steps to creating a business blog strategy, or you can download our Campaign Calendar Planning Template to outline a year’s worth of content of all kinds.
3. Optimize Your Core With KPIs: Goal setting is essential. If you don’t know what you are trying to achieve, how can you know if you’ve succeeded? Read Marketing Metrics Are Meaningless If You Aren’t Taking This First Step.
4. Create A Powerful Story: Another key part of your content marketing training plan I’ve covered many times. Here are some ideas and examples of creating great stories: If You Are Curious, You Can Make Anything Interesting and What Stories Can Your Data & Marketing Content Tell?
5. Power Up The Content Mix: The infographic emphasizes quality over quantity, and we have found that some of the best content we create starts with doing original research to uncover insights that our clients’ customers can use. Check out these 10 ways to use marketing surveys for content.
6. Boost Quality & Reach With Influencers. In the B2B world, “influencers” doesn’t mean Instagram celebrities – it means trusted industry publications and media outlets. By creating high quality contributed articles, you can gain trust from your audience. Download How To Get Your CEO Published for a step-by-step guide to implementing thought leadership in your content strategy.
7. Create & Publish Your Content: (And double-check your content before it is published. OK, so there is a little something missing in this infographic – but the rest of what it offers is useful. So here’s my take on “push-ups” in this training plan: Push-ups are only useful if they are done correctly; poor form won’t target the right muscles and could even cause injury. Content that isn’t crafted correctly will also miss its target, and could even hurt your brand’s reputation. That’s why it is essential to find the right people to create your content, and to ensure it is always of a quality that reflects your brand positively. Check out Why Creating Great Content Matters.
8. Promotion That Won’t Quit: They are right, there is more to promotion than social media and paid ads. While this post is focused primarily on ways to promote a business blog, they apply to other types of content and inbound marketing offers as well: Market Your Blog To Take Your Inbound Content Marketing To The Next Level.
9. Build Biceps By Measuring & Optimizing: Analysis is a part of any marketing program — your job doesn’t end when the campaign launches, it really is just beginning. It is that analysis that sets you up with the data you need to make the next campaign even better. Build it into your content marketing training plan with the tips from these resources:
10. Repurposed Content Goes The Distance: We absolutely believe in this (and distance is my personal fitness favorite, with multiple half-marathon races under my belt). Check these tips for specifics on how make your content go a little farther than you thought possible:
So, there it is. Your beginners training plan to get your content marketing into shape. But don’t stop here. Just as you might subscribe to Shape, or Runners’ World, or Muscle & Fitness to keep learning more to improve your personal fitness program, keep learning more about your content marketing fitness. Subscribe to the Inbound Accelerator and you’ll learn new exercises and techniques every week to reach your goals.
