March 29, 2024

The Four Stages of Content Marketing

Content Marketing

Four Stages 

Content marketing, like most business functions can be thought of as a set of process steps. Get good at each step and streamline the approach and integration of the steps and you have an efficient process. This becomes a business system and the more you use the system and work to optimize it the better and more efficient it becomes. 

Content marketing can be thought of as a circular system. Let’s look at each stage.

Content Marketing Process

 

Content Marketing Means to Create & Manage

This is an essential part of the process. You need to have content. You need to create stories. You need to clearly understand the problems of your customers and potential customers and then to create content that provides solutions.

Your content needs to be well written or scripted and needs to be compelling.

Once you have defined your audience and your topics then you need to create a body of work that supports your objectives to serve your target audience(s).

Content Marketing Means to Optimize and Aggregate

Once you have the idea of the story that you want to tell then you have to decide how to tell it. You may need to define key experts in your company that can provide the technical expertise (technical content) to the content. You may need to define the excellent story teller to ensure that the story is not a technical bore. You will be to have polished writing so you may need to define who will do the copywriting (do not exclude an outside resource).

Will you have graphics, photos or video?

Who will be responsible to ensure that your content is optimized for the search engines as content that cannot be found is not as useful as content found by anyone searching for it.

This process step strikes a balance between:

  • Creativity
  • Technology
  • Engagement
  • Persuasiveness
  • Search Engine Optimization

You may need to create a team to be able to consistently optimize and aggregate your content.

Content Marketing Means to Converse and Listen

If you create thought-provoking original content then people will want to provide their inputs and insights. This is valuable content back to you. Listen to this feedback. Start a conversation. Engage and embrace the people that want to have an intelligent conversation with you.

You may develop key relationships with other content marketers, alliance partners and collaborators.

Content Marketing Means to Measure and Learn

Establish some benchmarks and objectives. This will help you to understand the effectiveness of your content. Which stories work and which don’t? Which pages or posts are visited more and which less?

Do you need to be more creative? Do you need to improve your graphics or perhaps create some infographics? Does your photography need to be better or more compelling or more controversial?

A proper measurement process helps you to improve.

This system is a closed loop system. It brings you back to the beginning. You need to create and manage based on what you measured and learned.

To learn more about content marketing I invite you to take any one of all of our tutorials on content marketing. Here is a direct link to the Content Marketing Introduction Tutorial