WordPress is, without a doubt, the most popular website platform in the world. But more importantly, it’s built for seamless user experience and is easy to use no matter how inexperienced you might be in managing your own website.
The whole premise of the platform is to make website management and content creation as straightforward as possible, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some technical terms you won’t have to learn if you are to manage your site like a true pro.
Assuming that you have the right theme and have installed some of the essential plugins, now’s the time to focus on developing a winning content marketing strategy that will propel your brand up the SERPs and build your reputation in the online and offline worlds.
Here are the steps you need to take.
Steps to a Winning WordPress Content Marketing Strategy
Perform Thorough Content Research
First things first, understand that there can be no content strategy without a content audit, and some good old content research. After all, knowledge is power. You need to know everything there is to know about what makes a piece of content stand out in the oversaturated online world.
Not only will content research help you find out what to write about, but it will also tell you how the pros in your industry do it in order to build online buzz and get their pieces trending.
Start by researching the top-performing content in your niche. This is the content you’re after, the content that will serve as the framework for your own pieces. The keyword here is “framework” because you don’t want to copy your competitors. Nor do you want to adopt their content strategy – because what works for them might not work for you? Instead, you want to identify what works best in your field, and then put your unique twist on it.
Focus on identifying customer and reader pain points, aim to go deeper into every subject with your pieces, and conduct detailed SWOT analyses of your content vs the competitors’ content to find where your opportunities truly lie. Once you have those insights, it’s time to organize your content marketing strategy.
Organize Your Content Schedule
Meticulous organizations are the second pillar of a winning WP content marketing strategy because there’s nothing that spells disaster like shooting in the dark. Instead, you need to know exactly when you should be posting, where you should be posting it, and how you should be engaging with your audience.
No matter if you’re running a small WP blog site or a marketing department for a large corporation. You need to have an editorial calendar with this information.
There are many plugins out there that you can use to run a seamless editorial calendar without letting anything slip through the cracks. Whichever plugin you choose, you need to make sure that it’s able to accommodate all of your content needs. And that includes all tasks such as posting, guest blogging, on-going sharing and dissemination, promotion, and more.
Create Content With SEO in Mind
With the first and second phase behind you, you can finally get in on the fun stuff – creating amazing content. By now you have gathered, through research mostly, that the top-performing content is engaging, that it goes in-depth on every subject, that it portrays a brand’s personality, and that it integrates the best SEO practices in the modern online world.
And speaking of SEO, your content needs to be optimized to rank high in both the local and general searches.
If you’re aiming to improve your ranking for multiple different locations, make sure to keep the language and cultural context in mind. Using content transcreation will allow you to make sure that your audience will truly understand your message and not just your words.
That way you will ensure that your content will actually provide value to the specific local audience. Which is essential if you want your website to rank well.
Build Up Your Mailing List
The next step is to build up your mailing list in order to make content dissemination much more efficient and effective. Sure, disseminating content across social media and publishing it on your website (and other authority websites) is effective. But you need to be able to establish a direct line of communication between your brand and your customers. Email marketing is the way to do just that.
Luckily, you can choose from a number of newsletter popup plugins that will help you capture the visitor’s attention and offer them a compelling incentive to leave you their email address. This could be the simple promise of amazing content rich with valuable information. Or it can be a more tangible incentive such as a sign-up discount or a free trial. It’s up to you to inspire your guests.
Monitor Performance and Fine-Tune Where Needed
And finally, it’s time to circle back to the first big point we made today – knowledge is power. Once you have put your content marketing strategy into effect, it’s time to keep close tabs on every piece and every content type (blogs, videos, infographics, etc.) in order to gauge its performance.
You’ll need to establish the relevant KPIs based on your goals, and monitor them continuously over time to identify the top performers in your strategy. Filter out the winning content, rinse, and repeat.
Wrapping Up
Content marketing is one of the primary pillars of digital marketing, and as such it’s one of the most valuable assets you have at your disposal. With these steps in mind and the right plugins at your side. You will have built a winning WP content marketing strategy that will take your brand forward as a whole.
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