We all want to create content that engages our audiences and keeps them interested in what we do. It all starts with creating a content marketing strategy that’s going to stick.

Having well-written copy is a great start, but it doesn’t guarantee instant social media shares or high-quality backlinks.

This is where your content marketing strategy comes in. Here are a few methods to create a successful one:

Define Your Goals

Before you start any campaign, you need to take the time to define what the main goals are. Your goals will work as the backbone of your strategy and will help ensure that your content marketing efforts are driven towards an end goal.

It could be to increase brand awareness, boost website traffic, or get more social shares – whatever it may be, it’s much easier to achieve once you’ve defined what the objective is.

Define Your Microgoals

Once you’ve got your main goals sorted, it’s time to think about your micro goals. These are the individual goals that you want each piece of content to achieve. Because your content will always be changing, your micro goals will change too.

Keep in mind, both your main and micro goals need to fit in with your overall strategy to make sure that your content ties into the bigger picture.

Audience Identification

Before you get ahead of yourself and start creating your content – you’ll need to establish who your audience is. Who do you want to target, and why?

In some cases it could be a particular demographic, or a specific group of people.

A handy way to segment your audience is to define their characteristics.

Some examples are:

• Age
• Gender
• Social Grade
• Interests
• What they are looking for

By establishing the groups of people in your audience, you can create tailored content that is relevant and valuable to that specific group.

Title Creation and Content Ideation

Creating content can be challenging at times, especially when you’re burnt out on all of your own ideas.

Not to worry, there are tools out there that can help you get out of this funk. In fact, it’s much more helpful to start using these tools first to gauge what people are searching for, and get an idea about what topics they’re interested in. Ubersuggest is a free keyword tool that gives you targeted suggestions on a base term. It not only helps with getting content ideas, but will help with targeting the right keywords to help your SEO ranking.

Another great tool is answerthepublic.com, which combines results by Google & Bing to give you suggestions on topics and queries that people are searching for.

Ahrefs is another helpful tool. Its software allows you to search for the top 10 most shared pieces of content by topic. So it’s great for getting an insight into what your competitors are creating and also the topics that your intended audience is interested in.

These tools help keep your content as targeted and relevant as possible.

Tracking Results

So you’ve created your content and have been following your content marketing strategy, but how do you know if it’s been successful or not?

Once your content goes live it’s important to ensure that you track how it performs. Using tools like Google Analytics is extremely insightful in finding out how people are reacting to your content and where they are coming from.

Having access to this data will help you identify what content is and isn’t working, giving you the ability to see where your content may need to improve.