As an entrepreneur, you need to have your fingers on the pulse of your organization and you need to always be working on achieving your goals.
Whether you’re a one-person show or employ others, you need to have a very clear cut vision of where you’re headed and the steps you’ll need to take to get there.
Utilizing content marketing as a springboard to achieve your goals and aspirations is a viable way to get the word out about your business and brand it so others will begin to recognize and be interested in what your messages convey.
Pretend you’re a fly on the wall at Monique’s Day Spa and you’re sitting in on a staff meeting where Monique’s team is discussing using content marketing to expand their customer base.
They’ve started laying out a plan and a timeframe for putting their first content marketing campaign into motion.
Monique has been in business for about a year. She wants to create more awareness about the spa and its services. Additionally, she wants to set herself apart from the competition by offering both innovative and appealing programs for her clientele.
They’ve identified where they need to concentrate their efforts so now they can begin to formulate ideas for setting the wheels in motion.
Monique’s staff begins to put together a client list that they can target their content to and the type of information they want to deliver through their content.
They know that each person it goes out to needs to find value in it so they will talk about it with their family, friends, co-workers, etc.
Do you see where this example is going?
Here are the steps they’ve taken thus far:
- Identified the company’s overall goals in their plan and set up a timeframe for their first campaign.
- Are clear on why they’re putting the campaign into motion.
- Began brainstorming ideas for content, keeping in mind their target audience and what they want their content to convey.
- Planning next steps for target audience
Before you even begin to put pen to paper, you need to be very clear on what your overall intent is with your content.
It’s very similar to planning a journey – you need to identify what you’re doing, why you’re going, the best route to take and what you’ll do once you get there.
Keep in mind that like any journey, you may need to change course, make adjustments and be ready to alter your plans quickly.
In an effort to help her staff, Monique has already taken the liberty of doing some behind the scenes work on her own to expedite some of what needs to be accomplished.
She doesn’t have the resources in house, as her staff needs to concentrate on what they do on a daily basis in the spa so she’s gotten two students from the local community college to work with her spa on an unpaid internship basis. The students are English majors who will be helping the staff come up with and write relevant content.
Topics will cover subjects like why people go to spas, health benefits of spas, new programs that Monique will be implementing and asking her clientele what would make their spa experience really great or improved.
In addition to getting her content out on the web via her blog and social media, she’s already planning on getting involved in the community with events and building relationships with other related businesses to attract more clients.
She feels that by combining marketing tactics, it will open up even more subject matter for content writing.
As an entrepreneur, you need to always be thinking out of the box. This is what will set you apart from your competition and help you achieve your goals.
In the next blog post, you’ll learn about incorporating the five W’s into your content marketing campaign.
