How Your Content Marketing Strategy Benefits from a Content Plan

If your company has a content marketing strategy, you wonder if you need a content strategy as well. If you're skeptical as to why you should create a content plan, take a look at some ways it will benefit you. When you have a cohesive content plan, you can

• Increase brand awareness and brand loyalty by being in the right place with quality content

• More effectively evaluate content performance and revise as necessary

• Save time and money and avoid duplicating efforts

• Meet customer needs during every part of the buyer's journey

• Ensure that you deliver quality content that has been through an effective editorial process

• Deliver a consistent message on all your distribution channels

According to the infographic by Demand Metric, shown here, "80 percent of people appreciate learning about a company through custom content and 60 percent are inspired to seek out a product after reading content about it."

Demand Metric Infographic.

If you now grasp the value of having a content plan, you probably want to know how to make your content superior to that of your competitors. First off, the name of the game is quality, not quantity.

Doug Kessler, creative director and cofounder of Velocity Partners, outlined some interesting ways to get noticed in his article "5 Ways to Stand Out in a Sea of Content." The article appears in the CMS Wire blog, shown here.

CMS Wire.

Kessler suggests the following five tactics:

• Stay in your sweet spot: He defines your sweet spot as the overlap between your company's knowledge and the things your customers care about. If you stay in that area, you are sure to create quality content.

• Use psychographic targeting: Know what specifically resonates with your customers, and provide them with content that addresses their concerns.

• Harness emotion, not just the facts: You're most likely to get people to like and share your content when it evokes strong emotions.

• Practice insane honesty: This is an important concept. Kessler says that when you highlight your faults, people appreciate your honesty and are more likely to do business with you.

• Create confident content: This is content written by great writers who know their stuff and are convinced that what they have to share will be of value to you.