Insight

TRUENORTHCUSTOM.COM INSIGHT V14N1 9 3. NOW USE THIS INFORMATION TO DEVELOP CONTENT. Once you have a clear understanding of your current channels, the people you are trying to reach, and your marketing goals, it's time to create and distribute your content. We find it is best to think in terms of long-form pieces and how they can be broken up and distributed across your other channels. For example, a recipe book for heart health could be a gated asset you use to get more email subscribers. Individual recipes can be shared on your blog and visual representations or short videos can be shared on social media. When planning your content, it is important to prioritize your channels and be realistic about what your team can manage. Build an editorial calendar showing when and how you will cover key topics—you can always change it in response to new developments. THE BOTTOM LINE Take these steps to make your content strategy efforts successful and profitable. 1. Take an inventory of what you already have. 2. Define your goals. 3. Understand your audience with personas. 4. Apply best practices to the most relevant channels for your audience. 5. Always test and learn. 6. Measure, optimize, repeat. 4. THE TRUTH IS ... THERE IS NO FINISH LINE. You created content and you're distributing it on channels—but the journey is not over yet. With a systematic measurement plan executed at regular intervals, you will glean insights that allow you to continuously improve your marketing efforts week over week, month over month, quarter over quarter. Be sure to share your content strategy across your organization so everyone understands what marketing is doing to get results. Regular measurement ideally involves testing, which offers you tangible ways to improve your content and your overall content strategy. E-newsletters can be deployed with different subject lines, allowing you to see what language generates the strongest response. You can experiment with different headlines and teasers on social media, as well as different types of content, to see which generate the most clicks. By planning your content ahead of time, you can test certain variables to expand on your own playbook of best practices. Want to talk through some ideas for your content strategy? Contact True North Custom CMO Jason Skinner at jskinner@truenorthcustom.com or (423) 305-7692. T O D O W NL O A D A C OP Y OF T HIS A R T IC L E , V IS I T T R UE NOR T HC U S T OM.C OM / W IN T E R 1 8 . ☛ insight into CONTENT STRATEGY

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