7 Tips to Write a Winning Content Marketing Strategy Plan

A proper content marketing strategy is often what can make or break a business on the global market. With 2021 at the doorstep, now’s a good time to rethink your content marketing strategy. According to Small Biz Trends, 91% of businesses have content marketing channels in place, however, only 33% have a documented strategy present. This indicates that many businesses rely on ad-hoc and day-to-day marketing without long-term planning – which can backfire easily.

Based on Smart Insights, 76% of marketers use organic traffic (SEO) as an indicator of content marketing success, with 84% of them outsourcing content creation. These numbers showcase a shift in the mentality of marketers who would rather focus on planning and analysis rather than moment-to-moment content creation.

With that in mind, how can you plan a successful content marketing strategy for 2021 which will help your business continue its organic growth? What are the benefits of doing so today rather than waiting for the calendar year to roll around? Let’s discuss that and more in the following segments.

Why a Proper Content Marketing Strategy Matters for your Business?

Before we dive into practical advice on how to establish a winning content marketing strategy, let’s discuss the “why” behind such a move.

Content marketing effectively represents the process of research, creation, publishing, and subsequent analysis of marketing content under your business’ name.

Paired with a premium WordPress theme for your website, your content marketing efforts can pay off substantially by attracting leads through organic SEO search ranking.

Judging by 99 Firms, 78% of CMOs see content marketing as the future of marketing, while 60% create at least one content piece a day.

Based on this, it’s best to start planning your content marketing for 2021 early to establish your business’s presence on time. If we were to list the benefits of doing so now rather than later, the list of perks would include:

• Omnichannel presence and publishing capabilities
• Brand personalization and expression opportunities
• Increased brand awareness, business reputation, and industry authority
• Engagement of relevant leads and their conversion with subsequent nurturing
• Higher SEO ranking on global search engines such as Google and Yahoo

Writing a Content Marketing Strategy for 2021

Set your Year-Long KPIs Early On

A content marketing strategy is only as good as its foundations. In order to make the most out of it, you should establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) early in your planning stages.

KPIs are objective, empiric goals which your marketing team can use to produce and track content going forward.

Methodologies such as SMART and tools such as Evernote can be useful in creating goals which are relevant to your business specifically.

Make sure that the goals you set are relevant to your industry and target audience to ensure the strategy’s success in 2021.

Establish your Content Management Toolset

Once you set your KPIs, you should choose which tools to use to create and manage content going forward. Even if you already have a content stack in place, you should reevaluate each tool’s viability for the upcoming year.

In terms of raw content creation, writing tools such as Grammarly and Hemingway Editor can prove useful in editing and formatting your written materials. For visuals, you can rely on Canva or, depending on the scale at which you create visual content, software packages such as Adobe.

Sam Frederick, Chief Content Manager at Essay Supply, said that: “Your toolset will always dictate the final form and quality of content intended for digital publishing.

Relying on cloud-based writing services is great since they are always up-to-date regarding keywords and formatting trends. Choose the ones that fit your creative affinity and learn to make the most out of each tool as you go.”

Choose the Right Communication Channels

When it comes to choosing the right communication channels, it’s best to follow in your target audience’s footsteps.

What are they most likely to use on a daily basis? Some of the communication channels you should take into consideration for your content marketing strategy are:

• Email marketing
• Social media marketing (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter…)
• Instant messaging apps (SMS, Viber, WhatsApp…)
• Article publishing (on your website or guest posts on others)

The channels you choose to utilize will inherently dictate which types of content you will focus on in 2021.

For example, blogging opens the doors for long-form writing and keyword-centric SEO. On the other hand, social media allows you to directly and constantly engage your audience through discussion, giveaways, and live events. In practice, it’s good to rely on a mix of everything while focusing on one or two primary communication channels.

Stick to a Publishing Calendar

Speaking of ad-hoc content marketing, it’s best to avoid it for practical reasons.

Create a content calendar which will allow you to publish new content periodically and give your content creators time to do proper research.

You can integrate a WordPress event calendar into your website and communicate your publishing plan in that way.

Tools such as Google Docs are also a good way of ensuring that your content is never published without proper planning or prior optimization.

Constantly Engage with Your Audience

Whether you choose to focus on blog writing, social media, or email marketing, it’s important that you always engage with your audience.

Whenever someone comments on your post, respond in kind and engage them. When someone emails you with a question or feedback for your website, respond in a professional and timely fashion.

Never ignore messages or public social media comments left on your page.

It’s especially beneficial to discuss your published content, ask for second opinions and general thoughts from your followers. Be proactive and communicative to paint a positive image of your brand in the customers’ eyes early on.

Constantly Engage with Your Audience

Whether you choose to focus on blog writing, social media, or email marketing, it’s important that you always engage with your audience.

Whenever someone comments on your post, respond in kind and engage them. When someone emails you with a question or feedback for your website, respond in a professional and timely fashion.

Never ignore messages or public social media comments left on your page.

It’s especially beneficial to discuss your published content, ask for second opinions and general thoughts from your followers. Be proactive and communicative to paint a positive image of your brand in the customers’ eyes early on.

Repurpose Old Content

Once you accumulate a substantial amount of content on your publishing channels, you can repurpose it and distribute it again in some form.

This is a great way to give your content creators breathing room while they come up with original content for publishing.

You can create eBooks or PDFs and offer them as freebies for subscribers or those that fill out a survey on your website.

Older blog posts can always be updated with new keywords and SEO trends via tools such as Google AdWords to boost their ranking over time.

Likewise, you can discuss older content via live chat on social media and discuss how trends have changed since you published it. Don’t disregard old content as dead weight – recirculate it and make the most of it in your content marketing strategy.

Reevaluate & Rethink your Strategy

Lastly, once you set up your content marketing strategy and start publishing content regularly, it’s best to keep track of its performance.

This will give you an indication of what works and doesn’t work in regards to your strategy and allow you to build on the foundations.

Platforms such as Google Alerts are a great way to keep track of your published content, so make sure to set them up on time.

Depending on the type of content and the channels you choose for your strategy, tools such as Mailchimp can also come in handy. Performance analysis may not be the most glamorous part of content marketing, but it is essential in knowing how your content is received.

Content Marketing Strategy Pitfalls to Avoid

To cap off, let’s take a look at some of the common mistakes marketers come across when dealing with their content marketing strategies. According to Content Marketing Institute, only 45% of marketers achieve their set goals, while 32% don’t have a full-time person in charge of content marketing.

As effective as your strategy may be at first, these pitfalls can severely hinder your content’s performance in 2021. Without further ado, do your best to mitigate these shortcomings as they appear.

Lack of Translation or Localization Strategy

Even though English is the lingua franca of the modern era, you should still consider localizing your content into different languages.

It’s always a safe bet to translate your content into globally-accepted languages such as Spanish or German to boost your content’s appeal.

This will also have a positive impact on your SEO ranking, as accessibility plays a major role in how content is ranked on search engines.

Centus digital translation services can help you seamlessly translate your content into multiple languages, ensuring a wider reach and enhanced user experience.

Overly Focused on Sales Instead of Personalization

While sales may be the focus of your content marketing, you should make personalization your strategy’s central pillar instead. Focusing too much on sales will make your content come off as spam, and very few people will be incentivized to purchase your products.

Adopt a “pull” instead of “push” approach to writing, and your content will be that much more successful as a result.

Keyword Stuffing and Content Spam

Finally, don’t stuff your content with keywords without rhyme or reason to do so. Artificially boosting your content’s SEO is a short-term solution to a much bigger issue – lack of creativity or long-term goal.

Always write your content freeform and then optimize it for SEO with trending keywords.

This will help you strike a better balance of technical SEO and originality, both of which are necessary for content marketing’s success in 2021.

Wrapping Up

Creating a winning content marketing strategy for 2021 is a big ask, especially if you are starting from scratch. Remember that your target audience should always be taken into consideration – know who you are talking to.

Define your KPIs, choose the tools to write with, and express your brand’s voice through original content before delving into SEO.

Any content strategy which is true to your business’ principles can be made a winning strategy – avoid blindly following trends and stay true to yourself.