Content marketing is so effective at generating leads, creating brand awareness and closing sales, but it can be a bit tricky. Just like any other area of your business, it always makes good sense to sit down with your key players and come up with a written strategy so everyone is on the same page and knows what their contributions are going to be to the overall success of your strategy. So, really your written strategy is the first step. Once you have that done, I suggest you follow these content marketing best practices.

1. Repurpose Your Content

When you create your content, don’t think of it as one-stop shopping. Instead, you should always be thinking about how you can use your content in a multitude of ways. For instance, webinar content can be used to write a few blogs, the blog can be turned into an e-mail campaign, etc.

2. Make Sure Your Content Can Be Found

You have your strategy. The next move is to create your content that will help execute your strategy and speak directly to your targeted prospects. Don’t let your content get buried. You want your prospects to know what content you have available and how they can easily get to it to learn more. To avoid content overload, don’t be afraid to promote existing content over always promoting something new. Also, make sure you optimize your content so the search engines can see it.

3. Offer Something Of Value

If you want to make your content effective, you have to give your prospects something of value like an e-book or white paper on an engaging subject that clearly positions you as a thought leader in your field. Ask yourself what you’d want to see from your company, and then create it even if it’s a difficult task. Don’t simply mirror what the competition is doing. Differentiate yourself by providing content that truly has value to your prospects.

4. Start Small To Grow Big

Once you have your content marketing strategy, you’ll want to start small so you can see which medium is working the best for you, delivering the highest returns. Vary your content to see what works best.

5. Track Your Results

The only true way to know if your content marketing is working is to track the results. The numbers don’t lie. They’ll quickly tell you what’s working and what isn’t. And, the value of this is that it allows you to make changes early on that will better position you to reach your prospects in a more effective way.

6. Connect The Dots

It’s not enough to just track your results and adjust your content. You have to look at the big picture and use your tracking to find the answers to questions like what’s the best way to reach our prospects, what key words were most effective, what messages give the best results, what are the best days to post your content, which content pieces pulled the highest, etc. By studying your data and connecting these important dots, you’ll see that it’s telling you an important story. By paying attention to all the details, you’ll have a more complete picture of how your content marketing strategy is working.

7. Use Marketing Automation

There are several really good marketing automation systems out there. You’ll need to review them to see which one appeals to you the most. The beauty of these systems is the ease with which they enable you to disseminate content, track responses, and guide your prospects through the buying process based on their needs and preferences.

8. 8. Be Flexible And Stay Responsive

When you follow all of these best practices, your content marketing will be most effective. That’s not to say that no changes will need to be made. Quite the opposite, in fact. The most powerful advantage of content marketing is the quick feedback it offers. So, stay on top of it and be willing to adapt your approach based on what the numbers are telling you.

What are you doing to boost the effectiveness of your content marketing? Share your tips with us.