To reap the rewards of content marketing, companies must invest serious time, often without seeing significant return on investment (ROI) until the next fiscal year.

Still, the payoff is worth the wait, whether a company seeks to acquire new customers, increase brand awareness, improve its reputation, increase traffic to its website or achieve some combination of those goals.

A quality content marketing program requires time, resources and someone to manage it efficiently. Statistics are improving, but still only 42% of marketers say their company does content marketing well. Pushing content marketing management onto an employee who’s already got other full-time responsibilities won’t do.

A successful content marketing program requires talent and organization at every phase of creation and implementation. The tasks involved include:

Determining how you’ll create a content strategy

In order to be most prepared, figure out an estimated time and the positions that may be needed to successfully implement your content strategy. This includes what will be incorporated in the strategy, how much time the strategy will take to develop and who will need to be involved in the strategy development.

Positions that may be needed include content strategist, managing editor and data analyst.

Great content marketing programs aim to:

• Give the audience information that helps accomplish their goals.
• Help their audience solve problems.
• Contribute meaningfully to the conversation.
• Demonstrate they care about the audience.

Essentially, the company is creating the “why” behind its content. That requires good customer data about what they want, what makes them tick and what motivates them. The research required to answer those questions is ongoing, so the strategy can and should change quickly to accommodate audience needs. That requires at least one person consistently focused on strategy.

Implementing the strategy

Estimated time: At least two FTEs
Positions that may be needed: content writers/producers, SEO/SEM specialists, social media specialists, email marketing specialists and bloggers.
Implementing a content strategy involves:

• Selecting the types of content to create.
• Developing content.
• Evaluating content for relevance and timeliness.
• Reviewing and editing content for accuracy.
• Distributing content via a website, social media, email, etc.

The average blog post takes about one to two hours to write. Every minute of video footage can take up to two hours to edit. Keyword research also takes significant time. Add in time for reviews, approvals and distribution, and the time for those tasks quickly adds up.

Coordinating creation and implementation of a content strategy requires stellar project management

With the right tools and people, a great content marketing program is within reach. But, it doesn’t require a big brand to make it happen. Follow these tips to make your content marketing strategy as successful as possible:

Automate as much as possible. Use a social media scheduling tool or content marketing platform that integrates with WordPress to save time and energy.

Develop a content marketing calendar. This serves as a home base for all content marketing efforts and helps the company distribute content more effectively.

Consider hiring a full-time content marketing position. At least one person dedicated to the cause full-time can help drive the strategy forward and get what’s needed from the team.

Consider outsourcing. Another economical choice is to outsource the job to a capable company that can help create and implement a content marketing strategy from start to finish. TempestaMedia provides an all-inclusive managed service that delivers quality content while helping customers save time. Contact us today to learn more.