Scheduling Your Startup’s First Content Marketing Campaign

You’ve got your business off the ground – congratulations! Now, you’re staring down the potential of an engaging client base, future sales, and your first content marketing campaign.

Content marketing campaigns are only as complicated as you make them. The benefits of using them, however, are many.

You’ll be able to find your business’s online voice, generate increased website traffic, and grow your reputation with your consumers. The only trouble is, where do you start?

Let’s break down the process of starting your first content marketing campaign. Once you have these steps under your belt, you’ll be able to get creative and explore the different kinds of campaign options you have available to you.

Research Your Competition

First thing first: what kind of content is your campaign going to be competing with? Would your in-target users appreciate a more traditional rather than a disruptive approach? Would you need to look for innovative ideas for marketing and content communication?

Take a day to scope out the kind of blog posts your competition puts out. Not only will you want to try and avoid creating duplicate content, but you can see, based on their posts, where your industry is going. Take a close look at not only the content but at its available statistics.

Ask yourself:

• What content gets the most interaction?
• How often does the competition post new content?
• Who responds to the kind of content they share?
• What kind of keywords are they using?

The trick, after you’ve done your research, is not to replicate the kind of content you saw on their platform. While you can take industry cues, it’s your job to extrapolate new types of content from what you’ve learned.

Set Your Goals

With some basic ideas of what you want to create, it’s time to set some goals.

What do you want to achieve with your content? This can vary from increased audience engagement to broader brand awareness to simply more conversions. Whatever your motivation may be, you need to make it clear from the get-go.

This is also a good point to determine what your audience’s goals are. No matter what your primary goal is, you’re going to try and target a specific group of people. What demographic do you want to reach? Choose early, as that demographic will shape how you’re able to communicate via your campaign.

Set smart goals to make sure you’re not being too shy or aiming too far from your reach.

Create Your Calendar

With your goals in line, it’s time to create your calendar – actually, it’s time to create two calendars. The first is going to outline the actual campaign creation process.

Here, you can use tools like Timeneye to determine how much time you’re spending on different parts of the project.

The second calendar you’re going to make is your posting schedule.

You can do this early in the process or later, but it’s always good to set a final deadline for yourself. Write on your calendar the exact date you want your first content marketing campaign to debut. You can readily revisit this calendar as you work to ensure that you’re right on track – or if you need to hustle.

Start Experimenting!

Once the preliminaries are out of the way, it’s time to start creating!

Note that the first advertisements you create are going to be experimental.

You might choose to base the format on a type of ad you like, or you may choose to forge your own path. Either way, experimenting is a great way to discover your content’s voice and theme.

Remember, though: creating a content marketing campaign is rewriting a content marketing campaign. Put another way, you’re going to need to rewrite and revise your work. This is the case for marketers at all levels of success. Reach out to your peers and get their opinions on what you’re creating. Try out new ways of saying what you’ve already said.

The more you work, the more ideas you’ll be able to revisit in your next content marketing campaign.

A/B Test Your Content

Once you have a draft you’re satisfied with, you need to A/B test it against other variations.

A/B testing lets you soft-debut your content so you can see how consumers will engage with it. You’ll be able to compare engagement based on differences you arrange between two different drafts of the same work.

After a week or two, the content will disappear, and you’ll be able to modify your content based on which elements performed the best with consumers.

Publish Your Work

Finally, with all of your revisions and reconfigurations out of the way, you can use your posting schedule to start sharing your content.

Note that you’ll want to spread your publications out, but take the time to celebrate, too! Publishing the first piece of work in your content campaign is a big step.

Assess Your Analytics

In the days that follow after that publication, make sure to watch your content’s analytics.

These analytics will detail how frequently consumers visit your work, what parts of the page they engage with, how long they spend reading, and so on. By assessing these analytics, you’ll get a better idea of what consumers like about your website and what you can integrate into future campaigns.

It’s easier than you think to start your first content marketing campaign. Don’t be afraid to experiment, but keep to a schedule. Once you’ve published your first piece, the marketing ball will already be rolling beneath your feet.

Cover Photo by Carlos Muza on Unsplash