5 Interesting Tips To Improve Your Content Marketing Plan In 2020
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The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating for a lot of businesses. Many that depend on foot traffic have had to shut down. Many will lack the resources to restart when it’s finally safe for normal service to resume. Others have struggled to handle the move to remote working. This has led to a huge reduction in some forms of marketing — but not all of them.
Content marketing is a prime example of a form of marketing that hasn’t been diminished by these events. On the contrary, it’s only grown, and it continues to grow. This is due to more businesses accepting the need to be found online. It’s also due to more individuals trying to build their reputations by establishing themselves as experts in their fields.
The added competition is great for copywriters, graphic designers, and consumers. It’s much trickier, though, for companies trying to stand out in the digital marketplace. Content marketing is still the way forward, but they need to step things up to press their rivals. In this post, we’re going to look at five interesting tips for improving your content marketing plan throughout 2020.
Focus on skill development
Core to content marketing is copywriting, and it always will be. Due to this, the fastest way to improve your plans overall is to improve your writing skills. You can benefit from skill development in general, though. The more you learn, the better your decision-making process will be. In the end, you’ll be able to achieve much more with your time.
You can study at your own pace, but online programs can really help. You likely have a decent amount of free time due to lockdown measures. Put that free time towards getting better. As you develop your skills, take note of how your work improves. Think about where your professional strengths and weaknesses lie, then use the former and address the latter.
If you’re unsure about how you compare to others, look at comparable content and use it to guide you. You might notice that other content creators in your niche are funnier, or better at using imagery. You’ll never be the best at everything, but being decent at most things should be more than enough to compete.
Invest in personal growth
Professional growth is one thing, but what about personal growth? It matters more than you might think. If you don’t feel motivated to work on your content or to work in general, you won’t get worthwhile results. Lockdown has a lot of people feeling lonely and worried about the future. If you’re in that situation, put some time towards looking after yourself.
Are there specific hang-ups holding you back? Maybe you hate how you write, or you’re uncomfortable emailing people. You might even struggle to start content because you assume it’ll fail. If so, you should consider breakthrough coaching. We all have persistent bugbears, and there’s a fair chance that transformation coaches can help you break through.
Try new types of a content marketing plan
We all settle into ruts, and content marketing is no different. If you typically write blog posts, maybe you use the same format over and over again. That’s a big problem. Not only does it damage your enthusiasm, but it also bores your audience. Seeing the same thing repeatedly makes it lose its impact: that’s why there’s such a thing as shock value.
Instead of blogging, why not create some infographics? It’ll help with your skill development to do something different, and it’ll spice things up. Given something so fresh, your audience might show a more active interest in what you bring to the table. Or maybe you could create some videos. You don’t need a lot of equipment to record some talking-head footage: a modern smartphone will suffice. Record a guide, put it on YouTube, and embed it in your posts.
Use the skyscraper technique
Improving your content marketing plan isn’t about improving it in a vacuum. It’s about making them better relative to other content marketing plans. If you make your plan 10% better while other plans see 20% improvement, you’ll end up falling behind. This is where the skyscraper technique becomes really useful.
The idea of the skyscraper technique is that you don’t need to massively outperform the competition. You just need to be ahead slightly. If you want the world’s tallest skyscraper, you only have to make it fractionally taller than the current record-holder. Additionally, you can learn a lot from how the record-holder was built, and use that framework for your skyscraper.
You can use this idea to create industry-leading content while expending minimal effort. Search for a hyper-relevant term in your area, and look at the top result. What does it do well? What does it do poorly? Aim to replicate the good parts and improve upon the bad parts. If you manage that, you’ll have a good shot at supplanting it.
Show more personality
Lastly, one of the best ways to enhance a content marketing plan this year is to introduce more personality. It’s quite common for brands to worry too much about being professional. Show some vulnerability. If you won’t show some vulnerability in the year of a pandemic, when will you? People want to read about how COVID-19 has affected the brands they follow and support. They want to be reassured that they’re not alone.
Showing personality can be as simple as being more relaxed about your phrasing and using whatever slang terms seem appropriate. You can also start talking more about the people behind your brand. Add more anecdotes about your daily life and behind-the-scenes events. Talk about the mistakes you’ve made. The more your audience sees humanity behind your content, the more it will resonate with them.
There are so many different ways to make your content marketing plan better, of course: you can improve your images, hire new employees, or even just expand your budget. The tips we’ve looked at here, though, allow you to approach the problem from some more interesting angles. Give them a try.
Author: Orion Talmay is a wellness expert and love coach. Through her integrative approach, Orion’s Method, she helps women awaken their inner goddess and nurture their feminine confidence. Orion is a graduate of Tony Robbins’ Mastery University and holds certifications with the AAPT, KBA, and AFFA.
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