In recent weeks, I have increasingly focused on strategy development for efficient and effective online communication. Why? On the one hand, because it is important, and on the other, because many studies show that this particular area often suffers from sloppy work within companies. In my last post, I therefore created a guide for developing a content marketing strategy. This really should be the starting point for all professional content marketing efforts.
If you delve deeper into the field of content marketing, sooner or later you will come across the term Content Marketing Life Cycle. It is also often and readily referred to as a strategy and indeed shows similarities to my own concept. Nevertheless, they are not one and the same thing. So, what distinguishes the content marketing cycle from the strategy development already presented? What are its advantages and how often must the cycle be completed?
Strategy Is Not Always Strategy
To resolve this apparent tautology, we need to look more closely at the terms strategy, concept and tactics. Don't worry, I will keep it brief: what I described in my last post is essentially a rough concept that still needs to be filled with specific content. It is a guide on how an existing state can and should be transformed into a desired altered state. A strategy, on the other hand, describes the framework of action available to us on our path to the goal. Tactics explain how this should happen (in the short term). So much for theory.
In our everyday practice, however, strategy has become an all-encompassing term, and for this reason, I—and many others—use precisely this term, even when we fundamentally mean concept. Pragmatically speaking, it makes little sense to use the correct designations if no one is searching for them. SEO and all that, we know how it works. 😉
The Content Marketing Life Cycle as a Proven Strategy
What exactly is the Content Marketing Cycle? It is a proven strategy for achieving objectives within a content marketing concept. It is therefore a sub-strategy, one of many possibilities, although the Content Marketing Cycle has often been shown to be an effective approach.
As its name suggests, it is a cyclical process that goes through various stages. Where one starts within the cycle is actually secondary, as long as one consistently follows through with it. My recommendation is even to establish the Content Marketing Cycle as a fundamental operational strategy within the company. But let's take a closer look at it.
We can describe the content marketing cycle in different ways. How many stations the cycle should pass through is often a matter of personal interpretation. I like to work with a scheme that has seven stages:
- Monitoring
- Target Audience Adjustment
- Topic Identification & Keyword Optimisation
- Content Creation
- Content Sharing
- Evaluation
- Content Recycling
Monitoring
A stage that is very suitable for starting the content marketing cycle is monitoring. Monitoring provides helpful insights that are needed for an efficient and effective approach.
Which data and parameters are tracked depends on the respective project and the defined objectives. However, the sub-objective of monitoring is always clear: to accurately position the topic, target audiences, and the company within the market, society, and the social web. This naturally requires a certain commitment and does not stop with the transition to the next step in the cycle. Constant monitoring is simply part of it.
Target Audience Adjustment
Ideally, the target audience would have already been analysed in the overall concept, and we would therefore already know with whom we want to communicate. Nevertheless, the work on the buyer persona is not finished. Especially if the content marketing concept has been completely redeveloped, we often do not know exactly who our ideal target audience is, what characterises them, and what appeals to them. Therefore, the buyer persona must be continuously refined. In some situations, entirely new target audiences may even emerge, which were often not considered during the initial analysis. Such potential should not go unused.
Furthermore, it is important that every single piece of content is tailored to the target audience. It is not about what the company believes its buyer persona might like, but rather their actual needs. The more precisely potential customers can be described, the more one knows about them, the better and more effective the content will be.
Topic Identification & Keyword Optimisation
Before proceeding with the actual content creation, relevant topic areas and keywords must be defined. What is our buyer persona actually searching for, and what can we do to meet their search query?
During research and optimisation, data from monitoring should always be incorporated, but not exclusively. Input from other departments is often very helpful too. What does sales say, what does customer service say?
These results are ideally stored in an easily accessible file. New ideas and insights can quickly find their way into the list, just as inefficient keywords can be quickly removed from the file. Keyword optimisation and topic identification are thus never complete; they continuously evolve, just like our target audiences.
Content Creation
The central question at this stage is what form of content is relevant for which target audience to solve their problems and simultaneously establish the company as a trustworthy dialogue partner. The possibilities are diverse: blog posts, infographics, videos, podcasts, e-books, infopapers, etc.
There is no good or bad here, only suitable or unsuitable—and this distinction is important! Unsuitable content will neither help nor harm in the short term, but it can have negative long-term consequences. For example, if content reaches the “wrong recipients” and is therefore perceived as spam. Here, I must reiterate that it is not about producing a lot of content, but about creating helpful and relevant content.
Content Sharing
The perfect content has been created, but where are the visitors? Unfortunately, they will rarely find their way to our content on their own; we must actively draw their attention to it. There is a rule of thumb online that states one should spend 20% of their time creating content and 80% distributing it. Whether that is true, I can hardly judge, but definitely too little attention is paid to spreading content.
Content Promotion and Content Seeding are the two most common terms used in this context. This involves bringing content to the widest possible number of potential interested parties via earned and paid media. Companies do not have to be active on every platform. Especially at the beginning, it is better to concentrate on a few well-frequented portals by the target audience.
What is unfortunately too often forgotten at this point is the fact that companies do not solely have to rely on their own content. Spreading “external” content can also be used for one's own objectives. Content Curation is the term that describes compiling, recommending, and sharing content from outside the company that is nevertheless relevant to one's own target audience. This is a simple and effective method, yet many companies still find it very difficult to implement.
Evaluation
The measurement and evaluation of content marketing measures is a central element of the entire cycle. Skipping this point or only working through it sloppily will become highly noticeable sooner or later. The evaluation of previous measures causes many responsible parties concern, though it genuinely does not have to.
The success measurement of content marketing depends on the definition of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). A lot can be measured on the social web, but not everything measured has true value. Therefore, indicators of success must always be defined in relation to the objectives, which we extensively covered in the post asking about the Return on Investment.
To make getting started with this complex topic easier, I recommend this article from the Content Marketing Institute. It describes eight central KPIs that every content marketer should know and track.
Content Recycling
Sustainability is not only in demand in politics and agriculture; we should also handle our resources carefully in content marketing. If so much time and effort have been invested in the analysis, creation, and distribution of content, one should not simply “forget” about the published content. Recycling, or repurposing, content is another stage of the Content Marketing Cycle.
Republishing existing content in other formats is just one option; converting evergreen content into granular micro content is another. Beyond that, there are no limits to one's imagination. It depends solely on the marketer's ingenuity, with high-quality, already existing content forming the foundation.
Conclusion
The Content Marketing Life Cycle is a proven operational strategy within an overarching communication concept. It guides the marketer through seven central stages in the further development of their measures and the achievement of their objectives. The success of the content marketing cycle is evident in its repeated execution. Each new “round” becomes easier to manage, each round provides more and better insights, and brings us significantly closer to our company goal.
Ivana Baric-Gaspar designs and structures for the areas of online PR and content marketing at Zensations. However, the grid of her desk is controlled chaos.
