Content marketing best tactics

Content marketingluckily, there are a few best practices that can help you in the long and short term. Forget the generic basics like writing to do lists and delegating work – we can take those as a given. Instead these 4 best practices for digital marketing campaigns, will concentrate on how content strategies, outreach plans and setting expectations can help you save time and create killer campaigns!

1. Content strategy…Looking at the long term 

Yes, we know…putting together a content strategy for your company can be time consuming. However, a well worked out strategy means you reap the time saving rewards in the long run.

You can save time straight away. Get your colleagues or key stakeholders together for a content ideation session – it’s so much quicker to come up with great ideas when you debate them out loud. Next step? Avoid guessing. Speak to your key stakeholders about your content ideas before putting your strategy together. Make sure your key stakeholders have input into the content, remember they know their section of the business and what content might not work at certain points of the year.

A quality content strategy ensures you can prepare content in advance, everyone involved in the campaign will know what to expect and you don’t have to spend more hours coming up with content ideas.

2. Method behind your media

So, you’ve got amazing content? Now it’s time to get it out there. While you’ll want everyone to read and share your content, outreaching to every journalist and editor isn’t best practice. However, just like with your content strategy, you can save yourself loads of time if you put together an outreach plan too.

If you’re not using a PR distribution service and prefer a more individual approach to outreach, start by putting together a quality media list. Identify the key sectors you want to target, get direct emails for editors and identify targets who will be interested in your content – all good time savers! Remember, it’s much more productive to have a smaller quality media list, rather than a large random list of contacts who might not even be interested.

Outreaching can take time. However, if you ensure there’s a good chance every journalist will be interested in your content, you’ll save time in the long run and hopefully get more results.

3. Setting goals and expectations

Setting clear goals and managing expectations can be one of the most time consuming and tricky tasks in digital marketing. Sometimes it can feel like all you do is have meetings and make plans without giving yourself the time to put words into action. However, it all comes down to setting clear goals from the outset.

Start by looking at your own objectives and expectations. What do you want to achieve? What can you do to get there? Next, organise a weekly, fortnightly or monthly phone call or meeting with everyone involved in the campaign. Remember, avoid having pointless meetings and phone calls if you don’t have any updates– an email will do. Try to keep everyone updated with short emails, rather than laborious essays and diplomatically encourage your colleagues to do the same.

If you develop a clear understanding with everyone involved in the campaign, you’ll soon find you have more time to get results – it’s a win-win!

4. Let the tools do the talking

Reporting can be one of the most time consuming and time sensitive jobs, when you all you want to do is shout about the great work you’ve done. Luckily the world of digital marketing is packed with tools to make your life easier and help you save time, so use them.

For example, stop spending time writing in depth reports for your business when Google Analytics can do it for you. You can sync your individual analytics account to a Google Sheet that automatically updates every month and hey presto, you have a monthly report done for you.

More time…better results

Digital marketing is a highly dynamic, demanding and busy environment where there never seems to be enough hours in the day. Your business is results-driven and you are there to get them, so any quick wins and chances to cut out long-winded processes will always be welcome! If you put together a longer-term strategy, plan your communications and develop a good understanding with your clients, you’ll soon find you have more time to put together successful digital campaigns.