Some businesses take a cafeteria-style approach to building a content landscape. They pick and choose what they think will work for them, without a great deal of rhyme or reason to it. The smartest content marketers look for holes in their content landscape, to learn where they can bolster their content to reach more customers. And, they never fill up on too much bread.
Surveying the Menu
Except, your customers might want a lot of bread. They may also want salad, soup, a nice entrée and some dessert. Your job is to give it all to them. How do you know what you have, and what you are missing?
You could go through each page and note how saturated the site is for content of a particular kind, and what it is lacking. However, the most effective content marketing strategy will involve a technical scan of your content landscape. This will save you a lot of time and gather more accurate data.
Full-Course Content
With that information, you can make plans to create more content that appeals to your target demographic. If you realize that you have been providing nothing but bread (blogs) and appetizers (short landing pages), you can put your focus on adding items to the meat course (eBooks) and dessert (promotions).
The point is to have content that is as varied as your customers. People who do not particularly enjoy reading a regular blog may want to sink their teeth into a 2,000-word eBook with a detailed how-to. Younger customers may stick to your social media pages and rarely visit your actual website. Your goal is full-course content, so that people consume and then feel satisfied.
You’ll Eat It and Like It
You may be reading this and shaking your head, insistent that you do not want to provide every single little thing that prospective customers may want to read. If click-bait makes you shudder, that is OK. This is what content curation is all about–making decisions about the content you will create and the content approaches that will waste your time.
You just have to make these decisions wisely. Talk with content marketing experts about the ways your target customers spend their time online, whether they consume mostly social media, or if press releases would also be useful. If your customer base needs a little refining, now is the time to do it. This adjustment will help your content marketing strategy reach the most likely customers, without anyone feeling like you forced them to eat their vegetables.
The cafeteria of the Internet offers the ability for customers to pick and choose the dishes that suit them best. In order for you to turn browsers into customers, you must offer a full course that keeps them eager for more. With the right content marketing strategy, your customers will know that you are all sizzle and all steak at the same time.