Your Content Strategy Isn’t Working

I know it sounds harsh. Your infographics may be beautiful and your e-books may be educational. But if the content you create isn’t collectively moving you toward your goal—or your team is struggling to get that content out the door—your content strategy isn’t working.

Building a strong content strategy is the best way to make sure your whole operation is on track and on the same page, but according to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2018 Content Management and Strategy Survey, 64% of content marketers struggle to build a scalable content strategy. It’s no surprise!

​In order for your organization’s content marketing strategy to be effective, it needs to be working toward a larger goal, whether that’s growing awareness, engaging a broader audience, or building up your membership roster. Don’t stress because its May and you still don’t have a firm strategy in place. There’s still plenty of room for content marketing strategy enhancements (or creation) in 2019. A few suggestions to get going:

1. Remember Your Target Audience. 

You sit on a goldmine of valuable information. This allows you to:

• Connect with professionals looking for industry-specific information;
• Remind members of the value your association provides year-round;
• Build awareness of your conference and other events;
• Extend the life of the materials you work hard to collect

2. Focus On Your Audience Interests.

By analyzing the data from your content marketing posts, you can learn a number of important things about your audience such as:

• What parts of the world your visitors come from;
• Which sites or platforms best connect you with your members, helping you tune your messages on the most critical platforms moving forward;
• Which types of content your visitors prefer.

​This feedback can guide future content marketing efforts to best connect you with your audience. 

3. Understand Analytics.

Analytics can teach you which topics generate the most interest among your followers; consider including these topics in your next conference event, educational seminar, or webinars.  ​

4. Maximize Your Content.

Turn a single piece of content into lots of little pieces. Rather than just posting a video once and letting it die on the vine, find ways to keep that video fresh—put it lots of different places, including on your blog, inside your virtual community platform, on your website, and as a post through your social channels. Then, maximize that piece of content as a repurposed blog, infographic, and bite-sized video that make social engagement easier. Your audience is diverse, and they each prefer specific types of content, so diversify to reach everyone. ​

The whole point of content marketing is to show your audience that you have value to offer with tangible pieces of content you’ve worked hard to collect. Choose the platforms that best connect with your audience and help your association achieve goals, whether that includes your website, community, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or one of the many others available online. Most of the content you share can be used across multiple platforms, giving you lots of opportunities to reach new people and prove the value of your organization all year long. ​

---

Do you need assistance with audience engagement strategy, technology, or content creation? We can help you expand and engage your audience with content-powered solutions. Contact our team below for a free consultation.  ​

CONNECT

Author

Calli Dretke
President & CEO

Calli stands at the forefront of one of the fastest moving Association Software industry trends: member engagement. Described by her peers as a “unicorn”, Calli exhibits passion, intellect, creativity and detailed execution in everything she does.