After optimizing your website, the next step in an Inbound Marketing strategy is to create valuable content for that site (for the entire list of Inbound Marketing steps, download “A Step By Step Guide To Inbound Marketing"). Creating a single piece of content – a whitepaper, a blog post, a video, etc. – isn’t in itself difficult; formalizing the process and managing it on a regular basis is where things get complicated.
But before you set about creating great content that’ll pull in prospects, you need to know these things:
We've packaged a few of the worksheets we use to guide clients through the simpler steps in the content creation process and they're available for you as a download below. What about the parts of the process we don't cover here? Well, those are proprietary and we share 'em only with clients!
Prospect Profile
This template will help you zero in on your best prospects and better understand their responsibilities, pressures, and other factors that influence their decision to buy.
Content Questionnaire
This template will help you more clearly define what primary and most meanginful messages you’re going to consistently deliver about your company and its value to prospects (no matter what type of content you’re creating).
Use this template when holding blog meetings to help you gather and organize ideas and manage the writing and of blog posts.
Content Worksheet
Use this template when creating any type of content to ensure that you’re promoting your company's product or service as a solution to your target's problem in every piece of content.
Blog Editorial Calendar
A simple, at-a-glance view of the blog topics you'll cover and how each will be promoted via social media networks.
There's both art and science to creating different forms of content your prospects will value, and these templates should help with some of the more basic components of the process. To learn more about content and its critical role in Inbound Marketing, read "Answers to the Top 15 Questions About Inbound Marketing."
