By Jeff Mesnik
When I was younger I played a lot of tennis, and I had one tennis instructor named Sherwin who I believe was instrumental in developing my playing ability. He helped me build a strong base, a foundation that I was able to build from. This became incredibly important as I played competitively. As we all know, it is easy to get lost during the game, to lose focus, and everything starts to fall apart. If you have a strong foundation, it helps to provide you a place to return to, and to build from again.
Sherwin’s message was to relax and be slow and steady. You need to be patient and just return the ball back (and deep) and wait for your moment. It was a message of consistency and calm. When things started to seem out of control, I would return to that posture and remind myself that I need to create consistency first – the rest will follow.
Nice story, but how does this apply to our content marketing strategy, and how does it create sales? The lesson here is that you need to start off with a strong base, something that you can build from. For content marketing, that strong base starts with understanding the basics of the content that needs to be delivered. For example we talk a lot about the top 10 questions most people ask before they buy. This should be the base of your content marketing playbook.
Often times content marketing initiatives start strong. There is excitement, there is clarity, but over time you can easily lose control of where you are going. Too many ideas can be sprinkled into your editorial calendar from your colleagues, and these ideas, while interesting, can derail you from your goals. It is at that point you have to return to your foundation. That nice and easy stroke, that helped you build your content marketing strategy. Thank you Sherwin!
So what is your foundation? What are your top 10 customer questions?
Here are some resources to help you plan your content marketing initiatives.
- The CMI Content Marketing Framework, Content Marketing Institute
- Creating an Effective Content Strategy, Small Business PR
- Quiet the Noise and Drive Sales with Content
- Launching a Content Strategy Has Never Been This Easy, HubExchange + ContentMX
Jeff Mesnik is the Co-founder and President of ContentMX. He has nearly 20 years of experience in high tech and marketing. Jeff leads ContentMX, whose mission is to increase engagement, multiply impressions, and expand a contact database to achieve tangible results, incorporating both email and social into a new age marketing platform. Like this article? Follow Jeff Mesnik on LinkedIn.