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Content is crucial—you have known and have proven that for some time now. That’s why you make sure to make the necessary investments that allow you to implement an effective content marketing strategy for your brand. That’s why companies today are prepared to spend more for content. For 2016, small businesses are expected to shell out around $2.2 million for their content strategy, while midsize enterprises will allocate around $43.6 million (Source: Content Marketing Institute).  

Keep costs down and get more from your marketing dollars

As with any marketing endeavor, of course, it’s important to make sure your expenditures lead to measurable ROI. It pays to make sure that your marketing budget is allocated only for the most effective campaigns. Moreover, it would be most ideal if you could reduce your costs without sacrificing your performance and results.

How do you ensure wise spending for content marketing? These action steps can help.

Your first investment should be toward planning. Content marketing should be flexible to suit the changing needs and demands of the market. But it doesn’t mean that you’ll just be shooting from the hip. The most successful, and cost-effective, campaigns are guided by an overarching strategy. Avoid waste of money due to mistakes and guesswork. Develop your content marketing map first, so it can serve as a guide to your next decisions.

Document your standards and processes. Build SOPs for every task you routinely do to create, publish, distribute and promote content. This way, training your team becomes easier, and you get time and money savings by making cross-checking easier and eliminating repetitive efforts to communicate and deliver information.

Repurpose. Get more marketing value out of every piece of content by looking for other ways to use it and have it published across different channels. This technique not only allows you to increase content production at half the cost and workload. It also helps you reach out to more target audiences. For instance, a potential customer who may not be keen on reading your white paper will appreciate and be moved by an infographic derived from it. A podcast episode can be transcribed and offered to your audiences in PDF form.   

Do it right. Don’t just do it—you’ve got to do it right. When creating content, make sure it’s top-notch quality and optimized to get results. When promoting over social media, focus your energy and budget on the channels where content will be most noticed and appreciated by your customers. Not sure if you’re doing it correctly? Then invest in the services of experts. At this high-stake marketplace, costly mistakes will not only waste your time and money, but may also ruin your reputation. So make sure to place your bets on avenues that lead to proven and measurable results.  

Reliable Search Engine Optimization help here

SEO experts anywhere will tell you that it’s important to keep your content updated. While it’s true that it works to consistently post fresh content, keeping your content updated also means that you refresh some of your content that has already been up for some time.

Revive your marketing with refreshed content

Content refreshing is great for driving traffic, and it also presents a great opportunity for you to perform some SEO housekeeping. If you want a solid content marketing strategy for the coming year, you’ll do well to practice regular content refreshment. You can certainly start now to ensure that you’re greeting the new quarter with refreshed and updated content.

Which of your content probably need to be refreshed? Not everything is eligible for updating, of course. Some blog posts simply cannot be tweaked to become more current, and there are also some sections with amazing evergreen content that are best left alone. The following, however, are the pieces that you’ll have to look at and evaluate to determine whether they need to be updated or not.

• Certain site sections need regular updating. The most frequently updated ones are Services and/or Products. For instance, promo announcements need to be removed or changed. Descriptions of services and products also often need to be modified, if only to assure your users that whatever is posted on your pages is still relevant and applicable.

• Another section that needs regular updating is the one you have for customer testimonials and reviews. You don’t want to be showing old feedback. Encourage your customers to leave testimonials and reviews so this section will always reflect fresh content.

• E-books, documents, and white papers need to have their content updated, too. If you’re in the habit of using these as link magnets, then you can keep them interesting and valuable by updating them.

• There are blog posts that have awesome content that can be refreshed and published anew in the future. You can archive the old post or pull it offline to avoid duplicates. You can also optimize these old posts to establish your expertise in a certain topic.

• Many people get the idea that company profiles don’t need updating, but this is not the case. It’s important to update your profile, especially ones on social sites. Not only will you be able to keep information about your brand current, but you’ll also direct your followers’ attention to your company.

By diligently refreshing content as well as developing new installments, you can make your content strategy this year more effective and successful.

Reliable Search Engine Optimization help here