Having a strategy for your content is the best way to achieve success (i.e. make some sales), save time and hit your overall business goals.

But Why A 90 Day Content Strategy?

Do you remember January 2020?

We had our usual ‘business away day’ to discuss what we wanted to achieve for the year. We had the entire year mapped out. Done. Sorted.

And then what happened? Oh yes, the entire world broke.

And our plan for the year went out the window.

Okay, so this is an extreme and (hopefully) a once in a lifetime example.

But 2020 showed us the power of moving fast and adapting.

1. A Year Is Just A Tad Long

This is why a 90-day content strategy works. It allows you to focus on one thing for 90 days. And it allows you to adapt and change if you need to. We have to move faster in our business more than ever. And take advantage of new opportunities. That’s why a 90-day strategy works.

It’s also easy to become complacent when you have a twelve-month goal. You think ‘I’ve got ages to achieve this!’ and your motivation is no way near as high as it is when you just have 90 days. We are human after all, and the looming deadline causes us to take action much faster!

2. But a Month Is Just a Smidge Short…

On the other hand, 90 days is just long enough to make some real gains with your content marketing. You can see a transformation in those 90 days (whereas a month is a little short). Like one of our members, Debbie Ekins who increased her traffic by 92% and added £10,000 a year in sales to her business.

3. When Life Gets in the Way, You Don’t Get Disheartened

We are human. And sometimes life just gets in the way. We’re thrown a curveball and it means we have to take a break or take things a little slower. That’s okay. With a 90 day strategy, you get right back to it when you’re ready. Whereas if you become stuck during a twelve-month plan, it’s a lot harder, mentally, to get back on the horse.

Creating Your Content Strategy: Taking Stock Of Where You Are Now

A lot of people recommend you do a humongous audit of your current content before you form a content strategy. And although, yes, this can be useful, it can take time and can cause us to procrastinate and overthink.

But, it is good to check a few things before you start, that way you can see how you’re doing when you implement the content strategy. We’re big fans of numbers as they tell us if we’re going in the right direction. So here’s what you should take note of before you create your content strategy.

1. Your Current Website Traffic

You can access this info from your Google Analytics. If you produce good consistent content during your 90 days, you should certainly expect an increase in website traffic.

2. Your Current Search Engine Rankings

You’ll want to see what keywords and phrases you’re currently ranked for in Google’s search results. If you create and implement your 90-day content strategy correctly, then you should increase your rankings for various keywords and phrases – appearing on page one of Google for lots of different searches. If you want to understand more about this, have a look at our Ultimate Guide for Beginner’s SEO post.

There are a few places you can check your current rankings, but we are loving the Hoth’s free ranking tool for this! Note down how many keywords you’re ranked for, and see this number increase during your 90 days of content marketing!

3. Your Website’s Domain Authority

Domain Authority is a way of checking how likely your website will rank in Google’s search results. It was created by Moz, and they give you a score out of 100. Don’t worry if it seems low, over the course of creating content this should increase.

What Platform Should You Use to Create Your Content?

One of the biggest questions we get asked is what platform you should use to create your content.

Pick One Platform That Will Deliver You Organic Traffic

We advise picking one platform that can deliver you organic traffic 24/7.

This could be your blog – where you can get found from Google.

Or a Youtube channel, where you can be found from…you’ve guessed it, people searching on YouTube.

Or a podcast where you can get found from people searching for podcasts in various places.

The point is, if you use these particular channels you don’t have to constantly update them. You create the content once and people can find you (if you do it, right) for a long time.

Pick One/Two Platforms To Share and Repurpose Your Content

Then, we advise picking one or two places to promote your content (and repurpose it) on social media. And what social media platforms you use for this will really depend on both your audience and your personal preference.

Here’s the typical way we do it…

1. Write a blog post.
2. Create 4-8 LinkedIn posts out of that blog post
3. Create Instagram graphics from that blog post

We do other things too, like email it to our list or post about it on Facebook. But those are the three main avenues we use.

It’s the most time-effective way of producing content that gets us found on Google and gets engagement and sales from our social media channels.

If you want to understand more about this, then check out our blog post on how to repurpose a blog post.

What are your business goals (and how can content help you achieve them?)

Okay, so now you understand why 90 days is the optimum time for a content strategy and what platforms you’d like to use. Let’s now talk about how you can put your strategy together.

Firstly, think about your business goals, i.e. what do you want to achieve in your business?

This could be…

• Build an email list of 5,000 people by x date
• Get five regular coaching clients every single month
• Earn 20K in revenue in 12 months from your digital product

How to Create Content That Supports Your Business Goals

Whatever your goal, content can and should support you. Let’s take some of the goals from the examples above and see how content can help…

How Can Content Help You Build Your Email List?

If your goal is to increase your email list, you should use content to help. You could create one blog post per week every week. You will optimise these blog posts for search engines in order to maximise website traffic. Each blog post would promote a ‘freebie’ you can give to the audience in exchange for their email address. If you do this for 90 days you will see results!

How Can Content Help You Achieve a Sales Goal?

If you want to earn a certain amount of money from selling something, you can create ‘helpful’ content around the topic of the thing that you sell – the kind that ranks on search engines and delivers you traffic.

Then you can also create sales content around the specific product itself.

Here’s an example of how we did this recently with our 90 Day Content Marketing Challenge. We…

• Created helpful blog posts about content marketing
• Created sales posts about the challenge specifically, such as our blog post – Everything You Need to Know About the 90 Day Content Marketing Challenge
• Created helpful social media posts about content marketing
• Created social media posts to promote the challenge specifically
• Sent emails promoting the challenge

It’s the winning combination of…

1. Helpful content (that ranks and gets you traffic)
2. Sales content (that directly sells your product/service
3. and repurposed social media content (that spreads the message) 

This is where you hit the sweet spot! And if you can create a content plan for one thing you offer that hits those three points over a 90 day period, you will see results.

Why Do You Need a Combination of Helpful and Sales Content?

The buyer’s journey consists of three stages: awareness, consideration and decision. And it’s a process that your customers will go through before they buy your product or service.

At the awareness stage, the buyer realises they have a problem.

At the consideration stage, they begin to research all the potential solutions to that problem.

And finally, at the decision stage, they’ve decided on a solution strategy and are looking at suppliers or companies to buy from.

The reason why you have to create a combination of helpful content and sales content is that it hits people at different stages of their buyer’s journey. The helpful content will help people when they realise they have a problem. And the sales content will help them once they’ve decided on the solution to that problem.

How do you stick to the Content Strategy for 90 Days?

Once you’ve…

1. Evaluated where you’re at right now
2. Picked your content creation and promotion platforms
3. Understood what content you need to create to reach your business goals (and planned out what you will create)

Then you’ve created a 90-day content marketing strategy. Well done you!

The plan is the fun bit, but now it’s the difficult stuff. How on earth do you stick to a 90-day content strategy? We all start these things off strong, right? But then client work gets in the way. Or that holiday. Or just a pile of accounts stuff to do.

What you need is someone to hold you accountable. To guide you and help you with things like SEO or copy. To be part of a group of people who are creating content every week to help inspire and champion you.

This is exactly what we offer in our 90 Day Content Marketing Challenge. The next challenge starts on Monday 17 May 2021. Sign up now or find out more. 

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

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