You’ve probably thought about the future of your lucrative job in light of the talk of the Great Resignation (or Great Reshuffle). Even if you’re happy with your current job, it’s a good idea to make plans for potential promotions and career changes (especially unexpected ones).
And to do so, something that should be very familiar to you right now is necessary: developing a content marketing strategy.
But this time, you’ll design it for your individual brand.
Not sure if you should spend the time?
What does “personal brand” mean?
Understanding what a personal brand is is necessary before you can create your own content marketing plan.
Anh added during the Twitter chat, “Think of it as your reputation and calling card to the globe.” You can connect with potential employers, clients, customers, collaborators, and other people thanks to your personal brand.
A personal brand benefits you in the ways that Gabriela Cardoza described in the chat:
- Try to set yourself apart.
- develop your thinking leadership
- Increasing credibility and trust
- Create a network
You already have a personal brand. Every time you interact with someone, you leave an impression on them about who you are.
When you create a content marketing strategy for your personal brand, you’ll put yourself on a path toward influencing those perceptions to support your goals.
Create a written content marketing strategy for your own brand using these seven stages.
1.Write a mission statement for the company.
The foundation of every effective content marketing strategy is a grasp of the mission and goals. Making a mission statement is the first step in developing your individual content marketing plan.
Gabriela outlined the parts of a personal brand mission statement as follows:
- Your identity
- How you act
- what you believe
- What makes you special
I’ll add another: What are you hoping to accomplish with your brand?
2.Compose a statement of the editorial mission.
Make a declaration of your editorial personal mission that relates to your brand mission.
- Your core audience is the group you are trying to reach with your message.
- What you’ll provide in terms of the information you offer
- The things your audience can do (or will know) as a result of your content are known as the outcome or benefit.
- You don’t have to make a long statement. Just give a phrase or two of an overview.
Now that you’ve finished creating your editorial mission statement and personal brand, you’re ready to create a content marketing strategy.
3.Describe the aims of your brand’s content marketing.
Your professional goals (to gain a raise, a new job, more clients, etc.) can be accomplished with the aid of your personal content marketing, but those aren’t your content marketing objectives.
Content marketing entails producing and disseminating information in order to draw in and keep your audience and ultimately motivate lucrative action.
Here are some ideas for individual content marketing objectives:
- Increase brand recognition by publicising your name.
- Gain brand credibility by making yourself seem like a trustworthy, valued resource.
- Make a closer connection with consumers to increase brand loyalty.
- Find strategic alliances: Make others want to assist you (e.g., guest blogging and conference speaking).
The correct audience will become clear after your content marketing objectives are established.
4.Specify who your target market is.
Though you already know what you want, what does your target audience want?
Describe your audience’s makeup first. What professions do they hold? What functions or positions do they hold?
Afterward, they describe their interests and actions. What are they seeking to learn? What are the aches and pains? Where do they reside (either physically or online)?
Say you work as a content marketing professional for a business that provides financial services. Increasing knowledge of your name and abilities is your aim. Your target audience includes managers and directors of content marketing, communications, and marketing in the financial sector. They want to learn more about how to persuade the executives of their company to support their budget and buy-in. They occasionally check LinkedIn but never Facebook.
5.Identify the sweet spot of your content
Visualise a Venn diagram. Your interests in content marketing are grouped together. Interests and needs of your audience are represented by the other circle. The sweet place for your material is where the two circles overlap.
Your own content marketing should mostly cover these areas.
You can choose your favourite content distribution methods and formats. For instance, you should consider a podcast rather than a YouTube channel if your audience likes podcasts over videos and you want to grow your subscriber base. You might also propose to speak at the conference if your target audience frequently goes there. Offering guest blogging on websites your audience reads could help you achieve your brand awareness objective.
6.Create a content calendar.
It’s time to create an editorial calendar now that your subjects, formats, and distribution channels have been determined. However, keep in mind that you are only one person and that you presumably already have a day job. Do not be ambitious at this time.
I advise developing a minimum viable calendar, which is the bare minimum you know you can regularly provide. That’s OK if it’s simply one blog post every month or a check of your LinkedIn page every three months. If you try to take on too much and don’t succeed, you’re more inclined to quit. You’re more likely to persevere if you have reasonable expectations.
7.Make quantifiable objectives
You should now add numbers and dates to the individual content marketing goals you defined in Step 3 after documenting your purpose, audience, content forms, and frequency.
For instance, if your content marketing objective is to build brand trust, your metric might be to increase your newsletter’s subscriber base by 50% over the next three months.
Connecting measurable objectives to all of your strategies is crucial for determining the effectiveness of your content.
Hold yourself responsible.
Your individual content marketing approach may be the most difficult because you’re working alone. It’s easier to put off the task when your supervisor or client doesn’t expect your content.
Establish due dates for each step of the creation and dissemination of content. On your calendar, note them. If you become overburdened and realize you won’t make a deadline, postpone it, but don’t take it off the calendar; else, you’ll never finish it.
Do you want to increase the level of accountability you have? Recruit a partner for accountability. Tell them about your manufacturing schedule. Treat this partner like you would a client or boss; inform them when the step is finished or when the completion date has been changed. (This is easily accomplished by making use of the calendar’s notification mechanism.) Even better, take on the role of their accountability partner.
Let’s get going. When will your personal brand content marketing plan be finished? Write it down in the comments, and I’ll get in touch with you on that day to see if you’re finished.