Elements of the Content Marketing Process for Digital Publishers

Written by Matt Berringer

July 19, 2022

Creating great content is only half the battle — you’ve also got to market it. Effective marketing will help you find and grow your ideal audience, hopefully converting them into paid subscribers or members.

Your content marketing framework’s core elements include content ideation, content creation and optimization, content distribution and content tracking, review and revision. Learn more about these stages with help from Nxtbook Media.

Content Ideation

Content ideation helps you generate new topics for your publication. Your team should have a variety of ideation techniques in your toolbox, including:

• Brainstorming
• Industry research
• Competitor analysis
• Keyword research
• Audience feedback
• Tracking trending topics

You should implement content ideation strategies regularly, not just when you’re running low on inspiration. The more ideas you generate, the more likely you can find newer and more interesting ways to approach familiar topics to engage and grow your readership.

Content Creation and Optimization

Every piece of content you create should be published with intention and as part of a larger content creation strategy. Your strategy should consider key factors like:

• Search engine optimization (SEO) and ranking keywords
• Data from previous content marketing campaigns
• Industry standards and competitor analysis
• Your audience’s wants, needs and expectations
• Current resources, including time, skill and budget
• Time-specific topics, like holidays or trending stories
• Various types of media, including pictures, graphics, videos, blogs and social media posts

The second part of a strong content creation plan is optimizing your content to reach as many readers as possible. Two key ways to approach content optimization are your SEO strategy and the user experience.

Your SEO strategy will let you know which keywords your content should try to rank for to top search results. User experience refers to the website and publication-specific factors like load time, page errors and whether you’ve optimized your content for multiple devices, like smartphones and tablets.

Content Distribution

Content distribution is every avenue you use to showcase your content and publication to new and existing readers. It can — and should — include multiple platforms and strategies, such as:

• Social media posts across platforms like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram
• Industry newsletters, influencers or thought leaders
• A subscriber-only email list
• Content aggregators in your niche
• One-time and ongoing collaborators in your niche
• Your website and each landing page
• Paid advertisements

Record how your content performs across each distribution method and compare those results to the time, money and skill invested. Some trial and error is expected and encouraged if you’re just starting the content marketing process. Once you’ve discovered the best and worst places to showcase your content, you can narrow the methods that work and create targeted and personalized distribution plans.

Content Tracking, Review and Revision

Have a maintenance plan for every piece of content, even if you consider the topic evergreen or publish more instructional content for niche industries. Your content maintenance plan should include:

• Tracking: Note how your content performs across each distribution channel. Use data from site-specific analytics, like high-traffic landing pages, reader retention rates, average watch or read times, peak
  performance times and other metrics relevant to your publication’s marketing goals.
• Review: Analyze existing content and how your audience engages with it. What’s performing well, and how do you know? Are some distribution channels, topics, writers or media types seeing more clicks than others? Note any trends between content publication dates and upticks in new subscribers or engagement from your current ones.
• Revision: Perform regular content audits to find and fix typos, formatting errors, broken links, outdated information and duplicate content. Revising existing content can also involve repurposing high-performing pieces into new pieces. For example, you could try breaking long-form video tutorials into smaller clips to share on your social channels or assembling a series of small blog posts to create a downloadable guide.

A Great Publication Starts With a Great Platform

At Nxtbook Media, we’re here to help you find the digital platform that can transform your publication with a better user experience, insightful analytics and other helpful features for content creation. You
can also take advantage of our add-on digital marketing services to supplement your marketing plans with things like:

• Landing page development
• Email marketing campaigns, audits and list development
• Search engine optimization
• Paid advertisements
• Social media advertising
• Content development and optimization

Learn more about specific pricing plans and packages, and schedule a demo today!