Throughout all your marketing collateral, your website, newsletter, sales pages, and email newsletters, you will need to have a developed cohesive message or theme. Your content theme will need to explain how your products are different from the competitions’ and how they solve your audience’s problems all in one voice – regardless of the channel.

* Determine the Goals of the Message – When crafting any message, the first thing you need to know is what your goals are for the content. Do you want to inform, engage, get more newsletter signups, or make a sale? Whatever your goal is, it must be something you understand before recording or writing the first word.

* Understand Your Products or Services – Make a product funnel with the products you have so that you understand every stage of the buying cycle for your audience. Also, it will help identify holes in your product funnel that you can fill with other things.

* Study Your Audience – It is easy to think you already know everything you can about your audience because you wanted to work with them and you have already created products and services. But, you would be wrong. Always study your audience so that you can stay ahead of their wants and needs.

* Identify Your Audience’s Pain Points – As you are studying your audience, you will discover various pain points or issues that your audience needs solved. Your products and/or services should solve these issues and take away their pain, and your content should explain how it works.

* Assess Your Competition – It might seem strange to look at your competition when it comes to developing your content theme, but you should. Not to copy what they do, but to get an idea of what type of content they’re using that’s converting. What do they know that you don’t? What do you know that they don’t?

* Define What Makes You Different – As you’re developing your content, you want to keep in mind what differentiates you from the competition. As you think of that, try to weave that story throughout.

* Find Your Voice – One of the first things to consider is what your voice will be. Will you be serious, funny or irreverent? This aspect of defining your content theme is important, and will move you forward and help you establish your brand.

* Brainstorm Your Message – Your overall message defines your value proposition. Your value proposition doesn’t change just because your products change. Your overall goals are still to solve the pain points of your audience with your various products and services. Writing a mission statement can help you identify your whole message.

Knowing what you want to communicate with others, specifically your target audience, will go far in helping you frame your content theme in a cohesive way. You can use this same information for any content that you plan to create for your business, whether you’re creating blog posts, white papers, or information products.

One of the most important things you’re going to do aside from filling your blog with content is to choose the look, design and feel of your blog. You want the theme to match your technology needs as well as impart a specific feeling to your audience that matches the niche you’re trying to represent.

1. Keep It Simple – It can be tempting to get a theme with many bells and whistles but you may not need that. Today, clean lines and simple colors are more popular than busy themes that distract from the main point of your blog. The theme needs to evoke the right feelings in your audience while also providing you with the tools you need to get the job done.

2. Consider Your Industry – You want to avoid having to change a theme too much using PHP or other code. The best theme for you has already been made with your industry in mind. No need to reinvent the wheel. Plus, when you choose a theme that already has your industry as a focus, avoiding messing with the coding of the theme, you can make changes and updates easier.

3. Choose Responsive Themes – Today, it has become imperative that a theme be responsive to the tools your audience will use to access the information. That means the theme needs to be responsive to whatever device anyone who wants your information is using. If they cannot access the blog and read it easily on multiple devices, you’re going to lose a lot of your audience.

4. Read the Fine Print – This is especially true with free themes. But, always read the rules and terms of service of every blog theme that you want to use. There may be limitations, or you may learn that the theme is no longer being supported and updated. You want a current theme that will continue being safe for a long time, and that is legal to use as you see fit.

5. Understand Which Features You Need – Do you want one column or two? Do you need the ability to download PDFs? Do you want to put up a lot of videos? Do you want a discussion board? Do you want a certain color? Ensure that your theme is capable of adding the functionality you want, or already has it to start with. The more features you can have before customization, the better.

6. Know the Purpose of Your Blog – Each blog has a purpose and point of being. When you can identify the point of your blog, it will be easier to determine which features are most important. It will also be more likely that you can identify what will make your audience feel impacted by the look of your blog.

7. Determine Your Budget – While you can get some awesome free themes from the WordPress.org website, consider purchasing a premium theme because you’ll get more support, help, and updates to keep your blog safe. There are premium themes within a wide price range.

8. Check User Ratings – Once you’ve identified several themes that will work in terms of features, colors, feeling, functionality and budget, check the user ratings to ensure that there is nothing that stands out like poor customer service or compatibility issues with plugins you know you want to use.

If you keep all these factors in mind, you’ll have a better chance of picking the perfect theme for your website that conveys the message you want to impart to your audience and works well on the back end too.

Finding people who are good at content marketing can sometimes be difficult. You can take several approaches such as looking for “content marketers” on Google or on professionally-oriented social media like LinkedIn. Follow these tips to better understand that sometimes the title is less important than the results of the work.

1. Know What Type of Content You Need – No writer or marketer can be an expert in everything. Therefore, it’s imperative that you understand exactly what type of writing you need before you begin trying to market any content that has been created.

2. Understand Who Your Audience Is – Knowing the audience is important because that helps you to identify the type of content that you need. It is essential to have a clear understanding of your audience and the various segments involved in order to create and market excellent content that gets results.

3. Look for Subject Matter Experts – If you can find subject matter experts to be on your team, even if they’re not the writers, you can use their knowledge to develop excellent content. Most college courses for example are created by a team consisting of a technical writer and a subject matter expert.

4. Find Industry Experts – Use the resources at your fingertips to find industry experts that might be willing to help develop your content strategy and work with your writing team. Without an expert, your content may often be inaccurate or just “keyword” articles that are written for search engines instead of people.

5. Be Willing to Pay a Fair Rate – If you truly want to hire trained content marketing professionals who have experience as well as even college degrees, then you must be willing to pay them a professional and fair rate for the work they will do at the quality level you expect. When it comes to content marketing, you most certainly get what you pay for.

6. Ask Colleagues for Recommendations – Usually, the people you work with and around know people who are expert content marketers that you can trust. Ask for recommendations from these groups. If you’re a member of an industry forum, that’s a great place to ask.

7. Search on LinkedIn – You can find a lot of people who are experts with recommendations right on LinkedIn by doing a search. You may need to join groups and communicate that way at first, unless you can find someone to introduce you.

8. Search Twitter for Experts – Twitter is an excellent way to find experts on any subject using the keywords that are common in your industry as well as “content marketing.” However, you’re going to get better results by hiring a good technical writer, a copywriter, and subject matter experts.

Working with content marketing experts requires you and them to have knowledge and skill in the industry that you want to market and not just general content marketing and writing skills. Only people on the inside are going to know what will work best for your particular audience.

Today, marketing really is all about online content. It doesn’t matter what type of business you have, marketing online is going to be more lucrative than marketing offline.

Most people don’t run to the phone book anymore when looking for a business. Instead, they look for a business online. And then in addition to that, they ask their friends online, and do a lot of research online before making their purchasing choices. Whether you have an online business or an offline business, this advice will increase your sales exponentially.

Build Your Credibility

The first step toward developing a content marketing mindset involves using the online world to build up your credibility. Use your blog, release white papers, and participate in social media and more to ensure that your reputation is well represented online. Perfect every social media profile and don’t start an account unless you are willing to keep it up to date at least weekly.

Seek Out Thought Leadership

Getting to know thought leaders in your industry can actually rub off on you and make you into a though leader – eventually. Find and follow thought leaders in your industry, comment on their blogs, offer donated original content, review their products, and ask them to review theirs. Interview them on a podcast. Do what you need to do in order to become part of their circle.

Understand Your Business

As you are building credibility and hobnobbing with thought leaders, study your niche and your business. You need to know everything there is to know, inside and out. That way when someone asks you a question you’re ready with a good answer and “sound bite” that can be used, makes sense and is true representation of what you do and what you stand for. Plus, you’ll have more to say (blog) if you know more.

Become a Strategic Publisher

Learning to think like a publisher is essential today in the online marketing world. Developing a publication calendar will go far in helping you know what information you’re going to share with your audience over time. If you take the time to develop a calendar, you can match product launches with the content. Doing without a publication calendar is a huge mistake. Planning in advance from day one will ensure that everything you do has a purpose.

Develop Your Own Online Space

In the old days of marketing, content marketing consisted of sending out duplicate articles to article directories. But, today content marketing consist of filling out your own online real estate with content before you even think about donating to any other sites. The more relevant, useful and enlightening content that you can put on your own online real estate, the better for SEO, and the better for your audience.

Remember You Are in Control

Sometimes, as a business owner it can be hard to remember who is in control. But, if you can accept that you’re in control of your own business and your own destiny, you’ll have a better chance of successfully developing and following through on your ideas, as well as meeting your goals.

Build Your Lists

One way to remain in control is to always be building your lists. Your email lists are the difference between success and failure when it comes to online marketing. Set up sign-ups for your newsletter or lists on your content and on your websites in ways that your audience cannot refuse. Plus, provide value by using the lists appropriately to build relationships and provide information.

Build Communities

One way to build relationships is to build online communities through your content marketing. Using your content, lists, and social media networks to build a community is an essential component of content marketing today. Because just producing the content isn’t enough; you have to push it out to your audience, too.

Finally, accepting that content marketing is an essential element of marketing today for all types of businesses will help you to get on board with the right marketing plan that will move your business forward.

Knowing how to scale content, or get the most out of your content, is an important idea that all small business owners need to understand. There is only so much time in the day, and only so much information that can be out there at any one time. If you don’t learn how to scale the content that you spend a lot of time, money and resources on, you’ll come up short.

Curate Compelling Content

Researching and finding content that your audience will find valuable outside of your own content is an important component of becoming a thought leader and getting your name into the discussion. Plan in advance to find the right content that relates to the information that you’ve created for the day, week or month. Share your thoughts on the content that you share, and link to the original source.

Use a Lot of Original Content

It is important to use at least as much original content as you do curated content. To craft content that speaks to your audience you need to always research your audience. Remember that while an audience may not change, e.g. “Housewives with children under 2 who stay at home,” their ideas change through the generations. You wouldn’t create content for the wife and mother who stays home with her young children today that has any relationship to content that you may have created back in 1960.

Craft Engaging Social Media Content

Remember that each social network has its own personality and values. You need to make sure the content you share on the social media matches this personality. You can edit and change it to make it fit. Share older evergreen content when it relates to a discussion on social media as an answer. Also, don’t be afraid to share everything more than once on the same social media. The people who are online right now may not be online later.

Repurpose Your Content Well

When you repurpose content, do not copy and paste into new formats. Truly change the personality of the content by using it as research and making it practically new for the different format. You don’t want it to look cookie cutter; you want it to look and feel new. All content should be housed on your website, so by making it new you avoid issues of duplicate content, and maintain the originality of the piece. Cross-link to all your content as needed to tie it in.

Tell Your Story

The best way to improve brand awareness is to find ways to tell your story. You’ll generate more leads and make more conversions by getting close to your audience, and letting them get to know who you are, why you are who you are, and what you stand for. Craft a compelling story that puts your audience front and center.

Plan in Advance

You know the saying that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. When it comes to content, nothing could be truer. You need to decide how much content you want to create, what formats the content will take, and how much curated content you want to add. In addition, you need to put it all in writing in the form of a publication calendar so that you can visually see how it all ties in with your product funnel.

Promote Everything

Whether it’s curated content, content you’ve created in its original form, or repurposed content, it’s important to share it all. Promotion is at the heart of your success. Promote via social media, pay per click, email marketing and affiliates. The more ways you can find to promote the content that you want your audience to see, the better conversions you’ll see.

Get Help

All of this seems like a lot of work, and it is. But, you can do it by getting help. You can outsource to individuals and manage everything yourself, or you can hire a company or a content manager or content strategist to help you with the process. You can be as hands on or off as you want as long as the content that is created and promoted fits your brand.

Your audience wants a continuous flow of information, and they want it in different forms and from different resources. You can offer them the best of all worlds by giving them the content you believe is valuable that other people create, and by providing them with your original content in many different forms for their use. Putting all that together in a cohesive form needs to be planned in advance to make it work seamlessly.

When you are guest blogging, the first thing to understand is what your goals are for doing so. Some typical goals are gaining credibility, spreading awareness and building backlinks. But, in order to know whether or not you’re effective in reaching your goals, you’ll need to know how to track the effectiveness.

* Tracking Traffic – To know if the backlinks are working to gain traffic, you’ll need to get advanced about using Google Analytics. You can set up inside analytics to track traffic coming from certain domains. Set up one for each domain you’ve guest blogged at. If a particular blog isn’t working to get traffic, stop guest blogging there and move on. If one is working well, pitch more blog posts to them.

* Tracking Blogs – When you publish a guest blog post you should put the blog name into a spreadsheet, with a link to your guest post. Make a copy of the landing page link in the spreadsheet and a note of whatever freebies or discounts you offered those website visitors.

* Tracking Comments – Using the spreadsheet, you want to periodically click through to the post so you can see if there are comments on your post. That way you can respond to them. Being responsive to comments is an important component of successful guest blogging.

* Tracking Sales – If you have set up specific landing pages for each place you put a guest blog, it will be super simple to determine which guest blog posts are getting the most sales. This is another reason to set up special links and special landing pages, as well as special affiliate accounts for the bloggers who let you guest post.

* Tracking Newsletter Sign-Ups – If you’ve used some of your blog posts to get more newsletter sign-ups then you should have no trouble knowing where sign-ups came from, since they should go to a special list designed to collect these names.

* Tracking Social Media – When you guest post you should also put social media links in your bio box. But, it can be hard to know where the links came from. So, you can build something in to help you track such as asking them a question in the blog post and asking them to go answer that question at your Facebook group, or to tweet with a certain hashtag. Plus, you can use the native analytics to find out where visitors are originating from.

* Tracking Your Ranking – While Google is not focused on page rank anymore, the fact is you still want your search results to appear on the first or second page for keywords that you are trying to rank for, right? Therefore you still want to know how and where Google has ranked your site.

* Use the Tools of the Trade – There are software and tools that you can use to help you track your guest blogging, such as Link Assistant. Using this software you can find out how you rank for specific keywords, visitors and more.

Link to Link Assistant – http://www.link-assistant.com/

Some things are easier to track than others, such as traffic. Other things you may have to think about a little harder. But, you can be sure that if there is a will there is a way to track what you need to know, to ensure that your guest blogging adventures are a success.

During your overall content creation strategy, do you ask yourself before spending time on any piece of content whether or not it is scalable? It’s a good idea to consider this issue. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create some content that can only exist in one format, but it does mean that you might want to spend less time and effort on content that cannot be repurposed.

* Look at Your Content Goals – During every stage of content creation it’s important to keep tabs on whether the content you’re producing is working or not. First, take a look at your content goals and then check your metrics to ensure that the content you’re creating is getting you closer to meeting those goals. Plus, evaluate whether the content you have already can benefit from scaling.

* Repurpose – Can you repurpose old blog posts? Can you create infographics out of stats that you’ve collected? Can you create a slide share off an old report? How about a YouTube video? If you can create anything you have already made into a different format with added flavor based on the place it will be distributed, then you will make the most of your content.

* Evaluate New Content for Scalability – Going forward, evaluate each potential new piece of content for scalability in advance of creating it. That way you won’t waste as much time or money on content that can’t be used in other ways. Once you have decided what content can be repurposed and used in different ways, craft a plan to get it done.

* Make Use of Technology – The other issue about content scalability is the technology available to deliver your content. Is your website responsive? If not, then it will be difficult for some of your users to view your content in any form. Make use of the technology that is available and upgrade your technology quickly to become responsive. More people are buying mobile technology than are buying PCs today, so the time is now.

It’s important to deliver the right content to the right people using the right channels at the right time. To do this you need to research your audience, plan the content you will deliver and know what technology you need to deliver it. Plus, you need to know when your audience is ingesting the content and through what mediums. This takes a lot of research and time spent on understanding how everything works in concert together.

Once you garner an understanding of how everything works together, you’ll be able to ensure that you create mostly scalable content that will enable you to get more bang for your content buck. If you can reach more people with the same amount of content but distributed through different technology in different formats, you’ll essentially unleash a multiplier effect that will explode your reach exponentially.

When you create a video blog and publish it, you’re not done. You will now need to do work to promote your videos, as well as your blog and YouTube channel. The more time you spend on promotion, the more opportunity you have to get the word out to your audience. It’s not hard to do if you know what to do. These ideas will give you a start at video blog promotion.

* Put Them on YouTube – Host your public vlogs on YouTube because that is the most popular video blogging platform available. They’ll be ranked higher, and you can use their system to easily promote your vlogs.

* Embed Them in Your Blog – Even though the vlog is on YouTube, you should still write a blog post and intro to the vlog and embed it into your blog. Remember to include in the title that a video is included, and include a good description.

* Allow Others to Embed Them – Don’t disable the ability for people who like your video to embed it into their own blogs. This will give you more exposure.

* Share on Twitter – Always share your video blogs, from your blog post on Twitter, with a very short blurb to entice people to watch it.

* Share on Facebook – Using Facebook to share videos is a great way to get the word out about your video. Shorter videos are best, using either the Embed feature or just a link with a short blurb.

* Share on Google+ – Naturally you should share everything you do on Google+ because of the fact that Google Search is still the number one search engine.

* Add an Appropriate Title – A keyword-rich, direct and to-the-point title is the best thing you can do for every blog post, video or not.

* Don’t Forget the Description – On YouTube there is a place to describe the video. It’s important to use the space you have to its full potential to include a link to your website and any products you are promoting.

* Use Tags Effectively – Using tags is often skipped today. Some people swear they’re useless, but they’re there for a reason. Use descriptive tags that mean something with keywords that fit the video.

* Like Your Own Video – It might seem strange but liking your own videos is important as it gets people started, plus people who are connected to you see that you liked it and it’s another way to show up in their streams.

* Create Video Responses to Other People’s Videos – If you have a good video that fits as a response to someone else’s video, especially if they are popular, send it as a video response after personalizing it as a response. This may earn you an entirely new audience.

Marketing and promoting your video blogs is an important step to making sure that people see the work you’ve done and start recognizing you as the expert you are. Don’t hide your work by continuously producing without promoting.

Creating content isn’t just about text blog posts; it’s about a whole host of different types of content, and even more than what is listed below. However, these are the types of content that are most consumed by all types of audiences.

1. Memes – These are images that invoke certain emotions combined with quotes from someone famous, or even from yourself if you have written something profound, factual or thoughtful. You can use a site like Canva.com to make your memes.

2. Infographics – If you have data-centric content and need a new way to impart the information to your audience, use an infographic. An infographic is a long graphic with many images and data explained in an easily understandable way.

3. Short Blog Posts – Have blog posts that are about 500 words long that explain information that is very focused on one topic. This type of post can provide an informational overview on a topic, but doesn’t go that in-depth.

4. Long Blog Posts – Every person who is using content for marketing should include long in-depth, authoritative pieces of content. These can be anywhere from 750 to 3000 words. These might consist of guides, reviews, and “how to” posts.

5. EBooks – An eBook is usually someplace around 10,000 words long, but don’t let that frighten you. Think of it as just 20 short blog posts. If you write 20 short blog posts about the same topic, explaining how to do something, you can make them into an eBook.

6. EReports – Usually 2500 words at least and up to 7500 words, an eReport usually covers some basic educational information about a topic as well as solutions for problems that the audience may have.

7. Social Media Blurbs – When you promote your blog posts, eBooks, eReports and other content, you’ll need a social media blurb. Make them different for each network to make it unique and original.

8. Videos – Creating regular videos for your website or blog and putting them on YouTube is a great way to get more views and create more content. Videos are shared more often than text content and have potential to go viral.

9. Testimonials – Asking your customers and clients to provide testimonials is a great way to get content on your website that you did not create. The testimonials will mean more if you provide links back to the person’s site who gave them, plus come straight from them without editing.

10. Product Reviews – When you recommend products, why not do a full product review? It’s a great way to get more content, as well as to promote a product you like. Be fair about the products and be forthcoming about how you obtained the product and that if they buy it you’ll get a commission.

11. Podcasts – These are audio files and are great for those of your listeners who like to take the content on the go.

You can create these types of content by repurposing content that you already have. For example a “how to” blog post can become a “how to” video. Several blog posts on one topic can become an eReport, or an eReport can become an eCourse – it just depends on the topic. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and break things up.

The fact is, blogging is a very important tool for marketing any business today. Not only can blogging build a business, it can also become a business. Blogging is essentially writing articles about a particular topic of interest based on the subject or niche of the website where the blog resides. But it does so much more and there are so many reasons to keep blogging.

1. To Tell Your Brand’s Story – Blogging is a simple way to tell the story of your brand through case studies, historical information, and by sharing data. People love reading about how you got started and why.

2. To Establish Expertise – If you want people to realize that you’re an expert in your niche, blogging regularly about the topic is an excellent way to do so. If you can blog three to five times a week about a niche, you’re obviously an expert.

3. To Attract New Clients – Blogging about what you do, why you do it, and how you do it will go far in creating new opportunities for getting more clients. Even if you feel as if you’re giving away all the information free on your blog, people who need the work done will still hire you.

4. To Improve Your SEO – Search engine optimization involves many factors, but one is on-page keywords that help search engines find your blog in order to send people to it who use those words to find information.

5. To Find Your Business’s Voice – As you talk about new products, services, or other issues within your niche, you are also creating a voice for your company that will carry it forth to new customers. If you’re excited about a product, your audience will be too. If you’re serious about it, your audience will be too. It’s all in word choice.

6. To Interact with Your Audience – Many people do not think of a blog as social media, but it really is. When you open up comments to your blog, it gives you a chance to interact with your audience based on the topic you want to discuss. Use that opportunity to get feedback and even for new product ideas.

7. To Use Resources Wisely – Most businesses have limited marketing budgets, and blogging uses that budget very wisely due to the amount of return you can expect on your investment. Blogging is the long game, and the blogs you post today will still be working for you a year from now if you plan appropriately. It’s all about momentum.

8. To Educate Your Audience – Blogs are an excellent way to educate your audience about problems and issues that affect them. Plus, it’s a simple way to get out news regarding solutions that you want to offer them.

Blogging will build your business faster than almost any other activity, especially if your business is an online business. If you’ve studied your audience enough to understand what they want to read, and blog as often as possible, you’ll create a lot of momentum in your business and your blog.