5 Things to Consider When Setting Your Content Marketing Goals for the New Year

New Years is known for parties, but it’s also known as a time to set goals. Have you set any content marketing goals for the next year?

Are you a small business owner who is trying to figure out your content marketing goals for the new year? If so, considering these five things will help you make the best decisions.

1. What are you trying to accomplish through content marketing?

Are you hoping to drive more traffic to your site through the content you create? Do you want to establish yourself as an authority in your niche? Perhaps you want to have an easy way to answer the questions that people ask over and over again about your company or products or services. (It’s a lot easier to send someone a link to a blog post than to continually answer the same questions via email, as an example.)
There aren’t necessarily right or wrong goals for your content marketing, but it’s important to at least know what your goals are, so that you can plan and execute your content marketing efforts more strategically.

2. What type of content do you want to create, or have created for you?

There are many factors to consider here. If you’re going to create your own content, you need to consider what you enjoy, are and are not good at or are interested in learning. For instance, if you hate to write, and don’t want to hire someone else to do the writing, video content may be a better option for you than heavy written content.

3. What kind of budget do you have for content marketing?

Content marketing doesn’t have to be expensive, but it will cost you, either in terms of time or money, or possibly both, depending on which options you choose.

If you opt to do it all yourself, you need to determine where you’re going to find the time to do it. Unless you budget time for it, it likely won’t happen. If you’re going to hire someone else to do it, you need to do a bit of number crunching to figure out how much you can afford.

Do you want to hire someone to create content for you, do you want to create it yourself, or do you want to use a hybrid approach?

4. What can you do yourself, and what will you need to hire others to do?

This takes things in number three above, a step deeper. A great thing to consider is that you can use a hybrid approach to content creation. Some of my clients hire me to write their content, but create their own videos. This saves them both time (due to the content I create for them) and money (due to the content they create for themselves). This also allows business owners to focus on areas of strength and passion in their content marketing efforts, while handing off what is for them less desirable, but effective forms of content marketing.

5. How frequently will you post content?

There is a wide range of opinions out there when it comes to how frequently you should update your blog, and where else you should have content. For example, some people feel you should update your blog every day, and others say once a week or even more sporadically than that is fine. Others state you should have content as many places as possible, such as on your blog, on various social media platforms, on YouTube, iTunes, etc.

My personal stance on this is that at a bare minimum, you should update your blog once per week, more if you can. But the bottom line goes back to how much time and money you have to devote to content marketing. More may be better, but it’s only better if you can do it consistently. So be realistic when it comes to determining how frequently you can create content or how much content you can afford to have created for you.

The answers to the above questions will be different for every business owner, so don’t worry about how you “should” answer them. The main thing is to think about them as you plan out your content marketing goals for the coming weeks and months in order to have the best possible results.

Your Turn

I’d love to hear your answer to at least one of the above questions, or alternatively, hear about your content marketing goals and how you came up with them. Leave a comment below to let me know your thoughts!