This lesson covers deciding which content types and formats will best help your business reach its goals.
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Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
This is module 5.
In the previous lesson, we looked at setting goals for our content.
In this lesson, we’ll look at the different types of content that we’ll include in our content strategy.
You can read about each of these content types, including the challenges of creating each of these types, recommended best practices, and links to useful tutorials, tools, and other helpful resources by visiting the URL on your screen.
I’ve listed them here, but I won’t go into each specific type in this lesson.
Content formats include not only common formats like text, images, video, and audio but also interactive formats, virtual and augmented reality, and live streaming.
What I do want to cover in this lesson are the key things to consider when making decisions about which content types you will use.
So, the first thing to consider is your target audience’s needs.
There are many different kinds of business models and what type of business you’re in will affect which types of content you should create to keep your audience engaged.
For example, if we look at these side-by-side charts of content types for B2B and B2C businesses, we can see that while both types of businesses use articles and videos, with B2B businesses, there’s more emphasis on using content types like webinars, case studies, and whitepapers, whereas B2C businesses focus more on using infographics, charts, and long articles.
So what kind of business are you in? What type of audience will you be creating content for?
The next area is knowing what types of content our audience wants to consume, do they prefer their information delivered in the form of blog posts, webinars, case studies, eBooks, etc.?
As we will see in the next lesson, knowing which types of content we will need to create for different stages of our audience’s buying journey is also important.
Resources are the other important area to consider when choosing content types.
These resources mostly have to do with our budget and what kind of team we have available to work on our content.
For example, if our content strategy requires the regular production of high-quality videos, then we obviously need to make sure that we have the budget to cover this and access to people with video production skills, plus the tools to create and edit video content, and so on.
That’s one of the challenges we talked about in module 2.
An important part of creating our content strategy, then, is working with budgets and knowing what percentage of our total marketing budget will be allocated to areas like content production and marketing activities.
So, to summarize what we have covered in this lesson…
To create an effective content strategy, we not only need to understand our target audience and set content goals, we also need to familiarize ourselves with different content types and formats,
We need to know what kind of business we are in, as different business models need different content types.
We need to understand our audience’s content preferences and which content types work best for different stages of the buyer journey,
We need to assess our resources in terms of the budget and team we have to work with, and then we have to decide which content types we’ll create to meet our audience’s needs within our available resources.
For more information about all of these areas, see the tutorials and lessons listed on the screen.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at doing a content audit, which is taking an inventory of our existing content to see how it’s performing and identify any gaps or opportunities that we may be missing out on.
Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.
This lesson covers how to use your target audience information to set SMART goals for your content, plus defining your business goals, aligning your content strategy with your business goals, and determining what you want to achieve with your content (e.g. drive traffic, generate leads, build brand awareness, etc.).
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Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
This is module 4.
In the previous lesson, we looked at understanding our target audience.
In this lesson, we’ll look at setting content goals for our content strategy.
Setting content goals involves identifying what we want to achieve with our content, and then developing specific, measurable, and actionable targets to help us achieve these objectives.
Here are the general steps to follow when setting content goals:
First, identify our target audience. Understanding their demographics, interests, and pain points will inform the types of content that we should be creating.
Next, define our business objectives. We need to determine how our content will support our overall business objectives, such as driving website traffic, increasing conversions, building brand awareness, and so on.
Next, establish specific, measurable, and actionable goals: For each objective we set, we’ll need to create specific, measurable, and actionable goals that align with our objective. For example, “Increase website traffic by 30% within the next six months.”
Also, we need to prioritize our goals based on importance and feasibility. This will help us focus our resources on the content that creates the most impact.
We also need to regularly review and adjust our goals, because the digital landscape is always changing, and so what worked well before may not work as well now.
So, we need to make sure that our goals are current and feasible.
Another important area is to measure and analyze our content’s performance. Here, we can use analytics tools to track performance and measure the success of our content against our goals. This will then help us identify areas for improvement and allow us to make data-driven decisions instead of guessing.
By following these steps, we can set clear and measurable content goals that will align with our business objectives and that will help us achieve our desired outcomes.
So, let’s explore each of these areas now in a little more detail.
The first step is to identify our target audience.
We’ve already covered this in module 3, so if you need help identifying your target audience, just go back and review that module.
The next step is to identify our business objectives.
Before we can identify our business objectives, however, we should have a clear idea of our business vision, mission, and core values.
If you need help with any of these areas, then visit the URL on this screen for an in-depth tutorial.
The next step is to establish specific, measurable, and actionable goals. For each objective or goal that we specify, we need to create specific, measurable, and actionable goals that will align with our objectives.
For example, our goal might be to increase website traffic by 30% within the next six months.
We can use SMART goals to set specific, measurable, and actionable goals to help us achieve this objective.
At this point, we will also want to define the metrics that we will use to measure our results.
If you need help or more information on content metrics, visit the URL on the screen.
The next step is to prioritize our goals based on importance and feasibility.
This will help focus our resources on the content that will create the most impact.
When prioritizing content goals, it’s important to consider both the importance and the feasibility of each goal.
Importance refers to how closely the goal aligns with our overall objectives, while feasibility takes into account the resources, time, and any other constraints that can impact our ability to achieve the goal.
One way to prioritize content goals is to use a method like the Eisenhower Matrix, which separates goals into four categories based on their importance and feasibility:
So…
Important and feasible are goals that should be prioritized and tackled first, as they will have the greatest impact and can be completed with the resources that we have available.
For example, creating product announcement blog posts when new products are released or existing products are updated would likely fall into this category.
The next category is important but not feasible. These goals are important, but can’t be completed given current constraints, so we might need to put these on hold or reevaluate them later to determine if they can be made more feasible.
An example of a goal that might fall in this category is producing a high-budget video ad campaign when we’ve only been given a very low budget to create our content.
Not important but feasible goals are not critical to our objectives, but could still be achieved within our available resources.
These goals can be completed if time allows but should be given lower priority than more important goals.
For example, translating website pages into another language that isn’t critical for our target audience would probably fall into this category.
And the last category is not important and not feasible, If goals are neither important nor feasible, then just drop them. They are not important and they are not feasible.
When using a method like the Eisenhower Matrix, it’s important to list all of our goals, then evaluate each one, add them into one of these four categories, and make a decision based on the category we’ve selected.
The next step is to continually review and adjust our goals.
As mentioned earlier, the digital landscape is always changing, so what worked well before may not work as well now.
The last step is to track our goals and measure and analyze our content performance using analytics tools. This will help us identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions.
So, to summarize what we have covered in this lesson, setting content goals involves steps like:
Identifying our target audience
Defining our business objectives
Establishing SMART goals
Prioritizing our goals according to importance and feasibility
Regularly reviewing and adjusting our goals to make sure they remain aligned with our objectives, and
Measuring and analyzing our content performance against the goals that we have set.
For more information about each of these areas, see the tutorials and lessons that are listed on the screen.
That’s all for this lesson.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at the different types of content to include in our content strategy.
Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.
This lesson looks at ways and methods to identify the demographics, interests, and pain points of your target audience, create user personas for your business, and understand the buyer’s journey and what types of content will be most relevant and valuable to your audience at each different stage of their journey.
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Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
Hello and welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
So far, we’ve looked at what a content strategy is, why your business needs one, and the benefits and importance of having a clear and defined content strategy in module 1.
We then looked at the main challenges of managing content effectively and what we need to put in place before we can develop an effective content strategy. That was module 2.
This is module 3, and this lesson is all about identifying and understanding our target audience.
Understanding our target audience is essential to develop an effective content strategy that will help our business succeed.
By identifying key characteristics of our target audience such as demographics, their interests, and their pain points, we can then create content that will speak directly to their needs, desires, and motivations.
So, how do we identify our target audience?
First, let’s look at what we are trying to understand about our audience.
Demographics relates to a market or a sector of the population.
Understanding our audience’s demographics lets us tailor our content strategy and content to better meet the specific needs of our customers.
Demographics relates to attributes like age, gender, income, education, occupation, geographical location, maybe even their family structure or lifestyle, if that’s important, and psychographics.
Psychographics is similar to demographics, but it deals with attributes that are harder to observe, such as mental and emotional characteristics and motives, whereas demographics are more visible and easier to determine.
So, things like your audience’s values, beliefs, and attitudes are psychographic attributes, whereas age, income, and occupation are demographics.
Now, the next set of information that we want to identify relates to our target audience’s interests and hobbies.
Understanding our target audience’s interests and hobbies can help us create messaging and advertising content that will fit their preferences and resonate with our audience, keep them engaged longer with our business or website, and create a more personalized approach that will help to increase our chances of attracting new customers and retaining existing ones.
To identify the interests and hobbies of our audience, we need to know things like:
What do they like to do in their free time?
What are they interested in learning more about?
Here are some examples of questions we can ask to uncover these answers:
“What are some of your favorite hobbies or activities outside of work?”
“What are some of the books, movies, or TV shows you enjoy?”
“What are some of the websites or blogs you like to visit?”
“What kind of music do you like to listen to?”
“What kind of events or activities do you like to attend?”
“What kind of sports or fitness activities are you interested in?”
“What kind of hobbies or activities do you enjoy with your family?”
“What are some of your favorite travel destinations or dream vacation spots?”
“What are some of the volunteer or community activities you’re involved in?”
“What are some of the causes or social issues that you care about?”
Another area we want to identify about our target audience are their pain points.
Their challenges, problems, and frustrations.
So what problems are they trying to solve?
And how can your product or service help to address these pain points?
Understanding our audience’s pain points lets us tailor our content to address their specific needs, desires, and concerns.
Now, how do we gather data about our target audience’s demographics, interests, and pain points?
If you visit the page listed on this slide, you will find more detailed information about each of these sources and links to tools and resources that you can use to gather this data.
Another way to identify your target audience is to create user personas for your business.
A user persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer.
User personas provide a detailed and specific picture of who your target audience is, what their needs and goals are, and how they think and behave.
You create a user persona from the data and research gathered about your target audience.
And these allow you to address your ideal customer when creating your content.
And there are a number of free user persona online generators that you can use to create user personas.
Visit the URL on the screen for a list of free tools.
The other important area that will help you identify your target audience and their needs, is understanding your customer’s buyer journey.
The buyer journey is the process that a potential customer goes through before making a purchase.
The stages of the buyer journey are typically divided into Awareness, Consideration, Decision, and Retention.
In the awareness stage, your potential customer becomes aware of a problem or need that they have.
In the consideration stage, our potential customer is actively searching for a solution to meet their needs and is considering their options.
In the decision stage, potential customers have made a decision to solve their problem, and they are now looking for the best solution, and they are ready to make a purchase.
In the retention stage, the customer has already purchased the product or service and is now using it.
Since they have already purchased, this stage is not typically considered to be part of the customer’s purchasing journey but your content strategy still needs to accommodate this audience group in terms of retaining them and building customer loyalty.
Visit the URL on the screen for more details on understanding your customer’s buyer journey, the types of content you can create for each different stage of their journey, and useful tools and resources that will help you save time.
So, to summarize what we have covered in this lesson, let’s look at the action steps that we need to take to identify our target audience.
One, gather data about their demographics, interests, and pain points. There are various methods you can use to do this,
Two, create user personas. There are free online user persona generator tools that you can use, and
And three, understand the customer’s buyer journey and the best content types to help them at each stage.
For detailed tutorials covering each of these areas and links to tools and resources, just visit the URLs shown on your screen.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at setting content goals to create an effective content strategy.
Thank you for watching this video and I’ll see you in the next lesson.
This lesson covers what you need to know and do before you can create an effective content strategy for your business.
You will also learn about the challenges of managing content effectively and what you need to put in place first.
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Watch the video lesson below or refer to the video transcript:
Video Transcript
Welcome back to our video course on how to create an effective content strategy for your business.
This is module 2.
In module 1, we introduced you to the course and looked at what a content strategy is, why your business needs one, and the benefits and importance of having a clear content strategy.
In this lesson, we are going to look at what you need to know and do before you can create a content strategy for your business.
Now, there are obvious and not-so-obvious challenges to managing content effectively.
So, let’s look at some of the obvious challenges first.
These include things like:
Having too much content. The more content you have, the more content you have to manage. Without good content management systems, it’s hard to keep your content organized and easy to find, and important information can end up getting lost or overlooked.
It’s also harder to coordinate your content when you have multiple people or teams contributing to it.
Also, having outdated, inaccurate, or obsolete information can be confusing for users and harm your credibility.
Another challenge is adapting to new technologies and platforms. Your business needs to keep up with new technologies, systems, and tools to stay current and manage its content effectively.
Keeping sensitive or confidential content secure and protected from unauthorized access or leaks is another challenge.
And so is tracking and measuring content performance, which is essential for making informed decisions.
Keeping content integrated and aligned with other systems and processes within your organization is also challenging, but important to optimize efficiency and avoid confusion or duplication of effort.
And budget and resources constraints is a challenge for all businesses, especially small businesses.
Now, the not-so-obvious challenges of managing your content effectively don’t become apparent until you actually start trying to manage your content effectively.
Then you discover that effective content management is a Catch-22 situation.
If you are not familiar with this expression, think about the dilemma that most people face when they first try to get a job.
You’ve probably heard people complain that no one will give you a job if you don’t have experience, but how can you get experience if no one will give you a job?
That’s an example of a Catch-22 situation.
Similarly, when it comes to managing your content effectively, you discover that “You can’t plan, produce, promote, and manage your content effectively until you have put in place the right systems and processes to plan, produce, promote, and manage your content effectively.”
But then you are faced with the challenge of do you put content management systems in place first and then start to create and promote your content, or do you start creating and promoting your content first and then worry about putting systems in place later?
As we will see, this has a significant and direct impact on our content strategy.
So, let me explain what I mean.
Your content strategy is part of your content management system, so if we start creating and promoting content before developing our content strategy and putting systems in place to manage our content effectively, then what’s the point of having a content strategy?
Let’s go back to our definition of a Content Strategy from module 1.
A content strategy is…
A plan for creating, publishing, and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to achieve specific business goals and objectives.
A content strategy also helps you:
Define who your target audience is and understand their needs and interests
Create the right content to address their needs and speak to their interests
Determine the most effective channels for distributing your content
And track and measure performance so you can continue to improve your results.
So, without a content strategy, we are just creating content blindly with no real direction or ways to measure and track our content’s performance, so it’s all going to be hit-and-miss and guesswork and assumptions.
As we will see later in this course, eventually your business will end up with a very difficult mess to deal with and many more problems to try and sort out.
So we want to put a content strategy in place before we start creating and promoting our content.
But, this has its own challenges.
The first challenge is that a content strategy involves all areas of our business because content impacts all areas of our business.
Even writing a simple article or blog post for our website has to take into account areas like marketing and research, product development, accounting, legal stuff related to what you can and can’t say in your content, and even different types of technology like servers and different applications that are used by different teams or departments to store and send information, and so on.
You can read more about this challenge by following the link on your screen.
The point is that our content strategy has to take all of this into account.
The next challenge is that creating high-quality content and managing our content effectively requires quite a sizeable team.
There are many different roles involved in the process of planning, creating, promoting, and managing content.
So, whether you’re an individual blogger or part of a larger organization, all of these roles and responsibilities have to be met, so our content strategy also needs to take all this into account.
This leads to the next challenge, which is that it takes significant resources to create high-quality content and manage this content effectively.
You need a sizeable budget and personnel with the right skills and expertise, plus spending time doing content research, content planning, and documenting systems.
All of this is time-consuming and takes resources away from other areas of our business.
Most businesses operate with very limited resources and have very little time to devote to areas like content planning and documenting systems, so that’s a big challenge when it comes to creating a content strategy.
And finally, the last of the “not-so-obvious” challenges only becomes obvious when we try to start putting our content strategy together.
And this challenge is that all of the basic business foundations need to be in place for our content strategy to be truly effective.
Let’s think about what this means.
If the aim of our content strategy is to help our business achieve specific goals and objectives, then our business first needs to define those goals and objectives before we can put a strategy together to achieve these goals and objectives.
But it’s not just setting goals and objectives.
Before we can put an effective content strategy together, we also need to have a clear marketing plan, and this comes from having a clear marketing strategy, which comes from having a clear business plan, which comes from having a clear business strategy, which comes from having clear strategic goals and objectives, which come from having a clearly-stated business vision, mission statement, and core values.
If all of these processes are not clearly defined, then our content strategy will not be as effective.
So, let’s recap what we need to know and do before developing a content strategy for our business.
First, we need to be aware of the challenges of managing content effectively and
Then, we need to make sure that all of the basic business foundations are in place.
I’ve listed a number of articles on this screen that I recommend you read, as these cover in more detail everything that we’ve talked about in this lesson.
So, make sure to visit the website and if you have subscribed to the free email course, you will get additional information on everything that we cover in this video course.
So, that’s the end of this lesson.
In the next video, we’ll cover module 3, which is all about understanding our target audience.
Thank you for watching and I’ll see you in the next lesson.
Password management tools let you easily store your login passwords and generate secure passwords.
Password Management Tools
Password management tools let you easily store your login passwords and generate secure passwords.
Managing content typically also involves managing many different accounts (e.g. other websites, social media platforms, subscription services, emails, membership sites, online banking, etc.).
If you have many online accounts to manage, keeping track of all your logins and passwords can be daunting.
A basic best practice for password security is to avoid using the same login details for every account, as this presents a huge online security risk.
This is where password management tools like the ones listed below come in handy.
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Manage Your Logins And Passwords More Effectively
In the course of managing your content, you may undoubtedly end up also having to manage many different accounts across many different websites.
If you manage multiple accounts and use one login and password for everything, you will create a major security issue for your business, as anyone getting hold of your login and password combination will then be able to access and take over all of your accounts.
Good password security practices involve not only creating strong and secure passwords but also using different passwords for different accounts.
Without a good system to keep all of your different logins and passwords organized, easily accessible, and difficult for others to access, however, keeping track of many different passwords for many different accounts can quickly become daunting.
Sure, you can use a spreadsheet. Fortunately, however, there are excellent software tools available to help you manage and keep track of all your logins and passwords, keeping these secure, saving you time, helping you stay organized, and of course, keeping all of your logins and valuable business data safe, secure, and protected.
Typically, with a password management tool, you can access the “vault” where all of your other passwords are stored using a master password.
After storing your login details, you then simply navigate to a site that requires your password, click on a button, and the tool will then automatically enter your login credentials and grant you access.
The password management tools listed below will save you a great deal of time managing your content across different sites and services.
RoboForm is one of the world’s leading password management software programs.
It is simple to install, easy to use, lets you fill in login usernames and passwords (and forms) automatically, and works on all devices (PCs, laptops, mobile devices, etc.), all browsers, and across all platforms.
Imagine having to memorize different logins and passwords for hundreds of accounts. RoboForm helps you manage multiple passwords easily and access all of your logins with a single click from your desktop PC, laptop, or mobile device.
RoboForm lets you easily manage logins for hundreds of online accounts
RoboForm also lets you print and save your stored details and synchronize logins between your computer or laptop and mobile device.
Use RoboForm to log in from mobile devices
RoboForm includes many handy features, including a password tool for generating and storing secure passwords.
RoboForm password generator
RoboForm is continually updated, secured with military-grade AES 256 encryption, and provides excellent user support.
KeePass is a free portable password manager for PC (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X), with ports available for Android, iPhone, iPad, and more.
KeePass keeps every username and password pair in an encrypted database, protected by a single master password or key (the only one you have to remember).
It doesn’t store your database in the cloud unless you upload it there.
Learn how to set up and use Amazon S3 to store, manage, and serve content on your website.
Using Amazon S3
This section covers how to set up and use Amazon S3 to store, manage, and serve content remotely on your website.
Amazon S3 is an affordable and almost limitless cloud storage solution that lets you store your files and large amounts of data, including images, media files, and website backups securely and embed these in your web content.
In this lesson, we provide an overview of the Amazon S3 service, show you how to set up an Amazon S3 account for your business, and how to upload files to S3 directories.
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Why Store Your Site’s Content In The Cloud?
Hosting and streaming large media files on your website (e.g. videos) can be expensive and sometimes even complicated.
When it comes to storing files to be used as content on your website, you have a number of options.
While the WordPress Media Library is a great tool for storing media files used in your content, these files are stored on your own server, and depending on your web hosting setup, these can take up excessive space and cause issues with site performance, or exceed your data or bandwidth allowance.
Another option is to upload and stream videos from a free video hosting site like YouTube, display images stored on Flickr, etc., and embed these into your content.
The problem with storing your web content files on free sites, however, is that you are not in control of your content. If, for example, the site changes its policies, this could have a significant effect on how your site can access your files and potentially even disrupt your entire business.
Given the above options and their respective challenges, a viable alternative is to serve content on your site that is stored and streamed from the cloud.
Many companies offer inexpensive cloud storage solutions that allow you to host and embed media, files, and documents into your website content.
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is an affordable, secure, and reliable cloud storage solution service from Amazon Web Services (AWS) that you can use to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web.
Amazon S3 lets you share, distribute and download zip, PDF, audio, and video files, and stream videos on your site without consuming a large amount of bandwidth or straining your server’s resources.
Essentially, you’re using Amazon’s servers to store as much information as you want (videos, audio files, images, large files, etc.) at very little cost (you’ll pay only a few dollars per month for large amounts of data use), making this an ideal solution for using media content on your website.
The video below provides an overview of the Amazon S3 service:
Note: Amazon S3 is one of several applications that Amazon offers in its stable of products, so it’s important not to confuse Amazon S3 with Amazon AWS (i.e. the entire suite of services).
Benefits Of Using Amazon S3
Amazon S3 helps to address some of the biggest technical challenges many businesses face managing content on their websites, like site speed, security, and bandwidth cost.
Here are some of the benefits of using Amazon S3 to host your site’s content:
Improve Site Speed
When you host images, videos, and other heavy bandwidth items like large downloadable files on your own server, the more simultaneous traffic you have (i.e. many users visiting your site at the same time), the slower your pages load on your visitors’ browsers.
If you have spikes in traffic, this extra load can even crash your site.
One of the benefits of storing content remotely on the cloud is that uploading images, videos, and other large bandwidth-consuming files to Amazon S3 instead of your own server allows thousands of visitors to access your information without slowing down your site because the files are being delivered from Amazon’s servers, not yours.
Storing large-sized files or a large number of files in the cloud and streaming these in your content remotely can help to improve your site’s performance.
Host Large-Sized Files
Imagine having a product launch where lots of customers try to download a number of large zip files hosted on your server. Your server could crash, support tickets would start piling up and what should be a very happy day would quickly turn into a nightmare.
If you host your images, videos, and other downloadable files on Amazon S3, your visitors will not experience your site slowing down, buffering, or crashing due to excessive bandwidth consumption.
You could have 100, 1,000, or 10,000 people downloading your zip files simultaneously without any problems.
Save Money Streaming Your Content
Another benefit of using Amazon S3 is how much money you can save. Amazon S3 is an “online scalable (simple) storage service,” which means that it’s essentially a hard drive in cyberspace with unlimited storage – you only pay for what you use.
When Amazon launched S3 back in 2006 (2007 in Europe) they began by charging only 15 cents per gigabyte, and this price has been getting cheaper over time. Currently, it’s in the range of around 3 cents per Gb. This means better service and more savings for you.
Storing large-sized files or a large number of files in the cloud and streaming these in your content remotely can help to keep your web hosting costs down.
Save Time Managing Your Media Content
One of the many benefits and advantages of using a remote storage service like Amazon S3 to add media to your content instead of serving those files from the WordPress Media Library or a free media-hosting site like YouTube is the amount of time you can save managing your media content.
For example, let’s say that you decide to change an image that you have used multiple times throughout your site.
Instead of searching and replacing every instance of that image on your entire site, you can simply upload the new image file and overwrite the old file in your Amazon S3 account. All instances of that file will then automatically update on your site.
There are many advantages to storing your website’s content files on the cloud.
Additionally, if you use WordPress, adding media files like images and videos to your content is as simple as copying and pasting the file’s link wherever you would like that file to display.
All images used on this site (except for the featured images containing the titles of our course modules and lessons) are streamed from an Amazon S3 account.
Read the relevant sections of the AWS website before creating an account.
You can sign up for a free Amazon S3 account and get a generous amount of storage and 12 months free…
Create an Amazon S3 account for free.
This allows you to experience the service without having to pay until you exceed their trial quota or period…
Amazon S3’s Free Tier gives you a generous amount of storage and 12 months free.
If this is your first time using an Amazon service, create a new account. Otherwise, sign in with your existing Root or IAM user account.
AWS Sign In
After logging in, go to your Dashboard section and click on Quick Links > My security credentials.
In the AWS Dashboard, click on My security credentials.
Inside the Your Security Credentials section, click on the Access keys tab.
You’ll need access keys to set up your service.
In the “Access Credentials” section, you will find your Access Key ID code and Secret Access Key code. Click on “Show” to reveal your Secret Access Key code.
You need both your Access Key ID code and Secret Access Key code to use the Amazon S3 service.
Copy both of these codes to a plain text file – make sure there are no spaces at the end of the code strings, or you will experience errors using the service.
Important: Never share your codes with anyone!
Save these codes for now on your hard drive (tip: don’t make the file name or location obvious). You will need these codes in the next step.
Note: If you need help creating directories (called “buckets”) to store your files or setting file permissions (so that other users can view, access, and download your files), we recommend watching the Amazon S3video course before proceeding to the next step.
You need to set file permissions for users to view or access files stored on Amazon S3.
You do not have to enable permissions on your files if you don’t plan to share your files with other users or want to keep these files private (e.g. backup files).
How To Upload And Share Files On Amazon S3
After setting up your Amazon S3 account, you can upload files from your hard drive to your Amazon AWS S3 buckets. These files will be stored as an S3 object.
An object consists of the uploaded file and its metadata. You can upload any kind of file you like to an S3 bucket (e.g. images, videos, audio files, backups, data, etc.)
Amazon S3 stores your files inside data containers called buckets.
As uploading files to Amazon S3 can be a little technical, we recommend using the tool described below to transfer files between your computer and your Amazon S3 account.
S3 Browser is a freeware tool for Windows users. You can use this tool to access, upload, and share files from your Amazon S3 account.
S3 Browser
After downloading and installing the S3 Browser tool, you will need to add your S3 account details (see the previous section for details on how to set up an Amazon S3 account).
Click on ‘Add new account’…
Add a new account in S3 Browser.
Enter your details:
Account Name
Access Key ID
Secret Access Key
Click ‘Save changes’ to update your settings.
S3 Browser – Add new account
Once your account is set up, the S3 Browser interface lets you access your S3 account.
Access your S3 account files via the S3 Browser interface.
S3 Browser provides a simple interface where you can perform tasks like set up, delete, and edit ‘buckets’ and folders, configure permissions, upload, download, and delete files and folders, and a whole lot more.
You can do everything you need inside the S3 Browser buckets screen.
To upload files or folders, navigate to the bucket and folder you want to upload your files to (or create a new bucket or folder), then click on ‘Upload’ and select your option …
Upload files or folders.
Locate and select the files (or folders) to upload and click ‘Open’.
Select the files to upload from your hard drive.
Your files will begin uploading to your S3 bucket on Amazon’s cloud server.
Your files will upload to your S3 bucket.
Consider upgrading to the S3 Browser PRO version for additional features, including faster uploading of files to your S3 account.
***
By default, anything uploaded to your Amazon S3 account will not be accessible to the public. You must set file permissions for uploaded items to make these visible or accessible if you plan to allow other users to view or download your files.
To set file permissions, select one or more files that you have uploaded.
Select your files.
Tick the checkboxes shown in the screenshot below to configure basic access permissions for your files (i.e. display images or share files).
Set your file permissions.
After setting file permissions, click the ‘Apply changes’ button to set file permissions.
Click ‘Apply changes’ to set your file permissions.
To copy your files’ URL(s) to your clipboard, click on ‘Copy’.
Copy your file URLs.
You can now paste the URL of your file wherever you need to use it.
For example, if using WordPress, you can add an image to your posts or pages using the WordPress Add Media tool.
Add images from Amazon S3 to your content.
If you get an error (e.g. an image or video is not displaying), check that the file’s access permissions have been set by copying the URL and pasting it into your web browser.
In addition to the tools described above, here are some alternative tools and applications you can use to upload, transfer, share, and backup files using your Amazon S3 account:
S3 File Transfer Tools
Cloudberry Explorer – This is a freeware file manager for Amazon S3. Cloudberry Explorer provides a user interface to Amazon S3 accounts allowing accessing, moving, and managing files, buckets, and vaults across your local and cloud storage.
Cyberduck – This is a free 3rd party tool (User Interface) that connects your computer to your Amazon AWS account. Cyberduck is like an FTP client that works with PCs & Macs.
S3 File Backup Tools
The tools below allow you to back up your files and data securely to Amazon S3 and can be used as part of your Content Backup Strategy.
Snapshot Pro – Snapshot lets you set up automated safe and secure site files and content backups to S3 and other remote storage locations at a frequency that suits you best (e.g. monthly, weekly, daily, even hourly.)
S3Backup – This is a Windows desktop application that allows you to use the Amazon S3 service for remote backups and secure online file storage.
Congratulations! Now you know how to set up an Amazon S3 account to store your data offsite and how to use Amazon S3 to upload, store, and share your files online.
Learn how to use Amazon S3 to store your web content.
Related Tutorials
See the lessons below for additional information related to this tutorial on how to use Amazon S3:
A list of resources referred to in the course content that are either temporarily or permanently unavailable.
Retired Resources
This section lists resources referred to in the course content that are temporarily or permanently unavailable.
We provide links to many useful tools, services, and resources throughout our course and the lessons.
As with all business and technology, some of these resources may be acquired by other businesses, merged with other technologies, temporarily put on hold, or permanently discontinued.
Unfortunately, we have no control over these external resources or the decisions made by their owners.
Note: Please feel free to contact us if you come across any links pointing to unavailable tools, services, or resources mentioned in the course. We will then aim to update the content and list these in the table below.
Resource
Notes
Status
Alternative
Tracker.ly
Tracker.ly is currently not accepting new clients.
Use this content troubleshooting guide to help you identify and fix content-related issues in your business.
Content Troubleshooting Guide
Use this content troubleshooting guide to identify and fix content-related issues in your business.
This troubleshooting guide will help you identify issues in your content that may be preventing your business from experiencing better results and presents fixes and solutions to improve your content management practices.
In this guide we’ll:
Show you a picture of what content management done right looks like and how it addresses most content problems.
Examine common areas where things can go wrong and present typical scenarios.
Troubleshoot the main issues preventing your content from performing better, identify their causes, and look for solutions to correct and fix these.
Refer to our content management glossary if you need help understanding some of the terms or concepts described in this section.
***
How To Use This Troubleshooting Guide
This guide is divided into sections listing the main content-related problems you may run into, with links to articles that expand on the possible causes and solutions to investigate.
We recommend starting with the section below, then coming back to this index page whenever you experience issues.
Let’s get started…
Knowing Where To Tap
A boilermaker was hired to fix a huge steamship boiler system that had stopped working, causing the ship owner tens of thousands of dollars in productivity losses.
After listening to the ship’s engineer describe the problem and asking a few questions, he went to the boiler room, looked at the maze of twisting pipes, listened to the thump of the boiler and the hiss of the escaping steam for a few minutes, and felt some pipes with his hands. Then he hummed softly to himself, reached into his overalls, took out a small hammer, and tapped a bright red valve one time.
Immediately, the entire system began working perfectly, and the boilermaker went home.
When the ship owner received a bill for five thousand dollars, he became outraged and complained that the boilermaker hadn’t even been in the engine room for fifteen minutes and requested an itemized bill.
So, the boilermaker sent him the following itemized bill as requested:
The aim of this troubleshooting guide is to show you “where to tap” to fix content-related issues and problems preventing your business from achieving its goals and objectives.
As you work through this guide, keep in mind that issues experienced at one level are often directly affected by the lack of systems and processes on their preceding levels.
Issues on one content level are often caused by a lack of systems and processes on the level that precedes it.
In practical terms, what this means is that if you experience content-related issues at the level of content production, content promotion, or content management, the underlying cause will probably be found to be related to issues at the content planning level.
In turn, issues at the content planning level are often caused by issues at the strategic level (i.e. a lack of a sound content strategy) and strategic-level issues are often caused by a lack of implementing foundational-level principles (i.e. business basics).
Use this simple chart when diagnosing content-related issues in your business.
This content troubleshooting guide aims to help you identify which level may be causing your issues so you can implement long-term fixes.
Before going any further, make sure to also read these articles:
The Challenges Of Managing Content Effectively – Content management challenges abound in all organizations. Learn about the main challenges to managing content effectively and how to address these.
Content Troubleshooting Goals And Objectives
Most users engage with businesses online via their websites, so it’s important to focus on improving the effectiveness of your web content.
Common web content troubleshooting goals and objectives include:
Improving overall website performance: This goal aims to optimize your website’s loading times, reduce bounce rates, and increase user engagement. This can be achieved by implementing a content delivery network (CDN), compressing images, and minifying code.
Increasing search engine visibility: This goal focuses on improving your website’s search engine rankings in order to drive more organic traffic. This can be achieved by optimizing meta tags, creating high-quality content, and building backlinks.
Enhancing user experience: This goal aims to improve the overall usability and navigation of your website, making it easier for users to find what they are looking for. This can be achieved by creating a clear and consistent website structure, improving website navigation, and making sure all links are working.
Increasing social media engagement: This goal focuses on driving more engagement on social media platforms. This can be achieved by creating shareable content, running social media contests, and incorporating social media sharing buttons on your website.
Boosting conversions: This goal aims to increase the number of website visitors that convert into customers or leads. This can be achieved by creating compelling calls to action, optimizing landing pages, and A/B testing different elements of your website.
Increasing brand awareness: This goal focuses on building brand recognition and reputation. This can be achieved by creating a consistent brand voice, incorporating brand imagery, and regularly publishing high-quality content.
Improving analytics tracking: This goal aims to ensure accurate tracking of website analytics in order to gain insights into user behavior and improve performance. This can be achieved by setting up Google Analytics, setting up tracking codes, and regularly monitoring website metrics.
Improving mobile optimization: This goal focuses on optimizing your website for mobile devices in order to provide a better user experience for mobile users. This can be achieved by creating a mobile-responsive design, reducing page load times, and simplifying navigation.
Now that we have a clearer understanding of what the aim of troubleshooting content is, let’s take a look at the issues that can prevent you from achieving these goals and objectives and how to address these.
Content Strategy-Related Issues
This section will help you identify, troubleshoot, and correct issues with your content strategy.
Here are some of the main problems experienced at this level:
Lack Of A Content Strategy – Your business does not have a content strategy.
Lack Of Business Planning – Foundational steps have not been implemented
Lack Of Resources – Your business lacks the human and financial resources to implement the content methods specified in the content strategy.
Lack Of Direction – Your business may be creating content but it lacks a clear purpose and direction. This is reflected in poor results.
Let’s go briefly through each of these issues.
Lack Of A Content Strategy
The Executive Level is responsible for creating a documented content strategy for your business.
The lack of a well-defined content strategy is often the root cause of most of the content-related issues your business will experience.
Your Content Strategy impacts all content-related areas of your business and is often the root cause of all other issues.
If your business lacks a content strategy, then the Executive level either:
Doesn’t fully understand that it is their responsibility to develop the content strategy, or
Hasn’t implemented the foundational steps that come before it (see next section below)
If your business lacks a content strategy, it’s most likely because other important foundational steps have not been implemented in the business beforehand.
Make sure that your business has implemented the processes listed in the chart below before developing a content strategy:
Your business needs to implement the basic business steps shown above before it can develop a Content Strategy.
For help and information on the above, see this lesson: Business Basics
Lack Of Resources
Your business strategy defines the overall budget of your business.
This budget determines the resources the business has available to invest in areas like hiring people for your content team and the budget it can allocate to different departments like sales, marketing, product development, etc.
The marketing strategy and marketing budget ultimately determine which content methods your business will use.
So, if your content strategy asks you to implement a specific content method (e.g. video marketing) but your team has insufficient human or financial resources to develop, employ, or promote this method effectively, then the solution is to either:
Review and adjust the content strategy (e.g. set more realistic expectations), or
Help your content team become more resourceful (e.g. learn to do the best you can to work within your limitations.)
For help and information in this area, see these lessons:
A Content Strategy tells your content team where to focus its efforts and sets the destination to aim for. The Content Plan helps your team get there by specifying what to do to and how to get it done.
So, if your team is lacking direction (e.g. by asking questions like “what are we supposed to be working on now?” or “what are we going to be working on next?”) then it probably lacks a well-defined Content Plan.
Before your business can create an effective Content Plan, however, the business has to have a clearly defined strategy as shown in the chart below.
Your business needs a Content Strategy before it can develop an effective Content Plan.
As the Executive Level is responsible for creating the Content Strategy, both the Executive Level and the Managerial Level have to work together to develop the Content Plan.
For more information and help on the above, see these course modules:
Before troubleshooting issues with Content Planning, make sure that systems and processes have been implemented in the preceding level (Content Strategy), and review the lessons and course modules below:
Your Content Plan is the practical “how to” implementation of your Content Strategy.
Effective content planning involves implementing systems and processes that will deliver better results in areas like Content Production and Content Promotion.
Unless processes are implemented to ensure that your content team only focuses on creating and promoting content that is aligned with the goals and objectives of your business, you will experience problems at the Content Planning level, such as:
Working in a constantly chaotic, disorganized, and crisis-driven environment; having no clear understanding of business goals or objectives (poor Planning Processes)
No clearly-defined areas of responsibility within the team leading to doubling up or missing important tasks and activities (poorly-defined Team Roles)
Missing important content events and opportunities (poorly managed or no Content Calendar)
Too much effort being spent on ineffective content planning or research (poorly defined Content Metrics)
Ignoring growing problems with existing content or sweeping these under the carpet (lack of scheduled Content Reviews)
Too much time being spent on content planning or research (lack of team member training or knowledge of using Content Planning & Research Tools)
It is important, then, to make sure that your Content Plan has implemented the processes listed in the chart below before moving into areas like Content Production and Content Promotion.
Content Planning issues affect your Content Production.
For more information and help in this area, see this course module: Content Planning
Before troubleshooting issues with Content Production, make sure that systems and processes have been implemented in the preceding levels (Content Strategy and Content Planning), and review the lessons and course modules below:
Implementing effective content production systems and processes will ensure that your business can consistently deliver content on time, targeted to the right users, in the right content types and formats.
Issues related to content production are often caused by the lack of systems or processes in areas such as:
Content Production Workflow – Different content types (e.g. articles, videos, ebooks, etc.) require different content production workflows. If you haven’t defined these different workflows, then you will run into workflow issues.
Workflow Documentation – Once you have defined the different types of content workflows your content team will focus on, it’s important to document these. A lack of documented workflows will cause many issues and problems in your content production.
Team Roles – Just as with content planning, unclear role responsibilities can lead to duplicated efforts and missed tasks and activities.
Content Calendar – Again, just as with content planning, a poorly managed (or no) content calendar can lead to missed opportunities and deadlines.
Production Team Meetings – Without a regular and structured team meeting schedule to discuss production issues, chaos ensues.
Content Production Tools – Are your team members aware of content production tools that can save them time and increase their productivity? Are they trained to use these tools competently and effectively?
Content Production issues affect Content Promotion.
If your team is experiencing issues related to content production, such as:
Content Output Is Low/Content Pipeline Has Dried Up – Your team is struggling to come up with new content ideas.
Content Is Late – Your content is not being delivered on time; your content team is missing important delivery deadlines.
Content Is Below Standard – Your content is not meeting expected quality standards
For more information and help in this area, see this course module: Content Production
Content Promotion-Related Issues
Before troubleshooting issues with Content Promotion, make sure that systems and processes have been implemented in the preceding levels (Content Strategy, Content Planning, and Content Production), and review the lessons and course modules below:
Implementing effective content promotion systems and processes will ensure that your business promotes content that strengthens its brand, performs well according to set metrics, delivers results that meet or exceed expectations, and that it can continue to improve and refine its processes.
Issues related to content promotion are often caused by the lack of systems or processes in areas such as:
Marketing Plan – The lack of an overall marketing plan results in not knowing when or which content to create or promote.
Content Marketing – The lack of a clear content marketing plan leads to focusing time and effort on content methods and activities that fail to meet your target audience’s needs and ultimately perform poorly.
Content Metrics – Not knowing which metrics to track and not tracking important metrics means that your business cannot measure results or improve its content performance.
Content SEO – To deliver optimal results, your content should be optimized for both humans and search engines. SEO-related issues include poor results in search engines or being penalized for failing to adhere to SEO guidelines.
Content Distribution – Not knowing which distribution channels or the right formats to use when sharing, publishing, and promoting your content leads to poor user engagement and poor results.
Content Promotion Tools – Not knowing about useful content promotion tools and services or how to effectively use these can lead to significant time and effort being spent on activities that could be automated or boosted to deliver better results such as wider reach, more engagement, higher conversion rates, etc.
An effective Content Promotion system helps to reduce Content Management issues.
For more information and help in this area, see this course module: Content Promotion
Content Management-Related Issues
Before troubleshooting issues with Content Management, make sure that systems and processes have been implemented in the preceding levels (Content Strategy, Content Planning, Content Production, and Content Promotion), and review the lessons and course modules below:
Implementing effective content management systems and processes will ensure that your business can continue to grow, scale this growth, and help it achieve its goals and objectives to realize its vision.
Issues related to content management are often caused by the lack of systems or processes in areas such as:
Content Organization – A lack of organization at this level results in your content team spending too much time and effort looking for the information it needs to get things done. This creates delays and missed deadlines, and results in wasted opportunities, wasted time and resources, etc.
Content Documentation – A lack of documentation puts your business at risk and creates many issues, such as inconsistent standards, low-quality output, etc.
Content Tracking – Not having tracking systems in place to monitor, measure, analyze, and review data and performance means that your business is operating on guesswork and hence cannot improve its results.
Content Protection – A lack of content protection measures can result in copyright issues, unauthorized use of your content or content theft, etc.
Content Linking – A lack of an effective content-linking management strategy can lead to issues like broken links, links leading to error pages (poor user experience), having to manually search and replace outdated links throughout your website, etc.
Content Reviews – Not performing regular content reviews can lead to a growing body of content that is outdated, inaccurate, obsolete, or irrelevant to users, leading to poor user experience, loss of traffic or conversions, etc.
Content Backup Strategy – Not having a content backup strategy in place places your business at serious risk of losing some or all of its content should something unexpected happen (e.g. loss of server, security breaches, etc.)
Content Management Tools – Not knowing about useful content management tools and services or how to effectively use these can lead to significant time, effort, and resources being wasted trying to manage content and content-related processes that could be automated and better organized.
Effective Content Management systems and processes will help your business achieve its goals and objectives.
For more information and help in this area, see this course module: Content Management
Outsourcing-Related Issues
When troubleshooting issues related to Outsourcing, make sure that systems and processes have been implemented in the preceding levels (Content Strategy, Content Planning, Content Production, Content Promotion, and Content Management), and review the course lesson below:
Essentially, your business should not outsource anything until it has the systems and processes to manage everything it plans to outsource.
Implementing effective systems and processes for outsourcing content-related areas and activities (e.g. Content Production, Content Promotion) will ensure that high-quality standards of service and delivery are maintained by your outsourced providers.
Without systems and processes to outsource effectively, your business is not outsourcing but abdicating its responsibility for managing its outsourced processes.
Issues related to outsourcing are often caused by the lack of systems or processes in areas such as:
Outsourcing Strategy – Your outsourcing strategy determines what areas of your business should be outsourced and why. Without a strategy, outsourcing is like a rudderless ship, aimless and without direction.
Outsourcing Plan – Your outsourcing plan defines how outsourced areas like Content Production or Content Promotion should be managed. Without an outsourcing plan, your business could be wasting valuable time and money instead of saving time and money.
Outsourcing Management – If your business is putting external providers in control of managing the systems and processes that the business should be managing, then it can’t control or improve the quality of the outsourced work.
Outsourced Hiring – A lack of outsourced hiring guidelines can result in spending time and money hiring people or services that can’t meet your business expectations.
Outsourcing Documentation – A lack of outsourcing documentation (e.g. guidelines, procedures, training, etc.) can result in outsourcing work to people or services who can’t deliver work to meet the quality or standards that your business needs.
Quality Management – Without a process to track, measure, analyze, and review what it is outsourcing, your business can’t manage and improve the quality of the work being delivered.
Effective Content Outsourcing also helps your business achieve its goals and objectives.
For more information and help in this area, see this course lesson: Outsourcing
Content Troubleshooting Articles
Refer to the articles below for additional content troubleshooting information:
Learn how to never run out of great content ideas for your blog, website, or email newsletters.
Content Ideas Course (Free)
Learn how to never run out of great content ideas for your blog, website, or email newsletters.
Your business needs content for your website pages, blog, newsletters, product descriptions, post headlines, sales copy, social media, ads, articles, promotional pieces, news releases, customer training, FAQs, forum signatures, SEO (e.g. meta descriptions), etc.
Great content helps your business:
Drive traffic to your website and social media pages
Keep your website relevant in the search engines
Educate prospects about your products and services
Convert visitors into customers, sales, and subscribers
Keep readers, subscribers, clients, and users engaged
Train new clients, staff members, customers, subscribers, users, etc.
Build trust, authority, and credibility
Stay ahead of the competition
And more!
Learn How To Keep Coming Up With Great Content Ideas For Your Website, Blog, Or Newsletters!
Infinite Content Creation is a comprehensive email course that will show you how to keep coming up with endless content ideas for your website, blog, or newsletters and turning these into published content.
What The “Infinite Web Content Creation” Course Covers:
Why Create Content?
Content Writing Tips
Guidelines For Writing Effective Articles And Blog Posts
Content Writing Action Plan: The 5-Step Formula
Difference Between A Content Strategy, Content Marketing Strategy & A Content Plan (and why you need all three!)
What To Write About (and how to keep coming up with endless new content ideas for your website, blog, or newsletters!)
A Content Creation System That Delivers Results
Outsourcing Your Content Writing … The Right Way!
You will learn methods that will help you easily come up with great content ideas for web articles, blog posts, and newsletters, and how to create content that will keep your readers interested and engaged.
In addition to being filled with lots of great content ideas, this training course will also show you how to develop an effective content marketing plan and how to outsource your content writing for the best results.
This comprehensive content marketing course teaches you how to never run out of great content ideas for your website, blog, or email newsletter.
Subscribe below for free:
Subscribe to our FREE 120-lesson content creation course!
Here are useful resources to help you find people with the right talent and skills for outsourcing your content needs.
Outsourcing Resources
Here are useful resources to help you find people with the right talent and skills for outsourcing your content needs.
In this section, you will find a list of useful resources to help you when outsourcing your content needs.
These resources can help you find people with the right talent and skills to complement your business.
We’ll briefly discuss some of the benefits and challenges of outsourcing and then provide a list of content-related areas you can outsource and sites where you can search for freelancers and outsourced service providers.
***
The Pros And Cons Of Outsourcing
Outsourcing basically means hiring someone outside of your business to do work that your business needs done.
Outsourcing provides a number of benefits such as allowing you to focus on your core business areas, reduce operational costs, and save you time hiring and training people with the right skills to meet various needs in your business.
You can outsource almost every aspect of content creation and content promotion…even content strategy, planning, and management!
Outsourcing effectively, however, requires managing the outsourcing process itself. With content creation, for example, this includes finding, interviewing, and recruiting freelancers with the right skills, providing your outsourced talent with clear briefs and instructions regarding the work and tasks to be completed, and having documentation they can follow like processes, workflows, and checklists to ensure delivery of the work in a timely manner.
Outsourcing is also not without its challenges. For example, a common problem that many businesses face when outsourcing is how to consistently maintain a high level of quality.
Create SEO strategy, perform topic and keyword research, content silos, etc.
Implement SEO methods, create internal linking, monitor analytics and improve campaigns, perform outreach campaigns to improve backlinks, etc.
Email Marketing
Develop email campaigns
Write emails, newsletters, roundups, etc.
Email campaign scheduling, posting, tracking, analysis, and reporting
Manage email lists, etc.
Blog Management
Write/update blog content
Upload content to the blog
Improve content as per style & formatting guidelines, SEO guidelines, etc.
Manage post comment replies, comment spam, etc.
Social Media Management
Create social media content
Manage social media campaigns
Graphic Design
Create illustrations, artwork, graphics
Create presentations, infographics, multimedia
Create ads, banners, mockups, etc.
Video/Audio Production
All areas of video/audio planning, scripting, recording, production, publishing, conversion, etc.
Translations – translate website pages and content for audiences in other countries/languages
Transcriptions – transcribe audio recordings, videos, and webinars, create captions and subtitles, etc.
Outsourcing Checklists
Use the checklists below if you plan to outsource any area of content production, content promotion, content planning, etc.:
Before Outsourcing
Define your needs, projects, and scope of work.
Research the specific tasks and areas you plan to outsource (who is best to approach, i.e. contractors, freelancers, specialists, etc., where to find them, what are the standard rates, what tools they will need, average timeframes for delivery of work, etc.).
Develop a hiring system (e.g. job post descriptions and brief, interview questions and tasks, contracts, trial assignments, etc.)
Have examples of existing content you can provide to freelance or outsourced writers to illustrate what you are looking for.
Create filtering criteria to screen applicants (e.g. check their social profiles, request social proof of positive previous client experiences and satisfaction, review their ratings, look for red flags such as negative comments or feedback from previous clients, etc.
Freelance Outsourcing Sites
Here are some useful sites for finding people with the right talent and skills to help you with your content-related projects.
Blogging Pro
Blogging Pro
Blogging Pro offers more than just content writing jobs. You can also find editors, copywriters, journalists, magazine writers, social media content writers, and writers specializing in different niches.
If you’re looking for higher-quality content, Contena provides access to expert part-time or full-time freelance writers, editors, and content creators.
Craigslist has a section that lists writing and editing services.
Craigslist provides a section where freelance writers can list their writing and editing services. Every city has its own database, so depending on where you are located or which city’s board you are looking at, you may or may not find suitable listings.
Note: Craigslist has a reputation for scams, so it’s a case of buyer beware.
Fiverr is an online marketplace where you can outsource content-related work to freelancers such as content writing, copywriting, video editing, proofreading, etc.
Most service providers on Fiverr charge low prices, so expect a general level of content quality and expertise to match what you are paying for.
Having said this, however, many beginner freelancers use Fiverr to gain experience and testimonials before moving on to higher-paying work, so you can find talented freelancers who are trying to become established.
Freelance Writing is an established US-focused freelance writing website with advanced search and navigation options that make finding talent in your niche easy.
iWriter is a freelancing site where you enter specific project details like the type of content you want (e.g. articles, article rewrites, blog posts, product descriptions, ebooks, etc.), add your target keywords, article word count, niches or topics, select writer skill level (you will pay more for premium-level writers than standard writers), content brief, and whether you want writers that you have built a relationship with to take on your project.
Writers will then create your content based on the specs you have provided. You then review and either approve or reject the content. If you approve the content, the selected writer will get paid for their work, and you can download the content and add it to your website.
The video below shows you how to order articles on iWriter.com:
MediaBistro is a creative job site for media and content professionals like graphic designers, copywriters, social media managers, marketers, editors, proofreaders, video creators, and more.
Check out this site if you are looking to outsource work in areas like writing, publishing, social media, SEO, marketing, communications, or any other type of creative area.
Scripted is an end-to-end content solution for SMBs, media publishers, agencies, and enterprise businesses.
Scripted offers various plans to suit different business needs with services like providing free content ideas and recommendations, publishing integrations, performance analysis, quarterly content strategy, content calendar creation, end-to-end content production, content publishing, writer prioritization, dedicated account manager, and more.
The Content Panel is a content-writing service that provides experienced content writers for articles, product descriptions, SEO content, website content, copywriting, blog management, freelance writing, and ghostwriting services.
You can use their calculator to estimate the cost of your content writing depending on the type of project, word count, and level of writer quality.
Estimate the cost of your project using The Content Panel’s online calculator.
Upwork is a popular site for sourcing freelance content writers.
You can post jobs and hire professionals using Upwork’s Talent Marketplace, browse and buy projects from their Project Catalog, or let Upwork find you the right outsourcing talent for your team.
WriterAccess is an AI-powered platform that lets you find and hire screened, proven writers, editors, and designers at affordable rates, optimize content and streamline your workflow.
Freelancers are star-rated by customer reviews combined with performance algorithms.
Writers Work is a freelancing jobs board where you can find freelance writers in areas like general website content writing, blogging, copywriting, social media posts, ghostwriting, journalism, and more.
Unlike other platforms, you won’t find freelancers for areas like editing, transcriptions, or similar-type work.
Posted jobs go live within 24 hours and stay live for 30 days. You can also choose to feature your listings.
The video courses below cover basic areas of outsourcing digital services like content creation and are ideal for beginners (note: you can access all of the video courses below with a single all-access pass):
Learn how to create, launch, and sell high-quality digital products like downloadable reports, e-books, videos, and audio content quickly and cost-effectively.
Password Managers provide an easy and secure way to keep track of all your passwords. This video course shows you how to use powerful and FREE password management tools.
Learn how to use news releases effectively to boost your search engine rankings, drive more traffic to your website, and generate new leads for your business.
Careerminds provides a useful guide on the pros and cons of outsourcing with research questions to ask candidates, outsourcing evaluation forms, an outsourcing transition framework, and an outsourcing due diligence checklist.
These membership sites are free to join and contain valuable resources and information on internet marketing and digital entrepreneurship.
Free Marketing Membership Sites
These free membership sites contain valuable resources and information that will help improve your traffic, sales, marketing, copywriting, and business skills.
We have secured a number of freemium membership sites giving you free access to valuable information that can help to improve your skills in areas like internet marketing and digital entrepreneurship.
Feel free to register for one or all of the free membership sites listed below:
Power Copy Club shows you how to write captivating, cash-pulling headlines.
Inside this free membership site, you will learn about:
The three components of a good headline and how to combine these factors for maximum cash-pulling effect.
The two best ways to keep your prospect’s eyes glued to your sales page.
Secrets to crafting compelling sales letters and sales video script openers.
How to create irresistible benefit statements. Learn the right way to brainstorm, develop and showcase product benefits for maximum conversion.
Get an inside look at the perfect video sales letter. Discover the essential ingredients to creating high-converting video sales letters that outperform text-only sales pages every time.
Why the digital product business is the best business in the world.
How to start building your own digital empire with a variety of easy-to-create products.
How to recognize a hungry market and what steps you need to take to give your business a profitable start.
How to create “Blow Their Socks Off” ebooks and reports with content that will impress your visitors, turn them into buyers, and turn buyers into repeat customers.
The five secrets of creating edutaining content that gets visitors and buyers coming back for more.
How to create professional video products and hot-selling software and apps without high-end directing and coding skills, and the equipment you need.
Traffic Generation Club shows you how to start getting better traffic results by understanding the key differences between traffic quantity and traffic quality.
In this free membership site, you will learn:
How to get a horde of eager affiliates promoting your products all over the web.
How top vendors create affiliate programs that everyone wants to be a part of and how to get super affiliates to drive traffic to your sites.
A clever way to siphon traffic from Facebook using an overlooked strategy that can attract thousands of eager customers to your business.
Three ways to optimize your existing traffic and turn it into even more traffic and more sales.
Web Profits Club shows you many different ways to make money online.
Inside this free membership site, you will learn about:
The truth about affiliate marketing and five easy and doable steps that successful affiliates use to pull large-figure incomes.
Selling digital info products and the one step you cannot skip to create a thriving business.
How to become a successful author on Amazon Kindle with a five-step overview of how the most successful Kindle authors keep landing on the bestseller lists.
How to turn content into cash using a blog. Includes a 4-step overview of how to set up and run your blog and five ways to make money with it.
Power Marketers Club shows you how to develop a marketing mindset that will help you overcome the fears, negative thoughts, and limiting beliefs that may be holding you back.
Inside this free membership site, you will learn about:
The 21 questions that will help you achieve your goals, and
The art and science of negotiating how to get more of what you want out of every single deal you make with vendors, suppliers, freelancers, etc.
Success Upgrade covers the art of taking calculated risks when starting a business and improving your money management skills.
Inside this free membership site, you will learn strategies for getting more money, keeping more money, and growing your business faster, plus ways to get the funding you need to start or run your business.
Manage your content more effectively on your social media platforms with these social media tools and resources.
Social Media Tools And Resources
Manage your content more effectively on your social media platforms using these social media tools and resources.
Social media has become an integral part of the content marketing strategy of most businesses.
Creating and posting social media content, however, requires defining social media metrics, having content tracking systems in place, and using tools to manage your social media campaigns in order to see a return on investment from your efforts.
This section provides a comprehensive list of social media management tools that can help you improve your social media marketing efforts and results.
Social Media Management Tools
The social media tools and resources below will help you manage your content more effectively on your social media platforms.
Social Media Sharing Tools & Counters
There are two main ways to get your content shared on social media platforms:
Post content directly on one or more social media platforms, or
Publish content on your website and encourage people to share it on their social networks using social media sharing tools.
You need to provide your site visitors with social media sharing tools if you want them to share content published on your website.
If your website is powered by WordPress, for example, you can install a free plugin like Hustle that lets you easily add social sharing tools and counters to your posts and pages.
Hustle lets you add social sharing tools and counters to WordPress sites quickly, easily, and for free!
Hustle lets you display a social media sharing bar that visitors can use to share your content on social networks.
You can select which social networks you would like to display on your social sharing toolbar, and customize options like toolbar layout (e.g. centered horizontally at the top or the bottom of your content or vertically on the left or right-hand side of your web page), visibility conditions (e.g. only show on specific posts or under certain conditions), colors, icons, etc.
Plugins like Hustle let you choose the social media platforms to display on your social sharing toolbars.
If your site is not powered by WordPress, you can use the social sharing buttons provided either by the social platforms themselves, or the tools listed below.
Social Media Management Tools (SMB)
The tools listed below are ideal for helping small-to-medium businesses measure and track their social media content performance.
Buffer is a social media management platform that lets you set up a queue of posts to share on various social media channels.
It offers a suite of intuitive tools and products that integrate publishing, engagement, analytics, simple landing pages, and team collaboration, allowing you to work efficiently to drive meaningful social media engagement and results.
Buffer also allows your business to automate your social media scheduling processes by scheduling social media posts in advance across multiple social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more.
The benefits of using Buffer include:
Save time and effort: Buffer eliminates the need for manually posting social media content every day, enabling businesses to schedule posts in advance and automate the posting process.
Streamline social media management: With Buffer, businesses can manage all their social media accounts in one place, making it easy to monitor engagement, track performance, and streamline social media management.
Enable data-driven decision-making: Buffer provides analytics and insights that allow businesses to track engagement, reach, and other key performance metrics, providing the data necessary to make data-driven decisions.
Improve consistency and accuracy: Buffer helps ensure consistent posting schedules and eliminates the possibility of human error by automating the scheduling process.
Support team collaboration: Buffer allows teams to collaborate on social media management, with features that enable team members to work together on content creation, scheduling, and analysis.
BuzzSumo allows you to analyze your content engagement based on relevant industry keywords and see how your content marketing campaigns are performing against your competition.
While not strictly a social media tool, it lets you see how often your blog posts are shared on social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc., and which types of posts receive the most engagement.
CoSchedule is a software that integrates content marketing, a marketing calendar, and marketing management tools to help keep all of your marketing organized in one place.
Hootsuite is a social media management platform with an integrated user interface that lets you manage your social interactions on various social networks and prepare social media updates in advance.
Crowdfire lets you schedule content, manage your Twitter account, connect your blogs and your YouTube channel, create social media posts, and provide suggestions about articles for sharing on your sites.
eClincher lets you analyze your social media performance, schedule and publish posts, reply to social messages, and auto-post with smart queues and RSS feeds. It also provides an image media library, and search function for social media influencers.
Followerwonk is a Twitter analytics tool that lets you analyze your followers (e.g. where they are located and when they tweet) to help you gain insights on Twitter users and trends.
Additionally, this tool helps you find and connect with the top influencers in your industry, expand your reach and widen your follower base, and develop your social graph by digging into your Twitter analytics data.
Friends+Meis a social media post scheduling and content management solution that helps you increase your brand visibility online, stay organized and stay focused on creating great content to share with your followers on platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Hookle is an app that lets you manage all of your social media marketing in one place and lets you see how your brand is doing online across all of your platforms from your mobile device.
Later is a social media management tool that lets you connect your Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter profiles but focuses mostly on Instagram.
It provides a visual drag-and-drop content calendar and a free linking tool that you can use on your Instagram profile to link to a shoppable Instagram feed or various blog posts and websites.
MavSocial is a visual social media management tool that provides scheduling, monitoring, and reporting features for your social content.
MavSocial allows you to repeat social media posts for a specified duration and includes access to a search engine where you can browse through a digital catalog of millions of stock photos and manage and edit media content for your social media posts.
Post Planner helps you find and curate high-quality content proven to drive user engagement, as well as plan and schedule a content-type-based social media publishing calendar, and then post your content regularly and consistently.
Post Planner also lets you create a targeted sharing plan where you select the content type for each time slot and the tool will then fill each slot with your chosen content, as well as allowing you to schedule posts outside of your social content sharing plan.
Social Pilot is a social media management tool with a simple dashboard that curates and suggests content from different niches and industries and provides scheduling, analytics, and white-label reporting suited for digital agencies.
SocialBee is a social media management tool that lets you add, organize, and share content across several social channels, integrates with Buffer (see above), and uses post variations to keep your content evergreen.
Tailwindis a social media management tool for Instagram and Pinterest that helps you schedule posts, monitor conversations, measure results, and provides recommendations for improving your Pinterest and Instagram performance.
The tools below are ideal for helping enterprise-level companies measure and track their social media content performance.
HubSpot
HubSpot Social Media Management Software
HubSpot‘s social media management software lets you publish content to your social networks, run all of your social media campaigns from one central location, set up keyword monitoring to be alerted whenever your brand is mentioned, and link your interactions back to your CRM to track contextual conversations and access insightful social media ROI reports.
Sprout Social – All-in-one social media management platform
Sprout Social is a social media management tool that combines social media scheduling, monitoring, reporting, and customer relationship management (CRM) into one platform.
Sprout Social Reporting Dashboard
Sprout Social’s “listening” features let you uncover trends and actionable insights from social data to improve and drive your brand and business strategy.
SproutSocial can also help your business streamline its social media presence by automating scheduling and publishing of posts across various social media channels. With SproutSocial, you can easily manage your social media accounts from a single dashboard, which makes it easy to collaborate with your team members and track your social media performance.
The benefits of using SproutSocial for social media scheduling include:
Save time and effort by automating the process of scheduling posts, allowing you to plan and publish content in advance.
Analytics tools that allow you to track and analyze your social media performance, enabling you to make data-driven decisions about your social media strategy and identify which posts are working well and which ones need improvement.
An intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it easy to schedule posts, monitor your social media presence, and collaborate with your team members.
Brandwatch is a tool that allows you to quantify brand awareness. You can use it to identify brand sentiments and see if your video campaigns are working and helping you build positive brand awareness for your business.
Brandwatch gives you access to weekly and monthly social media monitoring reports and video campaign tracking and customer conversations about your brand in real-time.
This is not only invaluable for market research, but it also helps you see what people think of your video campaigns and how these impact your brand perception.
Keyhole is a social media monitoring tool that provides real-time tracking and reporting of social media and influencer campaigns and key metrics via a social media analytics dashboard.
The software lets you monitor the performance of keywords, URLs, topics, hashtags, and @mentions, gain information about brand sentiment, relevant conversations, topics, and influencers’ engagement rates and reach, track campaign performance on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, and compare your social media accounts and campaigns against major competitors.
Oktopost is a social media management platform aimed at helping B2B marketers generate leads using social media and quantify their social media results.
Reputation provides social media engagement tools, real-time data visualization, and customized views and reports to help companies gain insights, respond quickly, and immprove their social media strategy.
Sprinklr provides a suite of products and tools to help enterprise-level teams collaborate, connect and engage with their customers on 25+ social media channels.
Use these tools to search for influencers based on niche, audience size, and engagement rates, and automate your outreach campaigns.
Aspire
Aspire – influencer marketing software platform.
Aspire is an influencer marketing software that helps your business discover and engage with creators on autopilot.
The Creator Marketplace allows you to receive hundreds of inbound creator applications each week, while the search engine lets them search, compare, and contact millions of creators across various platforms.
Social listening tools enable you to engage with brand fans who mention them online, and e-commerce integrations help them find influential customers to partner with.
Aspire also enables you to create, license, and promote more content than ever before by allowing you to build a campaign around anyone with influence, brief and review content before it goes live, license content for allowlisting and boosting, and measure which content is most effective with content analytics.
Use Aspire to drive business growth through effective influencer marketing strategies.
You can run performance-based influencer campaigns by identifying who drives the most ROI and sales through the analytics dashboard, putting ad spend behind content that performs through allowlisting and boosting, and driving and tracking sales through affiliate links and promo codes.
Upfluence – All-in-one affiliate and influencer marketing platform.
Upfluence is a social influencer marketing software that helps your business find the best creators for your brand by analyzing engagement and performance metrics.
With Upfluence, you can manage and hire creators at scale, simplify influencer gifting campaigns, easily pay influencers, and track marketing ROI.
The platform goes beyond just influencer marketing by also offering affiliate programs, creator management, user-generated content, and brand ambassador tools to help your business build valuable partnerships and turn creators into revenue.
GRIN – a creator management platform for influencer marketing.
GRIN is a creator management platform that helps brands establish authentic relationships with content creators and turn them into brand ambassadors.
The software offers tools for discovering and recruiting creators, nurturing relationships, reporting and analyzing metrics, content management, product seeding, and payment management.
With multiple ways to identify and invite the perfect ambassadors for your brand, GRIN provides an all-in-one solution to simplify the influencer marketing campaign process.
The software also integrates with other marketing stack tools, including social platforms, e-commerce solutions, and communication tools.
Use GRIN to build more valuable relationships with content creators and grow your brand through the power of creator partnerships.
Learn how to drive more traffic to your site and more customers to your business by getting your videos to rank higher on YouTube and on Google’s search results.
Social Media Content Calendar Templates – Social media content calendar templates and information on the best times to post content on different social platforms.
Influencer Campaign tracking Template – A free downloadable template from Keyhole. Use it to track accurate KPIs of your influencer marketing campaigns, measure the engagement rate of influencers’ posts, and understand which influencers are delivering customers.
Learn how to edit web page content and website templates with these learn basic HTML resources!
Learn Basic HTML
Learn how to edit web page content and website templates with these learn basic HTML resources!
As we explain in our Content Management Skills lesson, you don’t need to become a web developer or learn how to code to manage content effectively, but knowing some basic HTML can be useful if you need to:
Make quick edits to the content of your web pages.
Fix up the issue with the layout of a web page.
Fix up the formatting of content (e.g adding bold text, italics, links, etc.).
Change the color of page and content elements (e.g. background colors on elements or text highlights).
Add tables to pages.
Etc.
Here are some resources that will teach you basic HTML so you can perform quick fixes to content and communicate confidently with web developers:
This comprehensive tutorial will show you how to use basic HTML tags to format content on your web pages and blog posts.
Learn HTML – YouTube Videos
The videos below are aimed at teaching complete beginners basic HTML:
HTML In 10 Minutes
HTML Crash Course For Absolute Beginners
HTML For Beginners – Full course
Learn HTML In 1 Hour
Additional HTML Courses
The courses below provide comprehensive tutorials and lessons on using HTML.
W3Schools
W3Schools HTML Tutorials
W3Schools provides a comprehensive free HTML course with hundreds of HTML exercises, examples, and an online “Try it Yourself” editor where you can edit and test each example yourself.
HTML.com provides practical step-by-step HTML tutorials and follow-up guides aimed at teaching beginners the basics of HTML needed to add text and images, headings and text formatting, and tables to your content.
Develop the skills you need to manage content effectively with these digital business video courses.
Digital Business Video Courses
Develop the skills you need to manage content effectively with these digital business video courses.
Managing content effectively requires a practical understanding of all aspects of running a digital business, including knowledge of different methods and tools used to generate results.
The video courses listed in this section will help you gain the knowledge and skills to improve results in all areas of content management.
Video Courses For Beginners
The video courses below are aimed at helping beginners develop basic digital business skills in digital marketing and using the WordPress CMS.
WPMasterclasses.com
WPMasterClasses.com – WordPress and Digital Skills Video Courses
WPMasterclasses.com provides affordable digital business skills and WordPress CMS video courses for beginners.
You can access individual courses for a one-time fee or purchase an ALL ACCESS PASS membership for a low annual subscription.
The All Access Pass gives you 24/7 access to 60+ video courses (over 2,100+ self-paced video lessons and 225+ hours of video training).
Below is a list of video courses we recommend for improving your content management skills:
Learn how to drive more traffic to your site and more customers to your business by getting your videos to rank higher on YouTube and on Google’s search results.
Learn about the benefits of using webinars in your business, how to create high-quality and engaging webinars, and how to sell your products and services using webinars.
Learn how to use news releases effectively to boost your search engine rankings, drive more traffic to your website, and generate new leads for your business.
This video course covers essential areas of list-building, from planning, building, and automating your list-building strategy, to methods for turning online users into loyal subscribers.
Learn ways to increase your conversions by improving your processes and how to set up sales funnels that will help you sift through serious buyers, filter out non-serious buyers, and create a long-term, high-converting customer list.
Password Managers provide an easy and secure way to keep track of all your passwords. This video course shows you how to use powerful and FREE password management tools.
Learn how to create, launch, and sell high-quality digital products like downloadable reports, e-books, videos, and audios quickly and cost-effectively.
Learn how to access and use free image creation and editing tools, basic and advanced image editing techniques using tools like Photoshop and free alternatives, creating images for web content, presentations, infographics, social media, and so much more.
In this practical step-by-step video course, you will learn how to use text-to-speech and the latest AI voice technologies to create professional and realistic-sounding voice narrations from text files for a wide range of commercial uses and business applications.
Learn how to use Aweber to set up autoresponders, newsletters, and subscriber opt-in forms that can be integrated with WordPress for lead generation, user engagement, training customers, and more.
Learn how to set up and use Amazon S3 to upload, store, manage, and protect your site’s images, large media files, downloadable files, stream videos, and more.
Learn how to unlock the power of the WordPress content management system (CMS) using the many powerful features inside your WordPress administration area.
Need a new website or blog in a hurry? This video course shows you how to quickly install and configure a WordPress website or blog on your own domain name.
Learn how to optimize your WordPress site and how to craft website pages and blog posts that will help you get better search engine rankings and improve your traffic results.
This video course takes you step-by-step through the WordPress Maintenance Process and shows you how to keep your WordPress site updated, protected, and error-free!
Learn how to safely and automatically back up your WordPress files and database and how to easily restore your WordPress site if something unexpected or disastrous were to happen.
Learn how WordPress plugins work, how to find, install, and update plugins on your site, and how to expand your WordPress site’s functionality in almost unlimited ways.
Learn how to plan, build, grow, and maintain a viable membership site using WordPress that can be easily scaled and automated to become a sustainable, cost-effective, and profitable asset for many years to come.
If you are an intermediate or advanced user, the video courses below will help take your skills to the next level:
Skillshop For Google
Skillshop is a Google training platform that you can use to grow your skills and knowledge of using Google’s tools and solutions.
Skillshop courses include:
Google Analytics Academy Courses – courses covering Google Analytics 4 (the latest generation of Google Analytics), content measurement strategy, etc.
Google Ads – Courses to grow your skills using Google Ads to advertise your business online, get Google Ads certified, etc.
YouTube – Courses covering content copyright when publishing content online, available tools for creators and content owners to handle copyright protection on YouTube, etc.
Google Marketing Platform – Courses designed to help you achieve your marketing objectives, improve mobile user experience, get certified in Google Marketing Platforms, etc.
Skillshare
Access thousands of self-paced video courses on Skillshare.
Skillshare is an online learning community that provides thousands of classes on all kinds of topics taught by creators, entrepreneurs, and professionals, including many courses on content marketing and digital business areas.
Skillshare members have access to all online classes and can watch these on their own time.
Udemy provides many useful video courses to improve your skills in all areas.
Udemy is a leading global online learning provider with thousands of courses available covering every topic to help you further develop your knowledge and skills.
Simplilearn is one of the world’s leading certification training providers, helping working professionals achieve their career goals by partnering with universities, companies, and individuals.
Simplilearn offers hundreds of self-paced accredited online courses in digital content management and content marketing.
If you are looking for something more comprehensive in the field of digital marketing, they also offer a Digital Marketing Associate course which is geared toward beginners, and an advanced Post-Graduate Program in Digital Marketing, provided in partnership with Purdue University and co-developed with Facebook.
The site also provides many free online courses to help you build your digital marketing skills.
Simplilearn offers many free online courses that can improve your digital marketing skills via their SkillUp program.
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This is Part 5 of our free How To Create An Effective Content Strategy For Your Business video course.
Content formats include not only common formats like text, images, video, and audio but also interactive formats, virtual and augmented reality, and live streaming.
What I do want to cover in this lesson are the key things to consider when making decisions about which content types you will use.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at doing a content audit, which is taking an inventory of our existing content to see how it’s performing and identify any gaps or opportunities that we may be missing out on.
By identifying key characteristics of our target audience such as demographics, their interests, and their pain points, we can then create content that will speak directly to their needs, desires, and motivations.
In the next lesson, we’ll look at setting content goals to create an effective content strategy.
Now, there are obvious and not-so-obvious challenges to managing content effectively.
Now, the not-so-obvious challenges of managing your content effectively don’t become apparent until you actually start trying to manage your content effectively.
Your content strategy is part of your content management system, so if we start creating and promoting content before developing our content strategy and putting systems in place to manage our content effectively, then what’s the point of having a content strategy?
Let’s go back to our definition of a Content Strategy from module 1.
So, without a content strategy, we are just creating content blindly with no real direction or ways to measure and track our content’s performance, so it’s all going to be hit-and-miss and guesswork and assumptions.
The first challenge is that a content strategy involves all areas of our business because content impacts all areas of our business.
The next challenge is that creating high-quality content and managing our content effectively requires quite a sizeable team.
This leads to the next challenge, which is that it takes significant resources to create high-quality content and manage this content effectively.
And finally, the last of the “not-so-obvious” challenges only becomes obvious when we try to start putting our content strategy together.
So, let’s recap what we need to know and do before developing a content strategy for our business.
So, that’s the end of this lesson.
Managing content typically also involves managing many different accounts (e.g. other websites, social media platforms, subscription services, emails, membership sites, online banking, etc.).
RoboForm
KeePass is a free portable password manager for PC (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X), with ports available for Android, iPhone, iPad, and more.
Amazon S3 is an affordable and almost limitless cloud storage solution that lets you store your files and large amounts of data, including images, media files, and website backups securely and embed these in your web content.
We provide links to many useful tools, services, and resources throughout our course and the lessons.
This troubleshooting guide will help you identify issues in your content that may be preventing your business from experiencing better results and presents fixes and solutions to improve your content management practices.
Your business needs content for your website pages, blog, newsletters, product descriptions, post headlines, sales copy, social media, ads, articles, promotional pieces, news releases, customer training, FAQs, forum signatures, SEO (e.g. meta descriptions), etc.
In this section, you will find a list of useful resources to help you when outsourcing your content needs.
As we explain in our 
Managing content effectively requires a practical understanding of all aspects of running a digital business, including knowledge of different methods and tools used to generate results.
