Things You'll Need for Content Marketing Success in 2023

The new year has already kicked off; do you have everything you need for effective and consistent content marketing, or are you still trying to get organized? Don’t let January pass you by. Use our list below to make sure you’re not scrambling this year.

First, You’ll Need A Full Brand Foundation

What does that include? At a minimum, you can use our resources to develop your brand voice and define your brand colors and look, But to create a full foundation, you’ll need to make sure all of your messaging is on point too. That means spending time on your mission, vision, and values, and making sure your elevator pitch is together, and sharing all of that with your team so everyone is using the same language to talk about your organization.

Bonus: We’ve talked about graphics and stock images before, but to really get that full, complete brand foundation together, don’t forget about investing in original photography and video that’s true to your brand and stands out from the competition. It’s more worth it than ever since we’re all totally flooded with visuals on every content platform.

Next, It’s Time For A Real Content Plan

Once you know who you are, you know what you should say. This year, make it your resolution to never again realize at 4 p.m. that “I forgot to post on Instagram today!” No more scrambling for content ideas at the last minute. No more mailing it in when it comes to your content!

It’s time to get a real plan together this year, one that actually has something to do with your overall organizational goals. Use our handy editorial calendar template to plan out what you’re going to be posting next week, next month, or throughout the whole year, and for each post ask yourself: How does this benefit my organization? How does this help me pull in more donations, or sell more of what I need to sell?

And one key detail about content development, while we’re talking about it: If you’re planning to hire help with content, be as sure as possible that what is developed is both original and true to your brand. You can use a tool like Duplichecker to make sure no one you hire is giving you plagiarized content, which is unfortunately all too common.

You May Need Some Nifty Little Free or Low-Cost Tools

If you don’t have a video editor or copywriter on staff, there are some cool tools you can add to your content arsenal to help you create more types of content.

For example, Animakr is a video and animation tool that lets you make GIFs, edit video, add templates, and a million other things, and starts at only $10 per month.

Or, if you need some help with your blog titles and article headlines, Attrock has a free headline analyzer tool that will give you insight on readability, word type, sentiment, and other key indicators to optimize what you’ve written.

Keep searching for and testing new tools like these to help make your job a little easier this year! There are new ones coming out all the time, and you can read reviews about them before you commit to anything.

You Should Really Be Using A Social Media Dashboard

Our tried-and-true favorite is still SproutSocial, but try out a few different tools like Buffer, Loomly, or MeetEdgar to see what your favorite might be. There are pros and cons to all of these tools; for example, Buffer is very budget-friendly and easy to use, but has super minimal reporting, whereas SproutSocial gives you lots of data reports and extra features to manage your content from top to bottom. Or, if keeping a steady flow of evergreen content going out is your biggest challenge, MeetEdgar might be just what you need.

The point is to take your social media marketing seriously enough to manage it with a proper tool, one that’s used by other professionals! You’re worth it, we promise.

Finally, Schedule Yourself Some Training Time

Give yourself the gift of a couple of hours a week just for learning this year, since, as we’ve learned after this Twitter mess, you never know how you’ll need to switch up your digital strategy suddenly thanks to the decisions of a few billionaires! Platforms like Coursera are a great place to start, or just spend some time using our favorite news resources like Social Media Today to keep yourself up to date.

And don’t forget that your favorite tools like Canva and SproutSocial have a TON of resources to take advantage of. Canva has an entire design school that’s free, and SproutSocial’s blog is one of the best we’ve seen for the latest research and insights about social media marketing. Don’t waste money if you don’t have to; take advantage of free resources first, because there are so many out there to choose from. It just takes time.

Here’s to a consistent, creative, and confident 2023!