It’s the New Year and you know what that means—time to prepare your content marketing strategy for 2014! With the holidays ending, say goodbye to 2013, and start focusing in the New Year. Doing the hard work ahead of time will ensure that your company is prepared to tackle 2014 with a new enthusiasm. Tweak your plan from this previous year and focus on making your content marketing strategy the best it ever was.

Developing a content marketing strategy is a great way to maintain an active web presence and improve your company’s SEO, but it also has many other important advantages. Content marketing not only helps you stay engaged with the customers you already have, but it also helps you draw in new customers. Developing your company’s content marketing strategy means producing shareable content related to your business in a variety of formats—articles, e-books, white papers, videos, slideshows, infographics, photos, etc. If you’re willing to keep experimenting with different forms of content marketing until you find a strategy that works for your business, you’ll continue to improve.

It’s important to keep track of how well your content marketing strategy performs, so you can assess the best way to move forward each year. If you’re wondering where to get started, here are a few questions you should be asking yourself about your content marketing in 2013:

-Did you make enough time for content marketing?
-Did you produce enough content?
-Did you have a content calendar?
-Did your content engage your customers?
-Did you vary your content and try new things?
-Did you test your content?
-Did your content reach the right people?

Creating an all-encompassing marketing strategy can be achieved by making enough time for producing enough content, testing your content, and trying out new strategies. Try to figure out what’s been working and what you should leave out this year.

A well-developed content marketing strategy will help you get clear on why you’re using certain content and for what reasons. Who are you trying to reach? Where and when can you reach them? You can also focus on what you’re trying to communicate and how your team will create, edit, design, manage, and publish your content. Having all these things planned out, perhaps by developing a content calendar for your company, will keep your company organized throughout 2014.

This year, consider starting company profiles on social media sites that you haven’t yet explored. If you don’t have a Facebook page, take the time to create one. If you haven’t been running a blog for your business, make an effort to start posting original content. All of these things combined will help you create a stronger content marketing strategy in the New Year. By developing specific New Year’s Resolutions for your company and building upon last year’s goals, your marketing efforts will continue to get stronger.

Remember, developing a content marketing strategy is a long-term process and the results might not be seen immediately. You are setting your company up for success in the years to come. Think of it as an ongoing process, not a one-time thing. Start planning now and you’ll be able to stay ahead of the curve.

How has your company planned their content marketing strategy for 2014? What further steps will you take throughout the year? Share with us!

Happy New Year!