You may have heard that content is king in this digitally connected age. Here are 6 simple steps to get the ball rolling with some excellent content marketing in your business.

1. Define your goals. You can’t go anywhere without a goal. Set concrete goals for your marketing attempt, such as fortifying your connection with a particular audience or branching out to new ones.

With all the analytic tools available today, you can easily be able to monitor your progress as you move along.

2. Define your audience. Who are you marketing your product or service to? If you don’t have a clear vision about this, you’ll be wasting your time and money trying to market to everyone—which is sort of like throwing pasta on the wall and hoping it sticks.

Instead, build a vision of your ideal crowd. Perhaps even make a storyboard about the “typical” person in this group to fill out your marketing attempts with genuine copy.

3. Define your style. What exactly is your brand all about, and what’s the accompanying style that best matches with your message?

If you bounce all over the place with your words and your appearance, you’re going to make your audience confused and lose potential customers. Solidify the details about your appearance—everything from color schemes to fonts to content topics.

4. Learn from the past. Chances are, if you’ve been in business for a few years already, that you have some extant content out there already.

Take a look at what did well, and what bombed, and try to figure out why. Build on your success, and stay away from failure as you move forward.

5. Assemble the team. If you’re a one-man band, that’s great, but once a business reaches a certain point, you’ll need multiple people on the team.

One person could be blogging and incorporating SEO keywords, while another is interacting with the fan base on social media, and yet another is crafting and implementing Google ads.

The more specialized each person can become, the more their expertise will increase the overall success of your business—but remember to keep everyone within a good loop of communication.

6. Make a plan. Set up checkpoints, goals, and deadlines. Use analytic software to track clicks and see what parts of the strategy are working.

Just like goals are crucial for creating a destination, a plan is crucial for getting to those goals.