Last week I shared a post all about The B.E.S.T. Marketing Plan for your business. The E in B.E.S.T. stands for ENGAGE — and I mentioned that content marketing is where that engagement actually happens.
This week I want to go one layer deeper into that single letter, because “engage through content” is easy to say, but much harder to execute without a real strategy behind it.
That’s where the B.E.S.T. Content Marketing Strategy comes in — four channels, one framework: Blogging, Email Marketing, Social Media Marketing, and Text Message Marketing.
First, What Is Content Marketing?
Before breaking down the four channels, it’s worth defining the term itself. Content marketing is the practice of creating and sharing valuable material — words, video, audio, images — with the purpose of building trust, engaging your audience, and ultimately guiding them toward your product or service. It’s not advertising in the traditional sense. It’s showing up consistently with value, so that when someone is ready to buy, you’re already the trusted name in their mind.
With that foundation, here’s how each of the four B.E.S.T. content channels fits in.
B — Blogging
Blogging is often the first thing people think of with content marketing, but it’s broader than most people realize. Blogging can take several forms:
- Written — traditional long-form articles (like this one)
- Video — vlogs or video essays covering the same topics
- Audio — podcast episodes, which is exactly how this post came to be
- Picture — visual or infographic-style content that communicates an idea primarily through imagery
The format matters less than the consistency. Choose the form that matches how you naturally communicate — writer, talker, visual thinker — and build your rhythm around that.
E — Email Marketing
Email remains one of the most underrated and overlooked channels available to a business owner, but it’s one of the most effective and for good reason: it’s the one platform where you own the relationship outright. You’re not at the mercy of an algorithm deciding whether your content reaches your audience — if someone’s on your list, your message lands directly in front of them.
Email marketing gives you a direct, consistent line to your community. It’s where relationship-building happens in a more personal, less public way than social media, which makes it a natural home for deeper storytelling, offers, and nurture sequences.
S — Social Media Marketing
Social media remains one of the most effective ways to reach people online, simply because of where your audience already spends their time. It’s where discovery happens — where someone who has never heard of your business encounters you for the first time.
The channel that works best depends on where your specific audience actually lives (not where you personally enjoy spending time), but the underlying purpose is consistent: use social platforms to build visibility, spark engagement, and create the on-ramp that eventually leads people toward your blog, your email list, or your offers.
T — Text Message Marketing
The most overlooked piece of the B.E.S.T. framework is text message marketing — and that’s exactly why it deserves attention. Text messaging can be a genuinely powerful part of your content marketing strategy because of one simple fact: open rates on texts are dramatically higher than almost any other channel.
Used well, text marketing isn’t about bombarding people — it’s a direct, immediate, high-visibility way to reach your community for timely announcements, reminders, or offers that need to be seen right away.
Bringing It All Together
Blogging, Email, Social Media, Text Message — the B.E.S.T. Content Marketing Strategy isn’t about doing all four perfectly from day one. It’s about understanding what role each one plays, so you can build a content ecosystem where each channel is doing the job it’s actually best suited for, instead of trying to make one channel do all the work alone.
I go much deeper into each of these four channels — with practical next steps — on the podcast. You can listen to the full episode here: [The B.E.S.T. Content Marketing Strategy for Your Business]
Want help building your content strategy into a full marketing plan? Download the Aligned Marketing Plan guide — it walks through two powerful ways to plan your marketing with ease and flow: [nadinemullings.com/power]