Content marketing is important for businesses small. It helps you reach goals and increase your audience. Learn more here.
Marketing Content creates and distributes relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire and engage a clearly defined audience to drive profitable customer actions. The more content you create, the better your chances of success.
Content marketing is important for businesses small: 11 Tips
60% of marketers report that content marketing generates demand/leads.
81% of marketers see content as a primary business strategy.
Here are 11 tips for creating a smart content marketing strategy for small businesses.
1. Mission:
Define your company’s mission to create a clear goal for your content.
The task defines the goal or purpose of each piece of content, and not all content will lead to the same results.
Some goals may overlap, but they still need to be defined in nature.
- Generate qualified leads
- Building brand awareness
- Increased retention
- Increase customer engagement
- Convert potential customers into loyal customers.
- Building thought leadership
For example, if you’re a local restaurant, the “reason” might be to share great recipes or cooking tips.
2. Audience:
Know who you’re talking to so you know what you want to hear from you. Not only is defining the content of your assignment important, but also who will target the content.
You may have more than one audience you want to talk to, but these people need to know exactly who you want to attract and where they are:
- Semrush (Paid): A great content marketing platform that allows you to search for topics based on keyword phrases. You can even enter a field that will help you find ideas for topics.
- Quora (Free): It will also give you great ideas on questions people are asking. It will give insight into what people are asking and what people answer regarding the questions.
- Content Crowd (Paid): This is not a tool but a service. If you have some budget to invest in but don’t have the time, Crowd Content will give you access to thousands of freelance writers.
This type of professional service can help you better expand your content needs.
3. Objectives:
Set goals for each of your goals so you know what success looks like. For example, if the goal is to build authority, then:
Connect with others in your industry and ask them to interview them and share and promote this content on your site.
Share educational content, how-to tips and more. Let’s say you are an interior designer. Share insights on how decorating with small spaces, trendy colors, and any DIY hacks are cost-effective and space-impact.
4. Objectives:
Make sure your goals are measurable and realistic. How will you measure your results and performance?
Make sure you also have tools in place and make sure they are installed correctly so you can measure effectively. Some of the content marketing measures could be:
- Revenue: The number of paid sales, subscriptions or downloads (if applicable) your site earned per month (monthly).
- Leads: form submissions, newsletter signups, conversion rate, and signups.
- Brand Awareness: Website visitors, video views, and engagement on your social media accounts.
- Loyalty: Returning customers, bounce rate, subscriptions minus opting out of anything subscription based.
- Engagement: Social media growth over time, reactions, comments, shares, views, retweets.
5. Resources:
Find out how much time, money or staff you have to create and promote content. Start with your budget, goals, and objectives for your content strategy.
Do you need additional resources? Sites like Upwork and FreeUp are sites that can help with any needs related to content or virtual assistants.
6. Content Evaluation:
Content calendar is the main tool to keep you on time and on task. It does not have to be done in any project management tool if it is not accessible.
All you need is a simple spreadsheet. The form fields to include are:
- Subject.
- History.
- Platform (paid social, blogs, videos, lists, white papers, social media posts, etc.).
- Focus on the keywords.
- Inspiration (the initial research I did).
Start with the idea of an appropriate format for the topic and decide which platform will have the most impact on the topic(s).
7. Content optimization.
Keyword research is key. Start by finding keywords with high volume and low competition.
Looking for what other people are writing when doing the research will make your content easier to find, but it will appeal to the audience. Google Autocomplete is a quick and easy way to find ideas about what people are searching for.
In addition, the content should be visually appealing, so put effort into the images that relate to your content. Make sure you have a CTA (call to action) in the correct area.
8. Repurpose content.
Look at your data (Google Analytics, YouTube and social posts that got the most engagement) and see if you can recycle that content into new blogs, social media posts, infographics or videos. This tactic can save you a lot of time, since the basic work is done.
9. Update content and evergreen pages.
Take a note every three months to go through outdated content and see what always needs updating. Every industry is different, but the rules, regulations, and/or terms of many industries will change. Your content should be kept up to date, so you don’t look out of date or be up to date with industry information being posted.
10. Continuous promotion of content.
Similar to content reruns, permanent or popular content should be promoted not just once or twice, but for as long as possible. Make sure to post it. You have invested time, effort and budget into the content. Make sure you get the most out of it.
11. Analyze.
Once you know what you’re tracking (see step four), you can easily see what worked and what didn’t. Find ways that you can replicate. Maybe it’s short content, maybe it’s the topic. If you constantly look into analytics, it will reveal new opportunities that can help achieve your goals.
