So you’re a small business owner. Congratulations! As an entrepreneur, you are the driving force behind your company’s success. But as a small business owner, it can be tough to compete against larger businesses in your industry. One way to level the playing field is by using content marketing. This blog post will explain content marketing and why small businesses should care about it. I’ll also provide some tips on how to get started with content marketing for your own business.
What is Content Marketing?
Content Marketing is simply creating and sharing content relevant to your target audience. The more information you can provide about a topic (not in a pushy sales way), the more trust you’ll build with the individual and slowly start moving them down the sales funnel. This content can come in many forms, including blog posts, infographics, videos, e-books, etc.
Suppose you have products or services to sell. Content marketing can help improve your conversion rates by providing potential customers with the information they need to make an informed purchase decision. If you have a website, you can use blogs to help increase the rankings of your website on Google.
Why does content marketing matter?
If you are a small business owner, creating content around your business will help you get noticed by internet users. As small business owners, we need lead generation to be on point. Creating engaging content for your target audience or ideal customer will build brand awareness, trust and a relationship with both new customers and existing customers helping you become a valuable resource for people.
You are not limited to content that only promotes your products or services. You should avoid this type of content whenever possible. Instead, focus on providing valuable information to help your target audience solve a problem or learn something new. When you provide helpful, engaging content, people will be more likely to trust you, helping you build brand awareness.
Content marketing can also help build relationships with other businesses and thought leaders in your industry. By featuring other companies or experts in your content and getting featured in their content, you can establish yourself as a go-to source of information for your audience.
For Search engines, consistent content is crucial to help your website appear in organic search results if you’re a startup. Great if you haven’t got money to spend on costly paid google ads or paid advertising on social media.
How Can I Get Started With Content Marketing?
It would help if you did a few things before getting started with content marketing. First, you need to think about what you want to achieve and plan your content, also known as your content strategy.
Your content strategy should list what content you will share, your tone of voice, a clearly defined audience, what social media sites you’ll use and set measurable and achievable targets. You can review periodically to see if you’re hitting your target audience.
Second, you need to develop engaging content topics that will be relevant and interesting to your target audience.
If you’re unsure where to start, try writing blog posts or creating infographics. These are both great ways to provide valuable information to your target audience. You’ll also need to be mindful of how you share content for people to find, as some platforms lend themselves to specific types of content. For example, Instagram uses pictures, so a lengthy blog post is probably isn’t the best fit, but an infographic would probably work just fine.
Social Media Sites
Social Media such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat and youtube can be a powerful way to distribute content. However, it’s important to remember that not all social media sites are the same. For example, LinkedIn is better for BtoB content, while Instagram is great for pictures and videos.
When creating a content marketing strategy, you’ll have done some research and ensure you have clearly defined your audience. It might be that one social media platform is better than others for your target audience. At first, you should concentrate on this social media platform before moving to other platforms.
Although the content format on each platform might be different you maybe able to share the same content on different platforms. You need to ensure that your content creation process creates high quality informative content.
Social Media posts should be frequent have the same cadence between posts and offer valuable content for the internet users in your target audience. Most of all content should be of consistent quality.
What is blogging?
A blog is a website or portion of a website typically updated with new content regularly. A blog post is an article that is published on a blog. Blogs are usually written in a casual, conversational tone and can cover many topics. For example, you could review a new product or look at a competitor and write an article saying what you like about one of their products or services. Aim for an article at least 900 words long and cover some keywords relating to your business, this will help you get found by search engines.
What are infographics?
Infographics are visual representations of information. They are a great way to communicate complex ideas quickly and easily. Infographics can be shared on social media, embedded on websites, or even printed out and hung up. Infographics are great for platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest, which are visual. In today’s world, it’s easy for anyone to create an infographic on any device. There are apps on the various app stores for the purpose, or you can use an online tool such as Canva. When posting to social, remember to make sure the size of the image for that platform is adhered to so that people can easily read your graphics.
What is Video content?
Video content is any content that is in video format. This could be a commercial, a webinar, an explainer video, or even just a simple recording of you talking about your business. Video content is great because it’s engaging, and people can consume it in various ways. For example, they can watch it on their commute to work or at home. High quality video content is a great way to grab someone’s attention and is easy to do with just a smartphone. You don’t need a huge studio or expensive equipment. Always remember to put subtitles on your videos, though. People don’t always have their sound on when playing videos and will scroll right past if there are no subtitles.
What are eBooks?
eBooks are online books or guides covering topics that people might find of value. For example, I wrote a google Business Profile Guide to help businesses owners set up and get the best out of this free tool. Unfortunately, these guides take the most time to create. However, you can put them on your website and use them as a lead magnet. Trade your guide for to email and follow up with them later.
Content marketing services
If you don’t have time to create content, you can hire companies that will create content for you. They’ll help you design your content marketing strategy and help with building brand awareness by creating content marketing campaigns.
Though these services can be pretty expensive and they might not create content that fits entirely with your brand if you don’t quality check their work.
The time to create content that is high quality content takes time. So don’t be scared of trying it yourself to see what works. The good thing is that once the content has been created, it’s there. You might need to review it and tweak it from time to time, but you’ll not need to rewrite it!
Conclusion
Content creation around your business and services is a great way to build trust with potential customers, new customers and existing customers. It’s also an excellent way to show off your knowledge and expertise in your industry. You can use content marketing in several ways, so it’s essential to experiment and find what works best for your business. Ultimately driving organic traffic to your website.
Your content marketing strategy should be a long term strategy that is tweaked and updated regularly so you can cater for changes in industry trends. It takes time to create content people will enjoy and build brand awareness, but it will ultimately help lead generation for your business. We have our very own packages such as Marketing360 or our SEO packages to help build content around your business. Our packages are built by small business for small business and offer an affordable quality service.
