Effective Content Marketing for Small Businesses

Can a small business execute effective content marketing?

Most small businesses need content marketing but do not have the resources to execute effective content strategies that result in better brand awareness and lead to additional sales. Here we intend to outline a measurable content marketing strategy that can work for most small businesses.

How to start an effective content marketing strategy

Here are three steps to get you started:

1. Create goals for your content marketing so that you can measure its effectiveness. A goal might be to grow your email newsletter subscriptions, social followers, or simply bring more people to your site.
2. Study and list the topics your audience is interested in by looking at your own and your competitor’s most shared and liked posts. Check your analytics to see the pages that your audience lands on, and where they spend the most time reading. You can also email surveys to your audience to see what interests them.
3. Break your content ideas into groups. A rule of thumb is 40% advice and tips, 20% content shared from other sources, 20% brand promotion, 10% product uses, 10% company culture and news.

Next, Brainstorm a content marketing plan

After you’ve explored topics, created your goals, and organized the types of content you want to present, the next step is to brainstorm and research ideas. Try to come up with tons of ideas – at least 30 original ideas with titles that will be searched and could rank well over a long period of time.

Next choose the best ideas and brainstorm the right medium, such as blog post, infograhic, video or meme. Also note the best way this medium will be shared because you will want to create content based on the target social platforms strengths. The next step is to create a calendar.

Create a content marketing calendar

Use Google Docs or another shared tool to create a calendar with team assignments. Choose one team member to be in charge of making sure team members are reminded of their assignment dates, scheduling posts, and responding to comments.

The calendar should include social media posts and content due dates. Whether you post every day, every week or every month, it is important to keep your content publishing dates consistent.

Promoting your content

Make sure you edit everything before you share it. Remember, this content is representing your brand and will likely stay online for years.

In blog posts, make sure to optimize them with carefully written titles, descriptions, header tags, image tags, and content that will rank in Google.  You may have the budget to promote your content on social media. You may want to contact anyone you wrote about to let them know they can share the content about them with their followers. You may email your content to your current list and ask the to share it.

Measure your activity based on what you published. If you see that a topic worked well, follow up with more information. If analytics shows that visitors read your post then leave the site, try to add elements to the page to keep them engaged or read another post. If some of your curated content is driving up your referral traffic, brainstorms ways to keep the traffic coming.

An effective content marketing strategy for small business does not have to consume your team. With careful planning and monitoring your company can succeed in content marketing.