4 Essential Tips on content marketing for small business
The phrase ‘content marketing’ has come into the spotlight in a major way in very recent years – but what is it and how would it benefit your small business?
When content marketing for small businesses is done well, it can have the power to:
Introduce or reinforce your brand story and messaging
Build stronger and more meaningful relationships with your customers
Communicate promotions and new marketing activities
Build your reputation and authority
Increase sales
How do you get started with putting together a content marketing plan for your small business? Here are our tips to formulate a plan that to help to get the results you’re looking for.
If you are looking to do some of your own content marketing or to hire professional services to do some of the work, our legal templates have been created to make the process easier:
4 small business content marketing tips
1. Be clear on your overall expected outcomes
When creating your overall content plan, have a goal in mind for what you’re looking to gain.
From the list above, what would you ideally like to achieve by using content to market your business? It could be a combination of all objectives or something specific. Before you embark on setting a schedule or content calendar, be clear on your long-term plan and how you will deal with the client work that comes in as a result of content marketing. You need the right procedures, processes and documents in place to deal with the extra work it is likely to bring in.
Creating content can take time and be costly, particularly if outsourcing the content to others. Therefore, knowing in advance what your goals are will help you to only embark on a content plan that fits your needs.
2. Have a purpose for every piece of content
Before you write or create any single piece of content, be clear on what the purpose of that particular piece is. This will help to not only create it well, but to measure its success too. For example, if the aim of your new blog post is to push traffic to a sales page or product listing, this will impact on the copy you use and the calls to action within the article.
Set a goal so that you can measure the success of the blog post, such as number of clicks to the sales page, the time the readers spends on the page or how many times the article is engaged with on social media. You can then price the return on investment (ROI) on that piece of content and see how much content is needed to generate new clients.
3. Create a conversation
Content marketing can be a valuable method of communicating with prospective and existing customers and this in turn will help to grow your brand. Whether you’re writing an article, a social media post or a newsletter, consider adding a way for your readers to engage with you, share their thoughts and even share your content with others.
An easy way to do this is to ask your customers a question. Encourage them to reply to you and give them quick and easy ways to do so.
4. Manage freelancers with ease
For many small business owners who lack the time, skill set (or just inclination!) to create their own content, outsourcing this to freelancers can be an ideal solution. If you are outsourcing content creation to others:
share your specific goals with them; and
consider instating a service agreement to ensure both you and the freelancer are clear in your goals, objectives and measurables.
Protect your business by not issuing your freelancers with any of your passwords but rather set them up as social page Admins and with User access to any of your websites or platforms. Ensure that you retain full control of your own accounts.
How do you create and share content to grow your business?
At The Remote Expert we have the tools to help you manage content creation - from our independent contractor agreement template to our Supercharge program which is designed to consider things like content creation as part of your overall business strategy and include all the right documentation.
If you would like to chat more about what you need to do to make sure you get your content creation going and engage freelancers in a safe way, book a time to chat with Emma here.
