Wondering how to get started with content marketing? We’ve got you covered with this handy guide to content marketing for small business.
If you own a small business, you probably know you should be doing something to promote it on the web, but exactly what that is may seem a bit mysterious and vague. Or worse… a total waste of time. Unfortunately, when you take a look at the content marketing efforts of many small businesses, the picture can be pretty uninspiring.
Content Marketing for Small Business: How Can It Help Your Business Grow?
To put it simply, content marketing is the practice of creating things like blog posts, social media posts, newsletters, podcasts, videos, and many other types of useful or engaging content that will attract and engage your target customers to your website and business.
It’s all about telling your audience a story that will capture their attention or solve a problem. Content marketing for small businesses is a great way to bond with your potential and existing customers. It gives you the chance to build loyalty and trust while forging an emotional connection between your business and its customers.
According to studies by the Harvard Business Review, forming an emotional connection with your customers is even more important than customer service. Emotionally connected customers are more likely to make a purchase, revisit your small business, follow and recommend your advice, and be less sensitive about pricing.
In fact, customers who form an emotional connection with your small business through your content marketing efforts are more likely to choose you over your competitors, even if your competitor offers a lower price or is in a more convenient location.
What Should Your Content Be About?
There are lots of ways a small business can take advantage of content marketing, but sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. Here are some ideas of what the content for your small business can be about:
Talk About Yourself and Your Small Business
How did you get started in your business? Why did you decide to do what you do? Who or what influenced you? What advice can you share with people who want to own their own small business? What are some of the most interesting experiences you’ve had as a small business owner? What are your business’s core values and unique selling points?
Talk About Your Team
Tell everyone about your team. What’s their area of expertise? What do they do for your company? How did they come to work for you, and what experience do they have? Don’t forget to share some personal details too… like what they do in their free time, how many pets they have, where they’re from… you get the idea!
Talk About Your Customers
Who are your customers? How has your business helped them? How did they learn about your products or services? Why do they need your product or service? Why did they choose your business over others?
Talk About Your Product or Service
Your blog shouldn’t be all about selling your product or service, but it’s a great place to introduce new products or services. Talk about how to best care for your products. Explain why your products or services are different from your competitors. Talk about the history behind what you offer and why there’s a need for it now. Tell them about your manufacturing process, where your products are made, and how you source your materials.
Share Your Knowledge
What do you know that might be useful to your customers? Share your knowledge with your customers. Offer them solutions to problems they might have that fall within your industry.
If you own a handyman service, tell them how to troubleshoot a common issue homeowners might have, and tell them when it’s time to call in a professional.
If you sell appliances, tell them about the pros and cons of several different models to help them make an informed decision about which one to buy. Of course, you’ll want to make sure to emphasize the advantages of models that you offer.
Creating Your Content
One of the most important steps of successful content marketing for small business is creating quality content. Although the ideas above are a great starting point, if your content isn’t useful, engaging, and entertaining, no one is going to read it. Make sure to cover a variety of topics to attract a variety of potential leads.
The quality of your content is the core of your entire content marketing strategy. Trying to cut corners with your content creation will just turn potential customers away. Creating great content isn’t easy, so take a good hard look at your efforts. If you don’t have the best spelling and grammar, or you’re not the most engaging writer, don’t waste your time.
In this case, create a detailed content brief and hire a skilled writer to do the writing for you. Trust me, it’s well worth the investment.
Where You Publish Your Content Matters
Your content should always be published on your business website first. Your website is like your online storefront or home base, so be sure you have the most essential website design bases covered.
How to Get Your Content Seen
Another essential aspect of content marketing for small business is getting your content seen. No matter how great your story is or how beautiful your website is, they can’t do you any good if no one sees them.
If you want to take full advantage of the benefits of content marketing for your small business, start by creating content that draws people in. Sure, you want to tell your customers about your business and products, but your content should also offer value to your readers. It shouldn’t be overly salesy or promotional because that can really turn people off.
If you don’t have the time to learn how to do keyword research and search engine optimization yourself, hire someone to do it for you. It’s a must if you want to be successful with content marketing. Creating search engine optimized content is the best long term strategy for bringing traffic to your website, so hiring a professional will maximize our ROI over the long haul.
Promote Your Content
Once you’ve got engaging, useful, search engine optimized content on your blog, what else can you do to get it seen? Start by promoting your content to your email list. Send out an announcement about each post as it’s published and talk about your most popular posts in your weekly or monthly newsletters.
When you have an exceptionally fantastic piece of content, don’t be afraid to promote it through paid advertising. Platforms like Facebook allow you to pay to share your content with an extensive, targeted audience, and it’s quite affordable, even for small business owners. The payoff in new leads and revenue can be tremendous if you promote the right piece of content to the right audience.
Social media is the obvious place to promote your content, and you should take full advantage of it. Share your posts as they’re published to keep your business at the forefront of your customers’ minds and bring awareness to your brand. It’s an excellent tool for engaging and connecting with new leads and existing customers.
Content Marketing for Small Business: The Takeaway
I can’t think of any business that couldn’t benefit from establishing trust with their customers, bringing additional visitors to their website, collecting new leads, and increasing sales.
With content marketing for small business, you’ll see some immediate payoff, but the most significant ROI will come over time as you move up in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and see a massive boost in your organic traffic.
The great thing about content marketing is that it’s affordable. That makes it an excellent tool for small businesses who need to generate more traffic and leads (and what small business doesn’t?).
Everyone has a smartphone, tablet, or laptop in their face most of the day. And what are they looking at? Engaging, entertaining, and useful content! With some strategic planning and effort, that content could be bringing traffic to your small business website.
