by If you own a small business, you probably don’t have a significant marketing budget to work with. Marketing might seem like a waste of time and money, especially if you haven’t gotten anything out of traditional approaches. The good news is that content marketing is a more cost-effective method of generating new leads.
Search engine optimization, lead generation, and revenue generation are all goals that may be achieved using content. In one survey, 89 percent of respondents reported favorable results from content marketing independent of their specific objectives. Clearly, content marketing is effective—but only if you know how to use it.
There are several formats in which high-quality material can be presented. Here are a few examples of content strategies that have worked effectively for others for tiny businesses.
Articles and blog posts
Your plan should begin with a solid foundation of written content. New people will come to your site if your themes are relevant and your material is optimized for search engines. However, if a blog post or article is informative and well-written, it will attract viewers.
Your blog’s mere existence isn’t enough to make it stand out on the vast Internet. The finest content accomplishes all three of these goals at once: it educates, informs, and entertains your target audience.
If you’re at a loss for what to write about, consider asking your existing consumers for suggestions. A step-by-step tutorial with images, for example, if you’re selling a product that has intricate instructions As a clothing shop, write about the latest fashion trends and provide your reader’s ideas on how to incorporate them into their own wardrobes, if possible. If your restaurant is run by a family and has a unique history, be sure to share it with your customers. While it might be challenging to come up with subjects, every firm has something to offer its clients.
Infographics
Take a moment to recall the last time you read a lengthy blog post or lengthy article that had a great deal of information. You undoubtedly had a hard time trying to make sense of everything. In contrast, infographics aid in the understanding and retention of data. They’re also more eye-catching and more portable than plain text.
If you don’t know how to build an infographic, there are hundreds of free designs accessible online that you may use. Alternatively, you might outsource the design work to a professional. Whatever the subject, don’t forget to include citations and relevant keywords in the infographic’s title and description.
Above all, don’t forget to add a reference to your company’s name and website in the infographic. An infographic is a simple method to create branding content for small businesses on the internet.
Lists
Whether it was David Letterman’s Top Ten List or Buzzfeed’s most recent list, people have always been a fan of lists. Lists rank among the most widely shared pieces of material on the internet, with about 25,000 shares being generated each month. Your message will be shared more effectively if you create lists that are relevant to the people you want to reach.
When it comes to presenting lists on the Internet, animated GIFs, slideshows, and text lists are just some of the options available. Create lists in a number of forms or choose a format that works best for you. The subjects should be relevant to your company’s products and services. It’s possible that a list of “10 Reasons Tax Software is Better than a CPA” may draw attention—though perhaps not from CPAs themselves.
Content that can be interacted with
Asking a consumer to do anything is one approach to get their attention. A call to action should be included in every piece of content, but there are times when the material itself acts as a call to action. Keep visitors on your website longer and produce more business leads by using a variety of interactive features.
A landing page’s contact form is commonly relied upon by small enterprises. Forms like this are useful, but they don’t hold people’s attention for very long. However, on the other hand, a tax calculator or a project estimate generator encourages users to think about what they want and how your firm might assist them in achieving it.
Podcasts and videos
The most successful way to use content marketing is to keep adding fresh information on a regular basis. In addition, the user should be able to access it whenever and wherever they want. Mobile devices, which allow customers to interact with your business from virtually anywhere, make this even more important. You must, however, generate material that is just as portable. It’s easy to use podcasts and movies to do this.
Subscribers to a podcast can get new files delivered to their inbox as soon as they become available. Alternatively, you may make these files available for download on-demand platforms like iTunes. There are a number of venues where videos may be shared, including social media and YouTube. New leads may be generated, insights can be presented, and relevance to your consumers can be maintained through the use of both channels.
