“Why Every Small Business Needs a Content Marketing Strategy”

I’ve noticed that many small businesses online marketing is fragmented or not cohesive, meaning, there’s no real strategy behind their social media posts or even the content itself.  As stated in the above quote from Seth Godin, a content marketing strategy is necessary in today’s online world—even if you’re a brick and mortar store.

First of all, let me state that no matter what anybody says, you’ve got to try out various types of content first to see what resonates with your particular target market.  Try blogging, writing articles, some videos and even a podcast and see what your audience responds to. This is fairly easy to do just with a Facebook Business page alone.

I have a client that owns a body shop in Arizona and after running all his online marketing for the past 8 months, I pretty much know what’s going to get attention for his readers. He’s hired a video company to produce some very good educational videos, I write a weekly a blog for him and we curate other material from the web. It took a couple of months to figure out what his audience liked,  but once we did, his business grew by a large percentage. 

Now, we did other things in addition to this, like encouraging online reviews, sending follow-up thank you cards, doing short radio spots, and putting a referral system in place.  But the most effective thing we did and continue to do is keep up his online presence with a content marketing strategy. 

Here are a few things you can do for your social media profiles:

1. Figure out your business’ overall marketing message.  Once you figure that out, knowing what topics and content to post will be much easier to determine.

2.  Post every day on social media. Include memes, articles and maybe consider a blog.

3. Consider doing a Facebook “live” presentation.  It doesn’t have to be long, maybe only 15 minutes.  Something informational for your audience that they can use in their personal or business lives.  Consider doing it weekly. It allows your audience to get familiar with who you are and what you do. And it doesn’t even have to be you, the business owner, that does this. You can assign an employee or loved one to do it.  Facebook Live puts a “face” on your business and is some of the best content marketing you can do. 

4.  Get an Instagram account.  Record and post a 1-minute video of something relevant for your audience or post a meme. You can set it to also automatically post to your Facebook feed as well, thus increasing your reach.(Facebook owns Instagram)

5. Set up a blog. Yes, blogs are still a very powerful way to connect with your audience and text based content is still preferred by Google. Many people still like to read content online and a blog is a great way to reach those who have this preference.

Those five tips will get you started with a content marketing strategy but here’s a caveat for social media: We here the phrase “social media marketing” all the time.  Do NOT try to out and out sell on social media. The phrase at this point in online history is “give to get”.  Posting online on the various social media sites (which ones you choose to focus on are up to you and a topic for another blog) is necessary to build trust and credibility with your audience.  Once you have that, the selling process can begin.

What’s you’re online strategy going to look like?

Best,

Tim

P.S. If you would like a FREE 30-minute consult call where I’ll assess your online marketing and help you develop a strategy, just email me at tim@marketpitchllc.com.