Small businesses generally face tough challenges when it comes to planning and launching marketing campaigns. They

• have limited capital, which means they’re more limited in the strategies they can pursue
  
• have fewer resources, which means their teams are smaller and less experienced
  
• generally have less data and first-hand experience to strategize in the first place
  

One of the best marketing strategies for small businesses is content marketing, due to its approachability and affordability. However, creating a content marketing strategy can still be an intensive & time consuming process. If you’re new to the content marketing world and you want to launch a content strategy for your business, here’s a brief overview of the steps below.

If you get overwhelmed, feel free to contact us at www.hitbyseo.com and we’ll work out a content marketing strategy for your business.

Before we move onto each step, let’s first understand “What is Digital Marketing Content?”

What is Digital Marketing Content?

Digital Marketing content differs from advertising, in that it resides on a company’s own website, blog, social-media accounts. It may also include white papers, e-books, podcasts and webinars. It is much less expensive than taking out ads, but nevertheless requires thought, effort, planning, proper coding and tracking. Some of the goals of digital marketing content are to educate and engage readers.

You can take it one step further and start a conversation with your readers, which is called creating “earned content,” and is a sign of success. The objective is really to engage visitors to your blog, social media sites or website. An engaged visitor is one who likes, comments, shares, downloads or buys from you. The buying cycle is long, doesn’t necessarily start with reading your social media content. However, you can make it a goal to gain a follower or start a conversation with your readers. The ultimate goal of writing, publishing and promoting digital marketing content, is to acquire new customers and ultimately to make more money.

Here are a few tips in what I’ve found successful in the past in writing content for business purposes.

1) Consider the Audience – Write to a Specific Audience – Make it Relevant and Valuable

You aren’t a fiction writer – you are writing to a specific audience. You need to be RELEVANT and consider what VALUE your content will have for your SPECIFIC AUDIENCE.

Having been a business development manager for a biotech company, I had many challenges in finding topics that were relevant and valuable to my customers. When I found a hot topic that scientists were yearning to know more about, I hired a scientist who was an expert in the field to co-author our blog posts. Finally, I had a winning combination, a hot topic that was relevant and valuable and an expert in the field who could give valuable input to other scientists.

2) Listen to Your Customers

I discovered that customers will tell you what they are interested in. Many years ago, I was CEO of a soundproofing company. I found several niche offshoots of my own business by listening to my customers. Along with my line of soundproofing products, I offered used hotel draperies (yes, who would have thought that there would be a market for those) to people who were desperate to protect themselves from street noise. I wrote several articles about how acoustical draperies work to dampen noise, and the inquiries I received kept steadily growing. I received so many inquiries, that I designed my own line of new acoustical draperies to accommodate my customers. Soon I was receiving orders from prominent universities, the Pentagon, the FAA and many more distinguished customers. You need to listen to your customers. They will tell you what they are interested in.

3) Use Impactful Images – Pictures Do Speak 1000 Words

Let’s face it, we all love pictures. Do you look at the photos of people you’re doing business with on LinkedIn? People love to see WHAT they are buying and WHO they are doing business with.

I saw a great increase in conversions for my acoustical drapery business once I was able to show pictures of my draperies tastefully installed. Everyone wanted to see what they looked like.

On an average, when you hear information, you’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. If you see a picture along with the same information, you are likely to retain 65% of the information three days later.

Inc Magazine tells us that posts that include images produce 650% higher engagement than text-only posts.

4) Include Relevant Links

External links are very important in establishing trust of your content. They also improve the user experience, and yes, rankings!

You want to link to additional resources that your readers may be interested in. For example, if you’re reading this, I think you may also be interested in the writings of Avinash Kaushik, who has become a Digital Marketing guru and thought leader for the entire industry. Here is his blog:

https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/.

Another great thought leader is Neil Patel, who offers much free advice on every aspect of Digital Marketing. Here is Neil’s site: https://neilpatel.com/blog/.

5) Use Long Tail Keywords

Long Tail Keywords have three or more words, such as “search engine traffic.” Google tells us that long tail keywords are very powerful for getting organic visitors to your website. These long tail keywords create traffic to your website that is highly targeted and engaged. People searching for long tail phrases generally know what they’re looking for. For example, someone searching for “digital marketing content” is going to be different than someone searching for “marketing.” If you write about a very specific topic, be sure to use these long tail keywords so when people search for that topic, you will be found.

6) Use Proper Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation

If you want to be considered an authority, you need to ensure that you’ve taken proper measures like spell-check, grammar check and punctuation check. In addition to paying attention to what Microsoft Word tells me, I use a program called Grammarly, (www.grammarly.com) which is free and is a must-have. Unless you’re into posting mindless gibberish on Facebook, you need to be mindful of your audience and proofread your work before publishing it.

7) Be Discoverable – Use Good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Practices – On Page SEO

If you want search engines and ultimately readers to find your blog article or your website, you can’t just slap it up on your website and hope for the best. For general searching on the web, readers will only find what search engines bring up on the first page of search results. Web and blog content must include good “on-page” SEO to make your great digital marketing content discoverable. This means you must follow SEO best practices to include title tags, meta-descriptions, keywords, image-alt-text and proper u.r.l.’s for every blog post and webpage. Every page must be optimized or no one will ever read your content or find your business, unless you’re willing to pay for advertising.

8) Social Media Optimization –Make it Shareable and Share It Effectively

While writing an effective content is important, making it shareable and sharing it via effective channels is even more necessary in order to garner brand awareness and connect with a larger targeted audience.

Derek Halpern, a social media influencer, created what’s now known as the “80/20 rule”. If you want to gain huge traction with your blog posts, spend 20% of your time writing and 80% marketing and promoting your writing.

One of the approaches to find effective channels for promoting your content is tracking your competition, using tools like www.spyfu.com or www.semrush.com. These tools help you identify the most effective channels/ forums/ posts used to get maximum traffic. Leverage similar strategy for your business.

A second approach to promoting your content is to identify where your target audience goes today to solve their pain point. Use those channels to broadcast your content.

9) Measure Digital Content Success – Keeping Track of Results

It’s important to measure your success. To do this, web analytics must be used. They are available in different forms. Some of the more common analytic tools include Google’s search console and Google Analytics. Digital marketers are trained to use unique u.r.l.’s to identify the source of visitors to your website. A good digital marketer can measure the precise source of every visitor. Ultimately, this helps to identify which marketing channel is most effective and even drill down to which campaign, which keywords and what content is most effective. This may be a daunting job to a business owner, as it can be very time consuming and requires systems in place to track results.

Need a little help?

If all this seems like a tall order and you need some help, that’s where www.hitbyseo.com can be a lifesaver for your business. Our experts will take your brilliant content and make it discoverable! We are a global digital marketing agency that offers Managed SEO services. We’ll help you identify your audience and set up a content marketing plan and writing/publishing schedule to make this process painless and effortless for you.

In conclusion:

Have you been promoting your blog posts? What strategies did you employ?
Please feel free to share your experiences with us.

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