Content marketing can be a great tool for small businesses to better communicate with customers. But you can’t expect to just create a blog or social media post and have customers come running to buy from you. Instead, take a look at these tips from members of our small business community on how to make the most of your content marketing efforts.
Provide Value as an Expert Contributor
Serving as an expert contributor, or having expert contributors on your own site, can add value for your audience and allow you to share your expertise with a growing audience. However, it’s important that you go about this process in the right way. Sian Phillips offers some tips in this Tweak Your Biz post. And BizSugar members share input here.
Understand the Benefits of Medium
If you haven’t yet heard of Medium, it’s a platform that allows people to share their written work in a super simple setting that also has a potentially powerful reach. In this TKM Labs post, Steven Tran shares a bit about Medium and how businesses and bloggers can potentially benefit from it.
Learn These Lessons from BuzzFeed’s Most Popular Content
If you want to create great shareable content, you have to learn from the best. BuzzFeed’s posts get consistently high views and shares. So if you look at some of the site’s most popular content, as discussed in this Marketing Land post by Kerry Jones, you may be able to learn some lessons that apply to your own content.
Figure Out Where and When to Use Online Advertising
Online advertising can be a great way to increase the impact of your content. But not all types of ads are created equal. Here, Gary Shouldis of 3Bug Media shares some tips you can use to make the most of your online ads. And the BizSugar community shares thoughts on the post here.
Create Beautiful Graphics With Canva
If you’re going to blog or use social media, you’ll need to consider what images you share with each post or update. That likely means that you’ll need to create graphics at some point. Here, Debra Garber offers tips on the dlvr.it blog for using Canva to create beautiful graphics for social media.
Become a Podcast Guest
Whether you’re a podcaster yourself or you just have some expert insights to share, being a guest on a popular podcast that’s related to your industry can really help you grow your brand. In this MyBlogU post, Ann Smarty shares some tips and insights about being a podcast guest.
Pin Your Way to the Bank
Pinterest can be used for more than just saving cool recipes or home projects. As this Perpetto post by Ed Leake points out, you can actually use Pinterest to drive sales. And check out what BizSugar members are saying about the post here.
Grow Your Audience on Snapchat
Snapchat has been gaining traction with both consumers and brands in recent years. So if you want to use it as part of your content marketing strategy, you need to know the best methods for growing your Snapchat audience. Here, Calvin Wayman shares some tips on Social Media Examiner.
Make the Most of Your Content Marketing Efforts
Content marketing isn’t some magical solution that will automatically bring your business millions of new customers. You have to actually make the most of your content in order to see results. In this Madison Logic post, Nick Price shares some tips for making the most of your content marketing.
Keep Up With Platforms Like Blab
Some entrepreneurs and content marketers have been using Blab to broadcast content to their audiences for years. But some recent changes have people worried about Blab’s future. And as a marketer, you need to be familiar with the changes in the various platforms you use, as Mike Allton discusses in this post on the Social Media Hat. You can see further discussion about the post over on BizSugar.
If you’d like to suggest your favorite small business content to be considered for an upcoming community roundup, please send your news tips to: [email protected].
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Aira Bongco
Value is very important. Creating content for its own sake has its limits. You have to be willing to go another mile and provide tremendous value with even just one piece of content.
Annie Pilon
Creating content for its own sake is basically never useful – there always has to be some sort of value for your audience even if it’s something small
Thank you for the tips. I kept on noticing that content marketing is the new form of SEO marketing – you really cannot market anything more than your own content nowadays.
I think that every business should now start to market some form of content whether it be articles, images or videos. It is essential not only for branding but also for increasing your online presence.
Anna Lu
Try some other content ideas like publishing an infographic instead of written articles. With visual content, you are able to relate better with a majority of your audience. Plus, visuals have the potential to stay in people’s minds. They might not remember a long piece of written work, but they will always be able to remember a powerful image or graphic. As they say, “a picture is worth a thousand words”.
Steve
Hello, Annie!
Thanks for your article. I’m sure these tips will help others the same as they helped me today! I would like to add that sometimes if you are out of time and you have to get more links, it’s OK to use the content curation instead of improving your content writing skills. As this article https://www.onlinemarketinginstitute.org/blog/2016/07/15-best-content-curation-tools-make-content-marketing-rock/ says, publishing curated content can also help you to achieve the same goals and in a much more practical way, so there’s almost no need to focus on content writing.