Content marketing is an important tool for companies of all sizes, but especially for those smaller ones.
When you are a smaller business, you oftentimes have a few more hurdles to climb than the bigger outfits.
For starters, you may not have the resources (people and funds) to market your company as much as you would like. Secondly, you are typically not as well-known as those larger-sized companies and marketers, so it can sometimes take twice the effort to get your brand more widely noticed.
With that being the case, what are you doing with content marketing to make your brand get the recognition it needs and deserves from consumers?
Take Your Content to New Levels
Start by looking at your content marketing efforts up to this point, seeing what has proven to be a winner and what has come up on the short end. When you do a thorough review from time to time, you better position your brand for success.
The first thing you want to look at is the content itself.
From your blog posts to press releases and more, what does your content say about your brand and you as a small business owner?
Among the areas where your brand’s content should stand out:
- Blog posts – Countless people (at least this should be the case) will come to your website’s blog and view it elsewhere when others share your posts. Your blog gives you a great opportunity to promote not only your brand, but also stand out as an authority figure in your respective niche. Who writes the content is equally as important. Whether you do the writing in-house or outsource it to content marketing pros, make sure your articles sing with professionalism and information. Professionals such as John Lemp can tell you why performance marketing is so critical, especially in the case of smaller-sized brands. The goal is being able to compete (this includes going up against bigger companies) on both a financial level and also as an authority in your respected industry. When you have the right blog content in place, you should be able to drive tons of traffic back to your website. At the end of the day, this increases the possibilities for your company’s revenue stream to grow;
- Press releases – Some businesses send out press releases that are full of information and worth their while, still others seem to do it out of necessity and to fill space over several paragraphs of copy. You always want your press releases to be in the former group. While it is fine to send out the occasional release on important new hires or community initiatives your brand is a part of, the better releases provide useful tips to consumers regarding products and services. Once again, decide whether or not you have the resources in-house to crank these out or if it is better to turn to pros outside your business. At the end of the day, just like your company wants to get the most out of its employees and overall resources, you need efficient and productive press releases that are going to give your brand the proper attention it deserves.;
- Social media – You can have the greatest content in the world, but what if few or no consumers are reading it? That is why social media needs to be an integral component of your content marketing efforts. Remember those blogs posts a few minutes ago? Those posts should always go out on one or more social networking sites. Turning to sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and others, get in the habit (if you have not up to this point) of tweeting and sharing them. The same holds true for others in your particular field of business. Yes, you don’t want to be giving your greatest competition free advertising, but do help those who are not direct competitors. When you share other’s blog posts on social media, they are more inclined to do the same for your business.
When you stop and think about it, content marketing doesn’t require an advanced college degree or decades in the working world.
It simply requires having the drive to promote your brand through the written word, words that can turn your small business into a proven winner year after year.