Content marketing has become increasingly valued by the world over the past few years. In fact, content marketing for local businesses has helped them build trust between themselves and their consumers through high-quality and informative content to help the reputation of companies.
Now, although many businesses are aware of the power of content marketing for business growth, truth be told, many currently either do not use it at all, consistently, or even to its absolute entirety. Whatever reason your head is nodding nonstop, we’ve compiled some points together to help you grow your digital presence with some of our content marketing ideas for small businesses.
Before we get into all of that, let us first explain why content marketing is important for businesses. According to MailChimp, content marketing is a ‘marketing strategy used to attract, engage, and retain an audience by creating and sharing relevant articles, videos, podcasts, and other media.’ What’s so great is that content marketing is simply a variety of ways we can use to help speak to our ideal person or people. We don’t need to use one form of marketing, like articles, purely, but rather a series of different forms, such as videos, as our way to speak to our target audience. Are you still not convinced? Well, here are some advantages of the variety of forms of marketing that are perfect for your digital marketing strategy.
- Increased organic search traffic
- Access to a larger audience
- Increased social media engagement and PR results
- Higher expertise, authority, and trust; building stronger conversion rates from quality leads
- Expanded brand awareness
Different forms of content marketing
Before choosing your form of content marketing, there are some things you need to take into consideration, including setting goals for what you’d like to achieve. You will then have the opportunity to identify and choose the best form of content marketing for your desired audience. Is your customer a video fanatic or someone in health care who enjoys reading articles? Whoever they are, tune into who you would like to target and focus your energy on using the type of content form and platform they would use. Once this is completed, you can conduct keyword research to determine what keywords you should put into your chosen form of content. It may sound quite tedious to create a list of keywords; however, it will help you create your content when the time comes.
Figuring out the best content channels and type of content will never be the most challenging part if you take the time to set goals for your target customer. When you approach this stage of choosing your form of content marketing, we want to clarify one thing – there are MANY types that you can choose from. There are too many for us to list right now; therefore, we have selected four styles that we have found helpful for businesses to build and develop their digital presence.
Blogging
Out of every content type that needs to grow its digital presence, blogging is most definitely essential. According to Social Media Today, ‘there are many advantages that blogging has for businesses, including website visitors, SEO benefits and brand awareness.’ For instance, ‘the average company that blogs receives 55% more website visitors; companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website and 70% of consumers learn about a company through articles rather than ads.’ Hence, we would say that once your website is up and running, blogging should be the next focus for any growing business. This content type is perfect for all businesses, especially start-ups, as blogging would help keep unnecessary costs down.
Plus, search engines will usually look at websites that continually get updated over time, as these kinds of websites will usually be prioritised on Google’s search engine results. Although other points will help you rank on page one of Google, such as on-page and technical SEO, uploading quality blogs is a great place to start off.
Video content and podcasts
The popularity of video content and podcasts has taken flight in content marketing in the past few years. What’s great about these two forms of content marketing is that they are versatile in how businesses can use them.
Businesses can now use video and podcast content to speak to their targeted customers in ways that everyday blogging cannot, whether long form or short form; the versatility of video content can include added graphics and subtitles. Equally, the use of podcasts can provide businesses with the same value, as more and more people are listening to podcasts daily. Although they may not work for all companies, the use of video content is continually rising and could be a new way to help businesses create digital awareness.
Email marketing
Building an email marketing list will always take time; however, by doing this, your business could achieve great results. By connecting with your email list through continuous forms of quality content relevant to your business, you would build trust with your consumers.
Creating an email list would also allow you to sell directly to them, whether existing consumers or potential customers who wanted to know more about your business. If they’re a potential customer and on your email list, you would have a chance to bring them on as a consumer as you would have the opportunity to offer a solution to a problem they currently have.
Social media
Last but certainly not least, social media is an incredible way to engage with your target market. The best way to start when it comes to using social media is to create a social strategy. Instead of posting just to post and not reaping the benefits of social media, creating a social plan would help you align your content with your business goals.
What’s great about social media is that it doesn’t stop with sharing your business content with your target market; it can also help you build your business reputation online by using various forms of content marketing.
Content marketing is simply marvellous. It bridges the gap between your future customers and your business with good, informative content, building trust with your audience and your company’s reputation.
It isn’t about using all forms of content marketing to try and speak to your customers, but instead, choosing one or two that you know your target market uses and providing quality content with that form.
Of course, there is more to using content marketing, including measuring your results to help determine if your preferred forms of content marketing are working or not.
If you’re ready to take your business to the next level with the help of a content marketing strategy for small businesses but unsure how to, take a look at our digital marketing services page or contact us for more information on how we can help you and your business. As a content marketing agency for small businesses and larger corporations alike, we’re confident that we can find a solution for you.
