7 Content Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

Small businesses have typically become the slowest to adapt to the content marketing strategies that larger corporate companies use. SEO has definitely evolved over the years, and in order to stay competitive, small companies need to include things such as how-tos, e-books and other content marketing techniques.

Whether content is created inside the company or outsourced to an agency, there will be times when new content may be scarce.  Adam Stetzer, writer for SearchEngineWatch.com provides seven tips for creating good content.

1. Create a Content Marketing Calendar

Having a calendar that documents a content strategy is a great way to ensure timely content creation. However, this smart strategy is too often overlooked. Only 44% of marketers are reported to have a documented content marketing strategy.

Organizing a calendar of content scheduled for the month is a great first step that provides a set amount of time to strategize, brainstorm, create, and publish.

2. Find Out What Works

Stetzer suggests that before going out and researching other sites for content inspiration, find out what worked in the past with your previous content . You can use Google Analytics to check the top trafficked pages to see what content performed best. You can also check your company’s social media performance to measure which posts and topics gained the most attention and interests from your audience.

3. Understand Social Trends for Newsjacking

Social media is also helpful in providing good ideas for content generation. Writing content around trending topics, called “newsjacking” is a great way to provide valuable content to people looking for it.

You can further enhance content by addressing different sides to a story or taking a controversial stance.

4. Create a Survey

Stetzer also suggests that you can create news with an easy survey. Understanding your consumers’ stance on a topic in an industry provides material for articles and infographics.

SurveyMonkey and Google Consumer Surveys are great and easy ways to create surveys to share online.

5. Utilize Visual Content

While SEO focuses on text that search engines can digest, don’t underestimate visual content too. Visual images or videos are much more appealing for human readers. Audiences are naturally wired to be more engaged with visual content. Images are probably the easiest form of content to produce to immediately attract the attention of your audience.

6. Start a Video Blog

Along with visuals, another easy way to create consistent high quality content is to create videos. Starting a video blog isn’t expensive or time consuming. Short videos are the easiest to digest and simple to shoot. They also require minimal editing, and if at all, can be posted immediately to YouTube.

7. Repurpose Content

Stetzer understands that finding a topic and doing the research can be stressful and time consuming. If this is an issue, he recommends creating a handful of content you already created around a certain topic. Gather content with an underlying theme such as “Website Design Tips” and package it with a supplemental blog post.

Stetzer also suggests that you revisit an older piece of content and providing updates. New information and technology is constantly being created and evaluated, which can easily be reported as an update to an earlier post.

Today, content marketing and SEO seem to go hand in hand. For small businesses, it can be challenging to stay on course, and ideas can be difficult to generate on a consistent basis. Understanding these content strategies are helpful tactics for you to use.

If your business would like assistance with your Internet marketing and content ideas, let’s talk! We’re here for all of your content and Internet marketing strategy needs.

Read the full article by Adam Stetzer.