Why spend time on Content Marketing?
Content Marketing builds relationships by providing useful, relevant information on your website (blog), email campaign, and social media. Filling your website with a knowledge base of information your customers value makes you an authority. It also adds value to your site, making it rank higher for the content keywords. Traditional advertising media is more expensive and less informative.
What is your content marketing mission?
How do you want people to see your business? Step back from your business and look at the big picture. Set up your plan based on the result you want.
Do you want to:
- Be the expert?
- Build relationships? Build trust?
- Establish yourself as part of the community.
- Raise visibility/brand awareness?
- Increase your customer base?
Five social media approaches:
Mix and match to meet your needs.
Brand maintenance—monitor your channels, respond when appropriate, and post here and there.
Community-building—starting with the customers you have, grow your circle larger and more solidified. Make your business personal, and get to know them.
Find Influencers—identify and engage the people who are influential in your industry and community.
Reputation development—develop a positive reputation consistently over time.
The big splash—marketing campaigns/events that garner a lot of short-term attention.
Find out what platforms reach your customers.
Ask them. “Do you follow Instagram or Twitter?” “Have you ever used___? (Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, SlideShare, Flickr, LinkedIn)” You can create a free survey on surverymonkey.com and email it to your customers or put it in your email newsletter. Have a waiting room? Ask customers to fill out a survey card while waiting.
Determine what they want to know.
Think of topics related to your business, activities your customers have in common, and what questions you often receive from customers. Wishing them a happy new year isn’t enough content. Keep it interesting; engaging. Would you want to read your article? Consider working with a writer to draft your articles which are the core of your content marketing program.
Make out an annual calendar.
Right now, write down 3 topics your customers would be interested in… now you have your first three months themes. To start:
- Assign a theme a month. (Make sure the content is useful and relevant to your business.)
- Write a brief article (300-500 words).
- Add the article to your site (blog, or content page) – Be sure to fill in your titles, tag your images and add alt tags in your blog with the appropriate search terms for this topic.
- Make a social media posts directing readers to your article on your strongest channel(s). It is better to start small and do it well; just add more channels as you can.
- Fill the month with other posts related to the theme:
- Share quotes and humor from other pages that reinforce your theme.
- Ask engaging questions to start a conversation. (Test the questions out on people before you post and choose the ones that spark the best conversations.)
- Share data or an infographic to reinforce your message
- Post success stories
- Add in a related customer testimonial
- Provide a tip or top 5 list related to the theme
- Build several posts in advance and schedule them to post over the month.
- Take your article, plus a testimonial/customer story, and a tip, make it into a simple email newsletter and send to your clients. (Try MailChimp)
- Join in the community! Share links and comment on local posts and events. Participate as possible.
- FOLLOW UP by responding to all comments made.
- Call me if you need help!
