Top 3 Content Marketing Tips for Small Business

1. Make A Schedule

Want to have a successful content marketing run? Get organized. First, create a calendar (I like to use Google Docs); you should create an outline of what each month of your year looks like as far as seasonality, industry events, holidays, and company-specific happenings, then add them to your calendar. Allot time each week for filling in content ideas, developing strategy, researching, and actually creating your content. This could take between 2-4 hours per week (depending on how in-depth your content is and/or if you outsource any portion of this). The more successful marketing campaigns are the ones that were well thought out and planned properly.

2. Survey

Surveys are a great way to get inside consumer’s minds and see what they like. You can use surveys to improve your website, improve your product, learn about what type of content they want to see and more. Consider incentivizing for responses; a $5 iTunes gift card to all participants, one “grand prize” drawing or several smaller prizes. Team up with like-minded businesses for list exchange, sponsored prizes and other co-marketing efforts to cast a wider net for survey respondents. Some popular survey sites are: SurveyMonkey, SurveyGizmo and Google Survey Forms.

3. Use Images

While there is tremendous value in text-based posts, you must still integrate imagery into your content creation. Visual content is a fast and easy way to get your point across. You might want to take a longer piece of content and replace a paragraph with an image you have created instead. Making it visually appealing and easy to understand. Some ideas for imagery include using infographics, bold photos with text on top.  To create custom infographics try Easel.ly or Infogr.am

Affordable Small Business Marketing Strategy Tip #2

Everyone LOVES to WIN!  So why not run a contest on social media?

You’ll need to cough up some dough for a prize, but the number of participants and new potential leads you get will be well worth the price. Really tight on budget? You don’t technically need a super expensive prize to get participants. Even a couple high-end water bottles or fancy backpacks might be enough of a draw for some users.

Not sure how to host a contest? 

Try DIY & go with Rafflecopter – they make it super easy to set up a contest and embed the contest entry form on your website.  

Afraid to fly solo?  Hire a professional.  I recommend Mission4Media which offers affordable monthly social media management and contesting for all social media formats!  Be sure to tell James that Jody sent you!