Content Marketing – The What, Where, How
The What, Where, How
Content marketing is quite simply creating information to market your business. This can be done using a variety of methods to answer questions, share your opinions on relevant topics & trends and develop a library of information and stories to engage your audience… to ultimately become customers.
Content marketing is a gentle form of sales, a way to create a relationship with your customer and help them feel comfortable purchasing from you. It’s not a direct response - or fast - sales method but it is something you can do when starting out on a shoestring budget. It requires only your time.
What you are reading right now, is content marketing 🙂
Why Do You Need Content Marketing?
To get sales!
Customers expect more from a brand these days. They want to know more about you and more about what they are buying. I sure know I do. Content creation is your way to demonstrate what you stand for, how you products are made, what kind of service provider you are. Content creation allows you to express yourself and develop your brand in a way that connects you to your audience. It’s relationship marketing.
It helps people to buy from you. The buying process is actually a multi-decision making process, so if you can quickly reduce the anxiety of information gathering and connect on a more emotional level with your audience, then they will more quickly buy from you.
I have a client, The Goodlife Centre in London, that offers a huge variety of workshops in woodwork, carpentry, upholstery and crafts. We get lots of enquiries asking advice about which one of the woodwork courses should be taken first. So we created a blog post that answers that very question. Then whenever we are asked directly, we can send them a link directly to that blog post. If someone searches that question in google within the client’s location, then it will show in the search results too. We have and continue to create similar content for other courses too.
Start Simple
The not so humble blog
At its simplest, content marketing is writing blog posts and adding them to your website, see a screen shot from my blog page below.
This keeps your site fresh with up to date content that is great for being found on google, if you layout your content well with good key words and use of titles and subtitles. But first and foremost write for your audience, keep them in mind at all times. You can tweak it afterwards for the googlebots.
Content production doesn’t have to be blog posts. If you love to record videos, even from your phone then this is also a super medium, which is going to just explode further in the coming year.
For others creating a podcast is their preferred option, which is a lot more work but the rewards can be huge - the undivided attention of a podcast listener? That is priceless and still a very undervalued marketing tool. There isn’t a day goes by when I have not listened to at least two podcast episodes whilst driving or walking the dog.
Repurposing Content
Doing a lot with a little
The reason I especially love content marketing is because it can be repurposed across many different platforms and effectively catch your audience where they are looking. Not everyone likes to consume content in the same way so we can spoon feed it to them where they are; reading emails, scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, watching YouTube...
What does this look like in reality? Here’s an example of a awesome content repurposing that a client of mine, Sustainable Living Champion, Jen Galeis pretty fabulous at:
- 1. Records a podcast episode(with show notes) or writes a blogand publishes it on her website
- 2. Includes the content in her weekly newsletter - either the full article or a teaser with a link to it
- 3. Writes approx 5 different Facebook posts talking about the content and linking to it and shares on her Facebook page and in her Facebook group
- 4. Writes approx 5 different Tweets talking about the content and linking to it
- 5. Creates an instagram story (4-7 storyboards) with hashtags about the content (this is cross posted to Facebook stories)
- 6. Creates 1-2 instagram posts with up to 30 hashtags and shares it in her instagram feed
- 7. Creates 2-3 different pinterest pins and pins them to Pinterest which are then also repinned into group boards that she is a contributor for
- 8 . Shares the content on linked-in
- 9.Many aspects of this are repeated and reposted over time (if the content is not time sensitive)
OK, that is a lot of work right there and I appreciate that is not possible for everyone… but what it shows is exactly how much you can do with ONE single piece of content. Jen mostly does all this by herself using a scheduling tool (buffer) and she has a Pinterest manager. It is possible and it is how to widen your audience and get eyes on your content without spending nothing but your own time.
Content Calendar
Plan it out
Having a content plan will help you to feel less overwhelmed. You don’t have to create new content every day or week. Start with once a month, but try to be consistent and stick to it.
Creating a seasonal content calendar can be helpful because there are often occasions when you can produce something that is incredibly timely and relevant. This can help you get noticed by the press, search engines and ensure your content is more shareable as people will be looking for and sharing topical content.
Start by dropping in key dates that could be relevant - World Vegetarian Day, Mothers Day, Valentines Day, Oktoberfest, Summer Solstice - anything that might be important to your business or your audience. Then drop in some topic ideas for content based on that.
Most of all, I recommend starting with your audience in mind. What questions are you asked most often about your products and services? List them out and think about how you would answer each one. If you can come up with your ten most asked questions then write detailed answers for each one that is the basis of a content library right there! If the answers are quite short then make it one blog post instead. Then drop these content ideas into your calendar.
If you would like to use my basic content calendar template to get you started, simply copy it from my google file here >> then add your own details.
I challenge you to come up with at least one good topic for each of the remaining months of this year by next week! I’ll be testing you…