Recently I was quoted stating that all companies are media companies. Yes, “all” includes small businesses (at least those with websites). With content marketing, companies of all sizes have many ways to engage customers and prospects including your website and social media. For clarity’s sake, when you engage people you:
- build trust, and the more trust you have with someone, the more likely they will buy from you or recommend you
- turn people into your company’s ambassadors, which means they will tell other people about you
- have a communication channel to deliver offers (you know, sell something)
Many smaller businesses are aware of the opportunities that content marketing brings them but they don’t know how to get started. Here are two ways that are in everyone’s reach:
- Write* about your customers. This can be as simple as asking them 3-5 questions (check out Lifehacker’s How I Work column, where they usually ask many of the same questions to each interviewee). One bonus of writing about your customers is that most of them will tell their family, friends, and customers via their social media channels.
- Write on topics related to your expertise. If you are a plumber, write about preventing plumbing or other household problems. If you own a clothing store, share fashion tips.
* I used the word “write” but you could do audio or video as well.
Not sure where to post the content? Easy. Post a stream of the headlines on your homepage with the rest on its own page.
IMPORTANT: Because there is so much content these days (hey, if it is easy for you, it is easy for everyone) keep in mind that the content does have to be quite exceptional, so it does take some time.
David Henry says
Good points, Rob. I think that content can be very straight forward. Many times it’s as simple as answering the frequent questions that your customers/clients have about your company, product and/or service. If people have to search around for those kinds of answers, you risk losing engagement with them. If you can answer those questions and keep them engaged, you have a much better chance of converting them. If you think about the sales funnel with awareness being at the top, moving down to the consideration phase which drives to the bottom being conversion, it’s that consideration phase where people often need more information. It’s easy to create content that addresses those areas. One final observation from working with our clients, video content outperforms all other content by a large margin. So, it makes sense to invest in producing that content as it will pay off with better engagement from your audience.