From taking advantage of microsites to trying out different content, here are 16 answers to the question, “What is one content marketing tip you have for small business owners?”
- Create a Microsite to Boost Conversions
- Motivate and Encourage Users to Create Reviews
- Draft Niche-related Studies
- Repurpose Content to Ease Your Content Strategy
- Design Shareable Infographics
- Look at Competitors
- Crowd Source Articles
- Outsource Content Marketing to a Freelancer
- Always Segment Your Content by Buyer Stage
- Don’t Hesitate
- Focus on What Gets Meaningful Results
- Always Respond to Blog Comments
- Leverage SEO
- Make Content Shareable to Social Media
- Stick to a Content Calendar
- Use Multiple Forms of Content
Create a Microsite to Boost Conversions
Content marketing is an invaluable tool for small business owners looking to gain greater visibility and traction. One novel tip I have is creating a microsite: a small website dedicated only to your product or service.
By having a local destination for potential customers, you are directing them toward content specifically related to what you offer, which ultimately leads to more conversions. Additionally, this gives the freedom of experimentation; since microsites don’t live on the main domain of your business, there’s plenty of room for creativity in terms of design, marketing messages, and other criteria at a reasonable cost and low risk.
Michael Alexis, CEO, swag.org
Motivate and Encourage Users to Create Reviews
By encouraging customers to share their experiences, testimonials, and reviews of products or services, companies can create a wealth of authentic and engaging content to promote their business.
Brands can then use this user-generated content (UGC) to develop new content, like blog posts, infographics, or videos showcasing customers’ experiences. Leveraging UGC helps brands promote their products or services through social media, email, or websites.
Then, curate the best user-generated content and share it across channels to show appreciation and increase customer loyalty and the chances of more UGC. UGC inevitably helps businesses create a community of customers who are passionate about the brand, where they can share their experiences and interact with other customers.
Guna Kakulapati, Co-Founder & CEO, CureSkin
Draft Niche-related Studies
Content marketing can help your small business in building its brand’s authority. You can achieve it by diversifying your content, for example, by creating niche-related studies.
Data-driven content is increasingly relevant to modern consumers, as it can provide them with solid information about the products and services they need. Additionally, such studies can be quoted in media and blogs interested in your niche, giving you valuable backlinks (SEO boost) and bringing new customers (brand awareness boost).
Natalia Brzezinska, Marketing & Outreach Manager, UK Passport Photo
Repurpose Content to Ease Your Content Strategy
Creating new content can be time intensive and costly, but repurposing existing content can be a cost-effective way to get more mileage out of the content the business has already created.
This can include turning a blog post into a video or a podcast into a series of social media posts. One way to repurpose content is to take a blog post and turn it into a video or podcast, which companies can share on different platforms.
For example, brands can turn a blog post on how to use a product into a video tutorial on YouTube or Instagram. Another way is to take a series of blog posts on a specific topic and turn them into an e-book or a podcast episode into a series of social media posts.
Repurposing existing content also allows businesses to reach new audiences. For example, by creating a video on a topic covered in a blog post, a company can reach a different audience who prefers video content over written content.
Ubaldo Perez, Founder & CEO, Hush
Design Shareable Infographics
Infographics are a great way to garner attention for your expertise and your brand. They are very shareable, as well as eye-catching. We can easily make them with the help of Canva or even the editing pane of certain social media platforms.
Small businesses can capitalize on visuals and draw customers to their brand that way. Infographics are also quite versatile, as you can pair an infographic with a blog article or make it a standalone post on social media platforms.
Eric Ang, Director, One Search Pro
Look at Competitors
Whatever content strategies your competitors use, analyze which ones appear to be the most successful and look to them for inspiration. Furthermore, try to come up with other strategies that your competitors aren’t using so that yours will stand out. If you’re not in tune with your competitors’ strategies, you will lose sight of how well your business is doing.
Drew Sherman, Director of Marketing & Communications, Carvaygo
Crowd Source Articles
I’d say writing a crowd-sourced article featuring industry experts’ opinions is a great way for small business owners to get into content marketing. Not only will this be a valuable read for your audience, but it also gives you a chance to market your brand to those experts who you feature in the article.
They’ll likely share it with their own audience, giving you more reach and getting your brand noticed by a larger audience. Plus, you may even get some potential collaboration opportunities with those experts. You can seek expert opinions by posting your queries on platforms like HARO, Qwoted, ProfNet, Presspitch, or even use the Twitter hashtag #journorequest to get instant replies from professionals.
Shaun Connell, Founder, Writing Tips Institute
Outsource Content Marketing to a Freelancer
For small businesses with small budgets, content marketing can be highly cost-effective and its value builds over time. However, there are many unique nuances of content marketing that you need to understand in order to be successful. It’s easier to get content “right” when you work with an experienced content marketer.
Outsourcing content creation, strategy, and execution to a freelancer are less expensive than hiring someone internally. You get content on-demand without the overhead. Plus, you can tap into their years of experience in creating content for different channels, audiences, and use cases.
For the average business owner, content marketing isn’t in their skill set. Sure, you could emulate your competitors, but it takes a deeper understanding and loads of intention to make content work for you. Working with a freelancer shortens the learning curve while helping you save money and get the best results. It’s a win-win-win!
Alli Hill, Founder & Director, Fleurish Freelance
Always Segment Your Content by Buyer Stage
In our experience, lots of small business owners and those new to the content marketing space start by chasing high-volume keywords. We recommend taking a more holistic look at your content—by segmenting your strategy using your buyer journey.
For example, the content that drives your customers to your site in the first place (“best cameras”) likely won’t be the content that converts them to purchase (“[particular camera brand] sale”). To keep driving customers through the sales process, you need to map out your content marketing strategy: How will you market to those early in the buying process versus those who are near purchase? How will you prioritize those marketing efforts?
Only this way can you get a better idea of your content marketing ROI and actually understand the best way to drive sales to your site, not just website views.
Mike Belasco, CEO & Founder, Inflow
Don’t Hesitate
Just go. Hit send. Publish the piece. Record the video. As a small business owner, I want things to be perfect before sharing them with others. Within the realm of content marketing, I realized it was more important to create and publish rather than editing unproductively until I thought it was perfect.
The most important thing to remember in content marketing is that it’s not how you share the message, it’s about what message you share. Does your message provide value to your target audience? Good. Publish!
Roman Villard, Founder, Full Send Finance
Focus on What Gets Meaningful Results
Marketers are overwhelmed with the number of options to market their brands, but do you really need to be on every social media channel, produce a podcast, write a blog, and advertise on TV?
The answer is no, and for good reason. You will waste countless hours and dollars by trying to do too much and trying to reach too many people. Understand your audience and where they consume their news and media. If you don’t know, speak with industry peers or conduct a survey.
Once you have an understanding, experiment with 2-3 different tactics and see how they perform. Have goals and expectations for each tactic and monitor the progress, and continue doing what works.
Once you have implemented a few working tactics, you can expand into other areas you identified through your research. Success will not come overnight, but you should see consistent progress, or something needs to be changed.
Brock Thatcher, Channel Marketing Manager, AprilAire
Always Respond to Blog Comments
Always reply to comments on your blog to keep the conversation going. Doing so gives you more valuable opportunities to get feedback from your audience. This also shows them you care about their engagement.
Additionally, when visitors see you interacting and responding with readers in the comment section, it encourages them to join the conversation as well, leading to even more comments.
Dakota McDaniels, Chief Product Officer, Pluto
Leverage SEO
One content marketing tip for small business owners is to focus on creating quality SEO content. SEO is an incredibly powerful tool for driving organic traffic to your website and increasing visibility in search engine results.
When creating content, include relevant keywords and phrases that target your desired audience. Additionally, make sure to optimize your content for mobile devices and consider using schema markup to further boost SEO rankings.
Jaya Iyer, Marketing Assistant, Teranga Digital Marketing
Make Content Shareable to Social Media
One effective way of making your content stand out and having a winning content marketing strategy is to make each post you write or share on your website shareable with social media. Including these share buttons allow visitors to the site to easily forward the post to other people on their social media networks, expanding your content marketing efforts and spreading your message more effectively.
Alvin Wei, Co-Founder & CMO, SEOAnt
Stick to a Content Calendar
A content calendar is a plan for the content you will create and share, when you will share it, and on which channels. This can help you stay organized and ensure that you are consistently creating and sharing valuable and relevant content with your audience.
Along with your content calendar, it’s important to identify the topics that interest your target audience and tailor your content accordingly. Creating a buyer persona can be a helpful tool to understand your target audience and their needs, interests, and pain points.
Matt Jamison, Marketing Director, Save A Lot
Use Multiple Forms of Content
In a mobile-first world, different media appeal to different users. If you prefer writing, perfect! Create engaging blog content with visuals and share them across your social media. If you enjoy creating videos instead, make those instead and make them educational; they don’t have to be an episode long, just short enough to fit into a reel.
Take these videos and share them across your social channels. Templates of different content to create include:
- a how-to blog post to educate your audience on a specific topic
- a step-by-step guide that helps your customer solve a particular problem
- a quiz or assessment that helps your audience identify a challenge
- a podcast where you interview experts in related industries
- a video demonstration of how your product works
Pius Boachie, CEO, DigitiMatic
