6 Content Marketing Strategies for Small Business

A question that many aspiring entrepreneurs have is, “How can I make my business website work well?” That, of course, depends on what the person is trying to get out of the website and what his/her content strategy plan is. Unfortunately, a lot of business people are not aware of what a content strategy plan is.

Content Strategy Plan – what is it?

Many business people believe that just setting up a website or a blog and a Facebook page or Twitter account is good enough to achieve their business goals. Most importantly, you need a content strategy plan to succeed in business. A content strategy plan is a plan for the creation, publication and management of useful and usable content.

It is a plan on how to create goal focused content, how to publish the content, and how to manage the content after publication. In today’s technology-driven world, the amount of content delivered to users is increasing day by day. Here are some guidelines on creating a valuable content strategy plan for your small business.

  • Start a blog and create quality content: The first step in any content strategy plan is to start a blog as it gives you the space to talk with your customers directly and build a more personal relationship with them. With a blog, you can create quality content that defines your business goals, themes, messages, topics and ideas. The purpose of your content, industry-related issues, your opinions, gaps in the industry and other essential elements can also be added to it. Your content should be awesome and truly helpful to your customers. Ensure that your content focuses on your customers’ wants and needs.
  • Create insightful guides, videos and eBooks: To keep your customers on track, you have to produce a constant flow of new content, from blog posts and social media updates to guides, videos and e-books. This will improve your search engine rankings, drive traffic to your blog and help in nurturing your existing leads. Keep in mind that your content should be relevant and remarkable.
  • Produce infographics that address industry pain points: The next step is to work out the best way to present your content for maximum reach. Infographics (information graphics) are the best choice. Infographics are visual representations of data that can convey complex information quickly and clearly. Generally, image-based content is highly effective and there is no limit to how creative or informative your content can be. You can easily address your target audience about your industry’s pain points.
  • Have a plan for content distribution: How can you promote your content? How can you influence people to read it? This can be made possible only through social and email channels. You can use social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter etc, to spread the word. You can even start an email based monthly newsletter with links to your top blog posts or any of your important business activities.

    This is the best possible way to drive more traffic to your blog. Yet another way to attract more readers to your blog is by setting up an RSS feed. Allow people to subscribe to your RSS feed and whenever you add new content to your blog a notification will be sent to them, which will hopefully draw them to your site.

  • Establish authority by giving away quality content via guest posts: Giving away quality content via guest posts is indeed a great way to expose yourself and your products to the audience. Through guest posts on well-known sites, you can gain tons of credibility and exposure. Suppose you have content that doesn’t fit your blog’s content strategy, you can guest post it on another site, with you as an authoritative source. This opens doors to new opportunities and new relationships.
  • Network with industry peers via social media: You can try targeting your customers via different platforms; the best is to network with industry peers via social media. This will definitely have a great impact on awareness of your brand. You can also integrate social media with your blog and permit people to follow/like/tweet and share content directly from your site.

Hope these guidelines have helped you in demystifying certain concepts and given you some practical knowledge to get started. With the guidance of SEO Experts, building a quality content strategy plan for your small business will no longer be a challenge.

Image Credit: Smemom

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17 comments

Quality Seo Services December 13, 2012 - 7:59 pm
As you build your online marketing strategy, keep a few considerations in mind. Know your market, understand your available resources, and know when it's time to open your wallet and reach out for professional assistance.
Brian Taylor December 17, 2012 - 4:44 am
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us :)
Flash banners December 14, 2012 - 2:08 am
Marketing strategies are very important for any business even that is small or large scale business. That matters a lot that if you know what your customer wants , what are your resources for these are you using them all , what about the marketing team are they professionals doing it well & last but not least that content is most important if you are coming up with unique and healthy content then it will be very helpful for you to promote your business.
Brian Taylor December 17, 2012 - 6:10 am
Yes, you are right. We need to know what customers is expecting from us. Thanks for your comments. :)
Sam@Goa Trip December 14, 2012 - 6:34 am
As we all know very well still content is the king in the eyes of google and if you will not using quality and original content for your site or blog then you'll not get good rank in google which means your all techniques can was for promotion of it.
Nick Stamoulis December 14, 2012 - 9:44 am
I always recommend that companies add a blog to their website. It's an opportunity to create more web pages that can rank and target specific keywords. Of course, you need to keep the blog active. A new post should go live at least once a week.
Aditi Datta December 15, 2012 - 2:16 am
Hi, Well content do play a vital role whether it is for small business or a large one. I like the strategies that you have mentioned. Great ones specially the first tip of creating quality content!! That's all matters. Thanks for the share!!
PHP Programming Services December 15, 2012 - 2:58 am
Yes, content is king ! after google panda and penguin updates google wants quality and fresh content if your content has uniqueness so definitely your website will reach in top position.
Nanvy @ CRM Software Solutions December 15, 2012 - 4:25 am
Content is the very important strategy for small business. If you make content with quality then it is really worth to do for growing your small business.
mahi kashyap December 15, 2012 - 5:52 am
Hello Nanvy I agree with you. The content is the very important part of business & should be very genuine & must be focused on quality..
Ali December 16, 2012 - 8:56 am
The most important thing to do guest blogging is write content which suits the blogs history and while writing keep in mind the interest and expectation of subscribers of that blog.
Flash banners December 17, 2012 - 2:00 am
yes content will be the king as it is very important to come up with unique & healthy content because Google also prefer the unique content .
Stacie Jacobson December 17, 2012 - 7:00 am
Having a good content strategy plan is ideal if you want to have a successful blog. I've seen many new bloggers just get into blogging without a plan, but when they don't get all the traffic they want, they give up.
CanaryCanary December 18, 2012 - 6:03 am
Not only does quality content bring in a lot of traffic, you build a loyal following of readers. When you're building an authority blog you need a consistent flow of readers that share and syndicate your content. Also your name will get out there and you'll probably get a lot of JV partners.
Ti Roberts December 18, 2012 - 2:20 pm
Great list of strategies, Brian. It's extremely vital to be organized when it comes to content marketing and promotion. I find solace in creating a solid content marketing calendar at the end of every month. This better helps me to stay laser focused and effectively execute the plan. Thanks for sharing your strategies with us. I'm glad to have found your post on BizSuagr.com. Ti
Brian Taylor December 19, 2012 - 1:38 am
That's GREAT! Thanks for sharing my Article on Bizsugar. Cheers!
Chadwick Russell December 29, 2012 - 6:56 am
Yes I completely agree with you. The first step should always good content. For making a good content marketing you always need to write a good content. Good content means educated ,encourage and motivate content. This type of content will make readers and bloggers.
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