Content Marketing

Now that you have the who, what, where and when of your content marketing strategy, you now need to generate a regular stream of quality information across all of your content channels (blog, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc).

The challenge – what is quality content? Like many things in life, beauty (or in this case quality) is in the eye of the beholder. Many posts are quick to point out that you need to deliver quality content, but few provide what it takes to actually do so.

Content marketing is creating, publishing and promoting value-based content to attract your target audience, position you as a trusted expert and advisor in your industry, help build your online brand presence and drive more traffic to your site.

Your value-based content can be blog posts, articles, videos, white papers, eBooks, presentations or other information products that focus on the problems your customers and clients face and you can help them resolve. The challenge for most small businesses is to provide engaging content on a consistent basis.

Blogging is hard and a lot of work. I realize that some people make it look easy, but not all of us are naturally talented writers. If we were, we’d be writing the next bestseller. But with all the marketing benefits of blogging, we need to overcome the objections and add regular blogging to our marketing activities.

Content marketing has become one of the most important marketing activities you can do as a small business. Regardless of your industry, people are searching for quality information to help them make decisions, solve problems or keep up with what is happening in the world. Providing valuable information for your reader gets their attention and encourages them to continue to listen.

Now that your content strategy for your small business is in place, it’s time to begin writing that great content to attract attention and develop your expert reputation.

Develop a List of Post Topics

It’s important to have a list of 50 to 100 blog post topics before you start to post.

A consistent flow of content is critical to developing a community of followers that will support your brand and most likely become a customer or client. But one of the most common challenges small business owners face is how to create that compelling and relevant content on a regular basis in order to remain visible to their ideal clients.