Content Strategy: Helping Your Small Business Blog Stay Visible

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.

Let me be clear that blogging is not for every small business owner. Be honest with yourself before you get started on why you want to blog. If you can’t answer that question, you may wish to try other social media activities that are more aligned with what you are trying to accomplish.

How to create a content strategy

A content strategy helps you determine what content you will provide, why you want to provide it, where the content will be distributed and to what target market. To develop your content strategy, consider the following:

• Define your goals – Knowing what you are trying to achieve before you start writing will help you focus your efforts. For most small businesses, blogging helps you create visibility, generate traffic to your website and establish an expert reputation making your business stand out from the rest. Ultimately being visible as an expert will generate inbound leads.
• Understand your client’s challenges – One of the reasons I encourage small business owners to develop a brief marketing plan is to understand the wants and needs of their target market. By knowing the types of challenges their prospects face, you can develop a list of topics that will attract and retain an audience that is interested in what you have to say.
• List your content categories – Determine the areas where you will focus your content development efforts. WordPress and other blogging platforms enable you to categorize your posts, so knowing before you start writing what your categories are will make it easier to develop ideas that fit within these topics.
• Define your frequency – Writing requires creative thinking. Some people can create a blog post in minutes. For others (like myself), writing takes more time. Some write short daily posts, others writer longer posts less often. Know which type you are and schedule your writing time accordingly. Commit to no more than one to three posts per week, again depending on how quickly you can write. To stay on track, try some of the following tips:
  • Schedule time in your calendar to write
  • Note ideas and topics that you want to write about and start a draft post
  • Use your categories to organize topics to write
  • Subscribe to blogs that may help generate ideas
• Define your content type – content is not just words. It can be video, audio, images and text. Use what is comfortable for you and develop a good mix that makes your content interesting and easy to read.
• Determine your distribution strategy – Besides your blog and its RSS feed, where else will your content be distributed? Consider posting a link to your content on Twitter, your Facebook Business Page and LinkedIn, depending on where it makes the most sense. Consider having your content feed syndicated to other reputable sites. In order to drive people to your Website, you need to cast a wider presence by getting your content out to where your target audience is spending time.

Don’t make this a complicated exercise. Spend an hour or two putting the strategy in place, making an agreement with yourself to implement the strategy as a key marketing activity that will benefit your business. The next post will discuss how to write for your blog.

If you don’t have a content strategy today, will you be creating one for your small business?