Developing a blog and producing quality content for social media while running a business at the same time can be a difficult process.
As a content marketer one of the challenges you have is continually creating new quality content therefore as an entrepreneur, knowing a few content marketing tricks can go a long way to not only save hours of your time but also to grow your business with minimum effort.
Most small businesses hesitate to invest in a content marketing strategy since it can be a very time-consuming process. Although, it’s actually one of the most effective strategies you can use to grow your business as it brings 3 times as many leads and costs less than other traditional marketing strategies.
If you’re looking for a way to make the most of your time and get better results out of your content marketing efforts, here are a few tricks you should follow to help you create the type of quality content that you need to make that happen:
1. Create Topic Lists in Bunches
When you’re ready to write new content, you shouldn’t be sitting down to decide what you’ll write about.
This wastes time, and it’s inefficient.
I like to create long lists of potential topics all at once. Spend a few hours researching subjects for new ideas.
Give yourself enough topics for at least a month or two. If you’re publishing three posts per week, you’ll want to aim to at least 10 new ideas. And sometimes, I come up with 20 different topics at a time.
When your mind is focused on one task, it’s much easier to brainstorm. Come up with the ideas first. You can perfect the titles when you start writing.
This strategy will make it easier for you to pump out content. You’ll be able to pick a topic from your list and start writing
2. Set Specific Goals
All your content marketing efforts will go to waste if you don’t work toward a specific set of goals. To consistently grow your business, you need to work to achieve the right goals.
For example, choose a set of goals that promote growth instead of achievements. Instead of creating just a content plan to get 500 to 800/visitors per day to your blog, create a content that generates 500 leads per month.
The key to reaching these goals and sustaining your business growth is to measure the content marketing ROI(return on investment) of your campaigns. And yes, even the ROI of your blog posts can be measured.
Collect and analyze your content marketing ROI and upgrade your content plan goals at least quarterly to keep your business growing throughout the year and produce the content with a purpose.
3. Repurpose Old Content
After spending hours creating a great blog post, don’t just publish it and forget about it. There’s much more you can do with that blog post. Make the most of every piece of content you create by creating different types of content out of them.
You can as well use your blog posts to create short YouTube videos just like I have “Pekle Africa Video Series “ I usually make at least 5 minutes video from each of my blog post. infographics, and social media posts. Republish your blog posts on other platforms like LinkedIn, tweeter, Instagram and other medium to reach new audiences. Tools such as Infogram allows you to create beautiful infographics without any graphic design knowledge.
Another great way to repurpose your blog posts is to create slideshows highlighting the key points of your article. Then you can share the slideshow on a platform like Slideshare, which generates over 80 million visitors per month, to get more traffic to your website.
Rather than creating 5 blog posts every week, why not create 2 or even 1 great blog posts and convert them to 5 different content formats? It’ll help you save the time that goes into producing new content and get the most out of your existing content.
4. Google Search Suggestions
If you’ve got a general topic in mind, start searching for it on Google:
Look at all the suggested topics that come up when I type in “email marketing.”
These suggestions could all be topics to cover.
In addition to the search suggestions, you can also check out the related searches at the bottom of the page:
If you’re not sure what to search for to generate these suggestions, start with content titles you’ve already posted.
The reason why this is such a good strategy is because you know the topics will be relevant to your audience.
Plus, you can assume these new titles will be SEO friendly since you sourced them through Google.
5. Competitor Websites
If you’re not sure what to write about, check out your competitor’s blog. This is one of the best ways to come up with long lists of topics in bunches.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in any way telling you to steal or copy other peoples post. But there is nothing wrong with using their titles and concepts for idea generation.
Look through their posts and start writing down topics you haven’t covered yet.
You have a huge advantage here because you can try to make your post about the same topic even better than theirs. For example, let’s say you’re using a top 10 list from a competitor’s blog as an inspiration for a new content idea. Well, you can try to one up them by creating a top 15 list on the same topic.
In addition to your competitor’s titles for new content ideas, you can also look at other aspects of their website.
Read through their comments section. You already did this with the comments on your website, so it makes sense there will be ideas buried in other sites as well.
See if they have a FAQ (Frequent Asked Questions) page on their site. These questions could all be ideas for the topics you can write about.
6. Use Social Media to Promote Your Content
It’s pretty much impossible these days to separate your content marketing strategy from your social media strategy.
Social media has become an integral part of getting your content in front of the right people. But you need to do more than just post to Facebook and Twitter once or twice.
My Social media strategy is to give as much great value as possible that you basically guilt people into buying what you’re selling. So when you finally ask them to buy what you’re selling, they do.
What this comes down to is not simply talking about your content and asking people to click a link or subscribe to your newsletter. Instead, you need to show that you’re a trustworthy source of educational resources and earn their attention for when you do ask for something in return.
At the core of your content marketing needs to be the belief that it’s a long-term (lifetime) investment in building your worth.
Choose what platforms you’re going to use: When you’re just starting out you simply can’t and shouldn’t be on every platform. Pick what makes the most sense for your brand and where your audience is more likely to hang out.
Generate platform-specific content: You can both create original content from your blog posts or other content, or curate other people’s content like relevant links or videos. Both have their place and should be a part of your strategy. Every platform has its own nuances and subtleties to how they get used and people share.
Set up your social media ‘stack’: What tools are you going to use to support your social media strategy? planning posts in advance and making sure you have all the content you need. Canva for making graphics. And Hootsuite for scheduling posts to go out at the right times.
7. Use Paid Ads to Get Extra Eyes on Your Content
These days, a lot of social media platforms are moving to a ‘pay to play’ model. Meaning, even if you have a huge following and great engagement, you’ve got to pony up some ad dollars to get your content seen by everyone.
When you’re just starting out and building a new content strategy it’s probably a little scary to invest in paid ads. More than $72 billion was spent on social ads in 2016 alone, with that number expected to rise to $113 billion by 2020.
But, you don’t have to throw huge chunks of cash at social media to get a return Instead, $5 is all you need to start experimenting, especially with channels like Facebook Ads.
Define your goals: Paid ads all come down to working people from the top of your marketing funnel, where they haven’t heard of your brand, through to the middle and finally the bottom where you ask for the sale and they hopefully become a customers. So, start by asking yourself, who is my audience and what is my goal with them? Is it to run an awareness campaign for your top of funnel audience and build your brand awareness? Or, are you going after people who already know who you are and asking them to click through to a blog post or to a landing page?
Targeting: Next, you need to decide who is going to see your ad. Targeting is the whole reason social media marketing works as well as it does: “Targeting capabilities are at an unprecedented level.
Social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest give you an incredible wealth of information about your customers, which let you create highly targeted ads that are tailored to our audience.”
Budgeting: As we said before, you don’t need a big budget to be successful with social media advertising. In fact, you can start with as little as $5 a day. When you’re starting with a small budget, you want to focus on your top of funnel audience, as they’re cheaper to get in front of. You’re not asking for a sale or a click, you’re simply getting them to see your brand and engage with you.
Once you move on from that stage, you’ll start to look at things like cost-per-click (CPC), meaning how much are you willing to spend for someone to click on your ad.
Copy and visuals: Finally, it’s time to put your actual ad together. For this, which includes;
What do you want your ad to say? As in, what emotion do you want your audience to feel when they see your ad? Do you want to shock them, delight them, intrigue them?
How do you want your ad to look? Is it video? A stock image? Just text? What colors are you going to use? Is it on brand?
What action do you want your audience to take? Where should they go after seeing your ad? To a landing page or blog post?
Where do you want your ad to be placed? Is this an ad for mobile users or desktop users? Is it in their news feed or somewhere else?
Now, you should know pretty much everything you need to plan and execute a killer content marketing game plan.
Remember, your content marketing will only be effective–if you have a plan.
Thanks for reading, let me know if you got value.
In all you do make sure you Influence, Lead and Dominate.
