You’ve got to do more than list products or services on your business site if you hope to attract and keep customers. You also need a solid content strategy that keeps your audience engaged with your brand. Use these tips to create and improve your small business’s content strategy.
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Understand Your Goals
Decide what you want your content strategy to accomplish. Do you want to forge relationships with customers? Perhaps you want to drive more traffic to your business site. Pinpointing your goals lets you know where to focus your content strategy efforts. For instance, if you want more site traffic, prioritize search engine optimization for your content strategy. Blog posts and article writing services could help with that.
Have a Budget
While business owners can use a lot of free tools to deliver great content, expect to spend money for great results. You may want to hire contractors, an agency, or employees to help you deliver great content. Investing in professional help could pay off more than using free tools. Because it takes time to promote and create fantastic content, focus on the long game. That means taking your time when hiring professionals. Start with something like an SEO consultant before investing in other content services.
Understand Your Audience
Your audience determines the content you publish. Understand what your target audience wants to see in the content you deliver. What kind of material interests your audience most? How often do they want to read such content? Do they expect video or images with their content? Answering these questions helps refine your strategy and better ensures you get the results you desire. Your current customers could help with this, so seek their insight. Creating a buyer persona could help, too.
Do Some Research
Touching back on SEO, do some keyword research. You want to know what keywords and phrases your target customer uses when searching for companies like yours. That way, you know which phrases and words to include in your content. Specifically, research common questions your audience has, the terms they use when talking about your products or services, and topics they’re passionate about.
Use a Content Calendar
Once you have some ideas about content to deliver, create an editorial calendar. On this calendar, note when to finish creating content and when to share it. Consider sharing blog posts on the same day at the same time. You don’t want to share two blog posts one week and then go three weeks before dropping four random posts. Customers care about consistency more than you may think.
Hiring a professional content creator could help with this step. While you focus on other aspects of your business, professional content creators can research, write, and publish content. If you share content publishing responsibilities with a professional, focus on having a consistent voice.
Inventory Your Current Resources
Before you go too deep down the content creation rabbit hole, take stock of your current resources. For instance, what social media platforms, SEO tools, and stock photo subscriptions do you already have that you can implement into your content strategy? You don’t want to waste time gathering tools you already have. After all, you’ve got a business to operate.
It’s also good to understand the resources you have and their capabilities. Imagine spending money on an SEO tool only to learn you already have one with your social sharing tool. After taking stock, list the resources and skills you need to make your content strategy a success.
Your content strategy can help you realize and reach your full potential as a business owner. Take full advantage of the possibilities.