Why content strategy is important for small businesses
Picture this…
You’re a small business fighting to get to the #1 position on Google searches (or at least onto the first page) so more people get to see your website. You’ve heard that creating marketing content can help. But have a limited budget and want to get as much visibility for your investment. What you need is a content strategy.
A good content strategy will help you publish great information which connects with your audience. It also gives you something to measure, so you can do more of what works.
What is a content strategy?
A content strategy pulls all your ideas together into one place, for example:
☞ Words
☞ Video
☞ Audio
☞ Infographics
☞ Print
☞ Digital
To get started, define your goals (what you want the content to achieve). Then identify who the audience is, and decide how you’ll measure the results.
Having a strategy will help you to create good and consistent content, aligned to your business objectives. In other words, you’ll be creating useful things for people, and giving them a better experience of your business.
A good content strategy will help your small business:
✓ Raise brand awareness
✓ Connect your brand with customers (or potential customers)
✓ Gain credibility by showing your expertise
✓ Generate new leads
What is good content?
Good content works at the top of the sales funnel by creating brand awareness. You’re likely to generate sales leads at this stage, but less likely to immediately convert these into sales without something more.
The following type of content tends to work best at this stage:
‣ Ebooks
‣ Tips
‣ Check lists
‣ How to’s
‣ Educational webinars
When creating content, aim to entertain, inspire, or educate your audience.
It’s also important to make it relevant to your audience. That way, you can connect with them, share your values, and encourage them to engage with you.
So, when you want the right people to find your business in their search results, it makes sense to know who you’re targeting and what they’re looking for.
How to create a content strategy
There are three main steps to follow when pulling together a content strategy:
Setting goals
Identifying your target audience
Measuring results
1. Setting goals
Why are you creating content in the first place?
Knowing the answer to this question will help you understand what you need to do, and make everything so much easier to plan.
Common goals include:
✓ Growing email subscribers
✓ Ranking on page or position one in search results for your keywords
✓ Building social media followers
✓ Encouraging more engagement on posts
✓ Increasing traffic to your website
✓ Developing new sales leads
Each goal will need a different type of content creating.
For example, building social media followers will mean focusing your efforts on specific social platforms. But, increasing traffic to your website is likely to involve regular blog posts or videos.
Having unclear goals will affect your results because you’ll not know what to produce or where to spend most of your time.
2. Identifying your target audience
Who are you aiming to attract?
This is an important question as it affects what content you create. For example, you may decide to target finance professionals. But a freelance accountant for small, local businesses will have very different problems and needs to the finance director of a global corporation.
If you produce the same content for both, you’re likely to be disappointed with the results.
Ask yourself the following questions:
‣ What is their job title?
‣ How long have they been in the position?
‣ What are their likes and dislikes?
‣ What problems keep them up at night?
‣ What questions are they typing into Google at 2am?
‣ What sort of information are they looking for?
To go a little deeper, do a Google search for buyer personas.
Additional research on the following will help you add to the information gathered:
‣ Popular content on your website via Google analytics
‣ Keyword research (search volume, search intent, and competitiveness)
‣ Analysis of your competitors’ websites
3. Measuring results
How are you going to measure success?
There’s no point churning out the same content for months on end if it’s not having an impact. So, it’s important to go back to your goals and decide what, when, and how you’ll measure what’s working.
For example, if the goal was to grow your email list email but nobody has clicked to subscribe, it may be time to look at another tactic. Or, if you’ve been blogging every week to increase traffic to your website, but the analytics show no change, it could be time to check the reasons why. Do you need different keywords? Better quality posts? Different information to attract your target audience?
Possible metrics include:
✓ Time on a web page
✓ Website bounce rates
✓ Social media sharing from your website
✓ Website traffic
✓ Open rates
✓ Leads generated
If something’s working, keep at it. Consistency is massively important in any content strategy. But remember, it takes time.
Content marketing is a long-term strategy and it can take up to six months to begin seeing results.
Tips for creating your content strategy
Follow the recommendations above, and you’ll be well on your way to creating a streamlined content strategy.
But to really get to grips with your content strategy, take a look at the following:
Keep your brand in mind when defining goals and identifying your target audience.
Identify what actions and reactions you want to inspire (eg. likes, shares, comments, actions?).
Decide what content you’re going to create (eg. blog posts, videos, social media posts, podcasts). Content should be high quality and helpful for your audience. But also something you enjoy doing.
Think about how you’ll promote the content created and how people will find it (eg. social media posts, emails to your subscribers, etc).
Identify who is responsible for creating and sharing content (eg. you, a member of your team, or contracted out to a freelancer <= chat with me about content writing).
Plan time to create and publish the content.
Be consistent - whether you’re producing content once a month, once a week, or once a day, create a schedule you can stick with. If you get ahead of the schedule, you could bank up posts for future publishing dates.
Want to find out more about creating a content strategy for your small business?
Get in touch for a free 30 minute chat.
