Small enterprises sometimes struggle to carve out a unique identity and solidify their presence in challenging marketplaces.
Content marketing has emerged as a game-changing key strategy. This approach is not just a fleeting trend; it’s a fundamental aspect of building a sustainable and recognizable brand.
Whether it’s posting images on social media, producing a podcast, or maintaining a regular blog like this one, content marketing cuts through the clutter of more conventional advertising and provides consumers with something they actually want.
Let’s explore how content marketing for small business works to elevate your brand.
Rule 1: Patience and Consistency is Essential
With the volume of content passing before a potential customer’s eyes ever-increasing, the quality and relevance of brands’ messaging needs to be high. It may take time to achieve a breakthrough in views, followers, newsletter sign-ups, and conversions.
The Content Marketing Institute’s annual B2C report found that the following forms of content are most popular with marketers:
- 83% of marketers produced short articles and posts (under 1500 words)
- 71% produced video content
- 57% used infographics
- 57% created long articles or posts (over 1500 words)
The report highlights that while in-person events proved most successful in terms of marketing efforts (48% said so), 47% found success with short posts and articles and 45% with video content.
Whether it’s a blog, social media feed or YouTube channel, success takes time and effort. Post regularly, ensure the content is of high quality and continue to publicize the content source, and followers should accrue over time.
Blogs with irregular posting schedules or YouTube channels with large gaps between new releases make subscribers lose interest and allow your competitors to gain the upper hand. Once you’ve committed to a content marketing channel, you need to feed the hunger of your audience.
Productive Blogging found that it takes a business blog around 20 months, on average, to gain traction. Videos can create a more immediate upswing in interest but even that strategy takes two to three months to take hold.
Rule 2: Don’t Expect to go Viral (but Enable it)
The narrative of overnight success is more myth than reality in the business world. True success is a product of perseverance and a journey built over time.
For small businesses, this means acknowledging that each piece of content contributes incrementally to their brand story. Consistent content creation establishes a steady voice and presence, essential in building trust and recognition among your audience.
Virality cannot be planned for. If it happens, fantastic. However, you can make your content more sharable by clipping pithy quotes and cutting short clips to share on other social media channels. For instance, you may film a video interview, and use the full video on YouTube, then share clips on Instagram, and transcribe and translate it into a blog article.
This helps you derive maximum value from each piece of content and widen your conversion funnel to bring in more viewers, followers, and subscribers.
Rule 3: Passion Fuels Success
Your content should represent your brand values and identity. It should be relevant to your consumers, and popular but it must also connect deeply with what your brand is about.
Red Bull is a classic example. Their brand is about adrenalin-fueled excitement. To get this message across, they use a range of high-octane content marketing channels, including YouTube. The brand has built an incredible 13.5 million followers with its excitement-filled content.
You don’t have to spend as much money as Red Bull does on its content creation either. Virtual workspace platform Miro were nominated for a Webby Award for their attractive, informative blog which combines great visuals with well researched and written content.
Whatever media you choose for your content marketing, make sure it is infused with passion, surprise and, yes, entertainment.
Rule 3: Connect Through Personal Resonance
At the heart of effective content marketing for small businesses is passion. Often the best way to express this enthusiasm is with a charismatic personality. This is where third parties, such as influencers and podcast guests are helpful. Find people who are emblematic of your brand values and can talk engagingly about the products or services you offer, or about the larger issues pertinent to your sector.
Tonally, any content which uses personalities should not be too sales-y. What you’re trying to do is leverage the parasocial urge we all have to “connect” with the presenters and performers we enjoy online. A medium like TikTok, though it trends very young, should not be overlooked, since it is all about charisma and personal connection.
As well as having a popular TikTok business channel, sports apparel brand Gymshark uses popular influencers to demonstrate its wares and build a legion of fans and followers. With 5.2 million followers and more than 90 million likes, this brand is resonating deeply on TikTok.
When content aligns with personal interests and expertise, it not only becomes more enjoyable to create but also connects deeply with the audience.
Rule 4: Pair Authenticity with Quality
Passion-driven content is inherently high in authenticity. This kind of content naturally fosters a deeper level of engagement with your audience, setting the foundation for a loyal customer base.
However, you also need to ensure your production values and creativity are of consistently high quality. Make sure your images are sizzling, your videos well edited, your sound crystal clear, and your text immaculate.
This ensures that followers and subscribers know they can trust your content and will want to share it.
SEO: The Backbone of Effective Content Strategy
Our next suggestions all relate to SEO because it’s perhaps the most vital lesson to learn when creating effective content.
Rule 5: Make Content Discoverable with SEO
Incorporating basic SEO principles is essential to ensure your content reaches its intended audience. After all, there’s no point in making entertaining and informative videos, podcasts, or blog posts, if nobody can find them.
SEO makes your content discoverable, relevant, and easily accessible to those searching for related topics. Understanding keywords, metadata, and search algorithms is crucial for crafting content that not only captivates but is also easily found.
Five Tips for Integrating SEO
1: Research your Keywords
To seamlessly weave SEO into your content, start with thorough keyword research related to your niche. Use these keywords naturally in your content, including titles, headers, and throughout the body. Remember, the goal is to enhance readability and relevance, not to stuff keywords inorganically.
2: Don’t Neglect Images
Remember that image searches can work too. Make sure your visuals are on point, and that you supply searchable SEO-driven alt-text for images. This has the additional effect of making your written content richer for users with visual impairments.
3: Remember your URL Slugs
Each page on your site should have an SEO-rich URL that makes it immediately clear what content can be found on that page. This ensures that the AI-empowered search engines can find the content that users are looking for. Don’t be cute; be clear.
4: Don’t Overstuff SEO terms
An audience can sense phoniness miles away. Plus, some search engines will downgrade your site if you overstuff keywords. There’s a fine art to striking a balance between your content being SEO rich and feeling weirdly repetitive and stilted.
5: Don’t Forget Audio or Visuals
These days, images, audio, and visual content are all searchable. Companies are running sentiment analysis and other forms of data analytics to find out what’s being talked about online.
It’s worth making sure podcast presenters, designers and influencers know what essential terms to mention and use when optimizing SEO for these media.
Amplifying Impact Over Time
Understanding and applying SEO principles can significantly amplify your content marketing strategy. As your content becomes more visible and reaches a wider audience, the cumulative effect over time can be substantial. This long-term approach ensures that your content marketing efforts contribute to the enduring strength and recognition of your brand.
As you build your brand, you can expand the channels you use to reach an audience. At first you might select a couple of main outlets for your content: perhaps a blog backed up by a podcast. Over time, you’ll have more resources and personnel, and you can diversify your media channels.
As your content library builds, it can be viewed as a resource for audiences seeking insight on particular topics. Remember too that part of the success of generative AI is the vast reservoir of online content it’s trained on. That’s why it can create convincingly human-like text – it’s drawing upon literally billions of data sources and learning from them.
In future your content will be part of that vast data pool. How about that for responsibility?
Similarly, your human audience is looking for value in the teeming multitude of content sources available online. If you create an excellent and groundbreaking blog or podcast series, they’ll be grateful and loyal, potentially for years to come.
Content is King (if you do it well)
In conclusion, content marketing for small businesses is not just about creating content; it’s about creating the right content with patience, consistency, passion, and a solid understanding of SEO.
This strategic, methodical approach is the magic formula for small businesses looking to build and strengthen their brands in today’s competitive marketplace.
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