14 effective tips for content marketing for small businesses (part 1)

When running your business, of course, you use some elements of content marketing. Whether it's the updates you make on your Facebook page, articles you write for the industry-leading publication, or the posts that you leave on your business blog. You can call it what you want, but when you actively “push” information to achieve your business goals, you do content marketing. Therefore, first of all, it is worth learning how to do it correctly. What is meant by the word "right"? Tell Marya Jan. Word to the author.

I’m not talking about any pursuit of excellence, but if you make some decisions in the field of content marketing, then you should be fully aware of why you are doing it. Fully understand the implications of posting each piece of information, and then take specific steps to optimize your content marketing goals.

Sounds like some kind of nonsense? But this is not so, and in order to prove this, I am going to share with you very useful and effective tips in the field of content marketing, which you can begin to implement today.
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Let's start!

# 1 Determine your target audience with jewelery accuracy

If you do not understand this, then all your content marketing-related strategy and its implementation will not save you. Who are you targeting? Who is your ideal reader? Who are the people you want to bring to your business in the hope of turning them into profitable customers and buyers in the future?

Focusing on these people, create for them one or many images of an ideal client for you. Present them in such detail as if at the time of writing the articles you really appeal to a living person. Choose a label for these people to associate with you.

Be as specific as possible. After all, you want to reach your target audience, and weed out those people for whom this information is not designed. Because of this, your content will not be considered mediocre, people will not feel that you are trying to please everyone.

# 2 Understand your content marketing goals.

Your primary task is to attract new potential customers to your business and get profit from it. How exactly does the content fit into this picture?

Well, content does a lot of things for you, which is why it exists. It helps you gain confidence and gives you some influence. He is what sets you apart from your competitors. It creates trust and mutual understanding between you and your customers. And even more - he carries out preliminary sales, with the result that a person is one step closer to making a purchase decision.

Think over your global content strategy, but do not forget about the individual goals for each piece of information that you publish. What do you want to achieve? Want to share your content on social networks? Maybe an increase in the number of comments? Want to conduct a business survey? Attract the attention of the press?

Call to action with every nugget of content you post.

# 3 Create an editorial calendar for each platform.

By creating a very simple editorial calendar for each social media platform, you will put your content strategy into action. Think of all the social networking sites where you are registered. Think about the different channels you use to promote your content, and then create a basic calendar on an individual basis.

Create one for your own blog. The calendar must contain the type of content you will publish, the date of publication and the working title. Create two more calendars: one for your business page on Facebook, the other for messages you leave on other sites as a guest.

It is easiest to set aside a few hours for each platform, and then sit down and outline ideas for content in advance. Since you’ll go through all the important categories in the process, take some time to dig through your bookmarks, links to Evernote.

So you can define a plan for publishing your content for several weeks. I would recommend not to paint it for months in advance - the nature of things on the Internet is quite volatile.

# 4 Follow the 80/20 rule when posting content.

The 80/20 rule states that 80% of your results are based on 20% of your efforts. Apply this principle to your content marketing strategy.

First, you need to assess the current state of things: what works and what doesn't. If you have a dozen accounts in social networks, but you see that most of the traffic comes from two or three places, you may want to focus on the latter, and abandon the rest.

Secondly, apply this principle to your own blog. Spend 20% of your time creating content and the rest on promoting it. Especially in the beginning, when your traffic is low enough, or your audience is extremely small. For each post that you write on your blog, post 3 or 4 on other sites. Apply this rule to the very essence of your content: 20% advertising and 80% educational.

Finally, always remember that quality is more important than quantity. In contrast to the bygone days, when there were no millions of sites fighting on the Internet for each pair of eyes, now we are faced with a glut of content. More is not always better.

# 5 Create different types of content

You do not want to pass monotonous? This will certainly happen if you stick to one type of content. Feel free to change it from time to time. You can write blog posts or make audio podcasts. You can create video tutorials or do infographics.

Embrace all your strengths, but feel free to hire someone to create content in a different format. Especially if you have people who are good at it.

In addition, think about the type of content you are creating.

You can publish educational content, or create one that will inspire or entertain people. You can tell life stories, you can highlight the latest trends and news, even invite customers and customers to yourself - you can too.

# 6 Learn to write killer headers

Do you know a 100% way to sabotage your own advertising tactics? This is writing bad headers. It will be enough to destroy on the vine all that you have worked on.

As I said, determining your potential audience is an important step, and developing an effective content plan is a must. However, the title is the last piece of the puzzle. People can forgive you for an error when formatting the text, even for boring prose, they shook their heads with disapproval at the sight of the pictures that you chose, will tell your friends about your new content, even if you didn’t ask for it (or rather, you forgot about it) but boring and meaningless headlines? They will be ignored before you can say “content marketing.”

Think carefully about your headlines, because this is a skill that needs time to develop. If you don’t understand anything about it, or you’ve gotten out of your hands, hire someone who will do it for you!

Most people can make quite a tolerable headline themselves - this is not the way you will launch rockets into space. All that is required of you is to make it useful and to arouse curiosity.



# 7 Be interesting

Publish content that people really want to read. It can be educational, inspiring or funny. As long as it means something to people, they will consider it interesting.

Remember that you write on the Internet. Here the rules are slightly different from those used in writing articles for the press, or even from the corporate press. Pay attention to your expression and tone. Make your text more personal, try to find a connection with your readers at a deeper level.

Write in conversational style, as if you were talking to your friend. Do this, but do not forget about editing. Use short sentences and abbreviations.

Get to the point quickly, but don't forget to present it correctly. Use more paragraphs to break up your bulky paragraphs into easier to read. Use images, markers, italics and subtitles for the convenience of your reader.

If people find your text useful and easy to read, they will pay attention to what is said in it, and most likely will share it with their friends.

To be continued!