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Creating marketing content as a small business can be extremely stressful; how do you figure out what topics to cover? How often should you be posting? How can you know that you’ll see a return on your investment?
While nothing is guaranteed, one thing is certain: when you start with a content strategy, your chances of success increase exponentially. I highly recommend that all of my clients (and all businesses, really) put a content strategy in place before getting to work on creating content.
Being strategic when creating content for any business is a necessary and vital piece to ensure marketing efforts don’t go to waste. The way you spend your time, money, and resources can have a big impact on not only your bottom line, but also your general disposition towards marketing.
If you’re curious about how or why you need content strategy for small business, you’ve come to the right place.
Content Strategy For Small Business: Tips for Success
Being intentional about the content you create as part of your marketing efforts–especially as a small business– allows you to work smarter, not harder. Many small business owners compare the marketing process to being on a hamster wheel; it’s an endless cycle of stress, procrastination, and frustration (not to mention copying what competitors are doing as a result).
I’m here to remind you that it doesn’t have to be this hard. If you’re focused on growing your business and improving the marketing process, without reinventing the wheel, consider these three tips:
#1: Always Lead with What Your Audience Needs
It’s so easy to create content because you think you “should”. But what does that really mean? When we focus so much on the shoulds, we end up losing sight of what matters most: our target audience.
Creating content that’s in alignment with what your target audience values most is an essential part of a content strategy for small business. Think about the audience first, and more specifically, about what they need from you to feel seen and heard. By focusing on the needs of your audience, you can lead with what resonates most for them on a personal level and cultivate a stronger connection. Tailoring your content to appeal to your unique audience is much more effective than trying to appeal to anyone and everyone, and engagement is the key to influencing customer behavior.
#2: Establish Goals Before Creating Content
Just as in life, having goals to work towards makes it easier to stay focused and stay on track. It’s the same thing when it comes to content strategy for small business. After all, what’s the point of spending all that time and money creating a piece of content if you can’t tie it back to a larger business objective?
Content strategy helps you become intentional about what you create because it aims to serve a higher purpose. In some cases that can mean driving the audience to enter their email so you can build your email list, and in others that can mean driving more leads by taking search intent into account when planning your blog content and SEO keywords.
#3: Stop Paying Attention to Vanity Metrics
Just as in life, obsessively checking the likes on a post or your follower count is not a good way to instill confidence in yourself or your business. Mainly it’s because these numbers are not really a true marker of success, and only get in the way of focusing on intentional content creation. I call these vanity metrics, because they’re metrics that people care about but that don’t necessarily translate to actual business growth.
By putting more emphasis on solid metrics that matter, such as how many people click on your link in bio and visit your website, how many engage with your posts, and how many DMs you receive, you can measure success more effectively. Again, it all ties back to the goals you’ve set out for yourself when first putting a content strategy together for your small business, because when you know what success looks like you can figure out the data you need to track it properly.
Why Your Small Business Needs a Content Strategy
No matter how good the product or service is that you’re selling, it won’t matter if you can’t market it effectively. Relying on the product alone is not enough to grow your business.
This is why having a content strategy for your small business is so important. It not only provides you with a roadmap for where you want to take your business via marketing efforts, but it also allows you to show up more confidently and consistently over time. Genuine brand sustainability and longevity depends on it.
Bring in Expert Help When You Need It
When you’re immersed in the day-to-day aspects of running your business–which is what you do best–it can seem impossible to also be the marketing genius that your business requires for growth. Luckily, there are consultants out there (hi!) who can help take marketing off your plate so that you can do what you do best.
If you think your small business would benefit from some marketing help, including a comprehensive content strategy, set up a free discovery call today to get started.