Content become one of the most important marketing tactics for today’s entrepreneurs. Now, every small business is simply a content producer. So, you must have a strong content strategy to succeed in today’s digital world.
Why do you need content for your small business?
We leave in a social media era, where everyone creates something, gives something, shares something, talks about something… Often that something is content created by persons who try to create different relationships with other persons. They create and share messages, blog posts, photos, videos, presentations…
The growth of different social media around us makes the process of creation and distribution and the availability of different content to different persons much easier. Small businesses know this and want to be part of the whole ecosystem of creating, distributing, and consuming different content.
In this post, I want to talk about content marketing strategy because if you know that you need content, you also know that you will need an excellent content strategy. Excellent content strategy means that you will implement a strategic approach to succeed in creating and distributing content to increase your business potential.
1. Do you have a content marketing strategy?
First, start with the availability of content marketing strategy in your small business. If you don’t already have, you probably use some planning structure or schedule when we talk about content in your business. Also, you probably already have different content types in your business in the form of photos, presentations, how-to materials, brochures, flyers, catalogs, instructions, etc.
It’s time to collect everything that you already have and strategically put that to work for your small business.
Here, in this first step is important for you to be aware that you need a strategic approach when it comes to your content creation and distribution process. You will need content strategy to create and distribute new and existing content.
Another important question that you need to answer here is what you and your team members think about valuable content that your business doesn’t have already and can be produced eventually.
2. What type of content will you produce?
Now, when you collect everything in one place and pull out from your head everything that you think can be valuable content for your current and potential customers, you can start with building structure around that.
For example, you might have something like this:
Online content
- Blog posts
- E-books
- Short Messages
- Photos
- Videos
- Presentations
Traditional Content
- Catalogs
- How to manuals
- Instructions
This is not the full list of possibilities; it’s only a fraction of what you can have as content types for your small business.
3. Which type of content will be for which customer segments?
Different customer segments will need different content types from your business. You can’t distribute everything to everyone. Some content types will work better for some of your customers. If you write to students, for example, you must write content for young people and students.
Because of that, you need to take a deeper look at your customer segments and decide what type of content will be distributed to what types of customers.
4. Do you have enough resources to implement your content marketing strategy?
Next, think about your potential to implement a content marketing strategy. Everything that you do in developing your content marketing strategy will not be valuable if you don’t have enough resources to implement that strategy.
You need to think about your human and organizational possibilities to implement your content marketing strategy.
5. Who will be responsible for content creation?
An important question that your content marketing strategy will need to answer is about responsibilities for the implementation process.
You need to develop clear responsibilities for each of your team members if you want to succeed with your content marketing strategy.
Now, in this step is time to start talking about real names of responsible people, real tasks, real schedules…
6. What about your business commitment to content marketing?
Is your business committed enough to implement this important content marketing strategy? Your strategy also needs to answer this question.
First, commitment is important from your side as an entrepreneur and then from all members of your small business team.
7. Do you have a clear vision of the distribution channels of your content?
As the last thing that I want to cover in this process is the distribution channels of your content. You have the product and content, and now you need to bring that content to the persons who really need it.
Your content marketing strategy also must include a detailed description of each channel and each type of content that will be distributed through that channel.
Now, you have enough knowledge to start preparing your own content marketing strategy. Start today, and don’t give up. You will have many tweaks until everything becomes perfect. It’s important to start with something and improve the whole process as you go.
