Category Archives: Content marketing

Reasons why content marketing is crucial for small businesses

Content marketing and its value really can’t be stressed enough – especially in this digital age where, according to zippia.com, 62%, (that’s 4.9 billion) of the global population use the internet. It is an immensely powerful marketing strategy that can help your small business become highly visible to your target audience.

By producing quality content regularly, you build trust, authority, and credibility with your audience, which helps you stand out from your competition.

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as…

“…a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

One of the key words here is ‘valuable’ – content that will speak to your potential customers, information that they want and need; information that solves a problem or pain point.

Ways content marketing can help  

Content writing is more than just publishing posts on social media. There are many different types of content marketing and these include:

  • Blogs
  • Video
  • Social Media content
  • Email newsletters
  • Infographics
  • Case Studies
  • Checklists
  • E-books
  • Memes
  • User-generated content
  • Podcasts
  • Customer testimonials
  • Webinars
  • Success stories
  • Interactive content

What does all this content do for your business?

With 62% of the global population using the internet, you have a huge market for your products or services, especially if you trade worldwide. So, let’s look at some reasons for taking time to create all this content.

Get your business found on search engines

With all those people online, there will be potential customers out there looking for exactly what you have to offer. If you are not online, you won’t be found. You can put your business online in many ways. You can set up an online shop, through Etsy or Shopify, or one of the other online shopping host channels, but these can be expensive, especially with the fee increases we’ve seen recently.

Having your own website is a great step to take, as it is yours. You do have to pay an annual fee, but this can be done fairly cheaply, and worth it as your website can not only host your shop, but it can also tell your audience a bit about you, and you can add a blog and advertise your email newsletter all in one place.

The other thing I would definitely advocate is setting up a Google Business Profile, (which used to be called Google my business), which is fabulous for being found locally. Again, this includes a profile, you can post and share blog posts, as well as adding photos and videos.

More traffic to your website

Linking in with being found on search engines is that content marketing helps push more traffic to your website. If you blog about a problem that you solve or write an article on your website about what your business can do for your customers, when they do a search online, your article or website will appear. Once they’re on your website, it is likely they will have a look around, visit your shop and look at your details…and if they like what they see, they are likely to return in the future.

It’s important to have a CTA (call to action) on every page of your website, which tells your visitors what to do next. You can use these buttons to tell your audience to ‘buy now,’ or ‘sign up for my email newsletter,’ or point them to your courses, training or coaching and to your customer testimonials – in fact, anything that keeps them on your site.

More sales

When a potential customer finds a site they like, or feel that a site speaks to them personally, they will return again and again. And if they are returning, they are more likely to convert to customers.

Make sure that your website includes customer testimonials about the benefits that your products or services give. I always like to read about a product before I buy it, and if there are great testimonials, which show me how a product will benefit me, I’m more likely to press that ‘buy now’ button.

Testimonials are also proof, not just that you have good products, but also you have impeccable customer service, which goes a long way to getting that button pressed too.

Establishes you as an expert

Writing valuable content that speaks to your audience, also has the added bonus of setting you up as an expert in your field. If you’re sharing content that serves your customers and gives them valuable tips or information, they’ll want to know more. Setting yourself up as an expert promotes trust with your audience and engages them to want to know more about you and your products or services…and what’s in it for them!

Enhances your brand   

This might sound a bit harsh, but generally people are not really interested in your brand or in you, they are more interested in themselves – in their wants and needs. It’s not about being selfish, it’s human nature. When someone first looks at your website, shop, social media business page, they are not interested in your brand, no matter how hard you’ve worked on it. They are interested in what you can do for them, what you have that they might like, or something that makes their life easier. This is hard to hear, but it has an upside.

If you are providing something they’re interested in for whatever reason, or if your social media pages entertain or educate them, they will then become interested in your brand, as they will see it, and therefore you, as something they can relate to.

If you are consistently publishing new, unique content on your blog or website and promoting it to your social media pages – or if you are publishing new, unique content to your social media pages, consistently, more people will get to see your name or business name and will start to relate. If they like what they see, they’re more likely to share your posts, or tell their friends and family about your wonderful products or fabulous services, so your audience will start to grow, which is when your brand really shines through. This all takes time and is not something you can achieve overnight.

Helps you compete with your competitors

I’m not talking about copying or doing the same as your competitors, but there is something to be said to ensuring that you’re using the same (and more) marketing channels as your competitors. When your business and brand is not in a place where your competitor is, you’re potentially losing out on business.

It’s worth doing research on your competitors and finding out more about them, so that your business is in the right places to compete.

Improve customer relationships

Having good relationships with your customers goes without saying, we all know that. But it’s even more important in this digital age, as customers have so much choice when it comes to who they want to do business with. And it’s important to remember that customers are willing to pay more for a better experience.

Content marketing is the best way to show your customers and potential customers that you understand their problems or pain points…and that your products or services solve those problems. If you have a website, you could add a list of FAQs to help explain how your products or services solve those problems, or you can write about it in your blog or email newsletter.

This really helps improve those customer relationships, instill trust, and encourages them to spread the word about your business.

Helps your overall marketing strategy

Content marketing is just one aspect of your marketing strategy, but it is the glue that holds each activity together to help you grow your business. If you can align all your marketing activities with your content, it will help you achieve your goals and keep them coordinated with everything else you do.

For example, you decide to create an e-book alongside a downloadable checklist. You can promote this on social media, or in Facebook ads. You can also send it to your customers in your email newsletter, and you can promote it on your website. You could even write a blog post about it and how it solves a particular problem. So, just this one piece of content will help support your multi-channel marketing strategy.

Content marketing is good value for your business

Finally, if you research and write your content yourself, it is an economical option and costs you nothing but your time. You’ll learn a lot from the research you do, and you’ll find more content you can use as you go.

Not everyone wants to write their own content, and if your business is very busy, it may be worth you outsourcing some of the copywriting work. This is still excellent value for money, as you’ll be asking for expert help from someone who already knows how everything works and will know about your kind of business.

Conclusion

Content marketing is crucial for small businesses. One of the biggest challenges that you face as a small business is reaching your potential customers. To create brand awareness without access to a huge budget for marketing campaigns, content marketing is your answer. Having the right kind of content marketing strategy in place to ensure that you reach your target audience, will help your business stand out from your competitors and build trust, authority, and credibility with your customers.

If you struggle to get to grips with your content marketing strategy, or need help to write your content, contact me for a free 30-minute chat to see how I can help. Have a good week!

How to write creative, persuasive content

Do you dream of being able to write creative content that is persuasive and that inspires your readers? It’s not as difficult as you may think and is all about structuring your content so that your article is appealing and irresistible!

There are four forms of content…

  1. Written
  2. Audio
  3. Video
  4. Images

No matter which medium you’re working on, it’s crucial that your content is valuable and useful to your reader…or they simply won’t read it and it won’t resonate with them. Your articles need to help solve a problem or improve their life in some way. This will also help set you up as an expert in your field.  

Create a content strategy

Your content strategy is your why, who and how. Why you are creating it, who is it aimed at and how are you going to get it out there. Businesses use content marketing to build an audience and to either increase their revenue, lower their costs or to get better customers. For me, it’s about engaging with my audience and, almost as a proof point to illustrate that I know what I’m talking about and am experienced in this field.

Publishing content is great, but it also needs to be published consistently. It needs to educate, entertain or inspire your audience. This way you can turn total strangers into followers and then those followers into customers. You do this by building relationships and solving problems.

Know your audience

Once you know what your strategy is, you need to build the content around your audience. What makes them tick? What problems do they have? What do they look like? If you know your audience well and know what they want, you can really deliver.

Now you’re ready to choose which form of content to use. Try and utilise a mixture as this will help keep your audience’s attention.

Written content

This is the most popular and most used way to communicate with your audience. There are lots of different ways to communicate using the written word…

  • Blogging – Blogging is about writing relevant, useful, informative and entertaining copy. A blog is a regular, consistent post. Your audience can follow your blog, and so get informed automatically every time you publish a new one. Anyone can start up a blog about absolutely any subject you can think of! There are cookery blogs, health and fitness, nutrition, fashion, travel, crafting…you name it, and I can guarantee it’s out there.
    A blog post can be as long or as short as you like – you will soon get to know what your audience likes. Use SEO (search engine optimisation) to get ranked higher in search engine results and use categories and tags to make your blog easier to find.   
  • Email – A direct way to communicate with your followers. If you have a ‘subscribe to email’ button on your website, you can regularly keep in touch with your customers and followers. Just be aware not to overdo it and bombard people with emails every day, or use them solely to sell or push your products/services, or you will find lots of ‘unsubscribes’.
  • Newsletters – These used to be hard copy, but most businesses send these out via email nowadays. It is, in effect, an email as in the last point, but this is specifically your newsletter. Again, don’t go mad with the frequency – once a month is great and also more manageable for you too. You can give news on what you’re doing in your business, any new products or services on the horizon or any freebies you might have created. Or, it might be just some interesting information you want to share, or hints and tips. And of course, you can use it to share links to your blog post.  

Audio

Podcasts are very popular and are growing in numbers every day. There are less podcasts out there, than there are blogs, so it is a good one to try for your business. Like blogs, they can be about absolutely anything…someone out there will be interested in what you have to say. It’s also a great way to reach your audience as they can listen to your podcast whilst driving to work, or working out. Your audience don’t necessarily have to set aside a certain amount of time to catch up with your latest message.

Video Marketing

This has been around for a long time now, but it is fast becoming the norm for all sorts of small businesses, as well as the larger corporates. You can ‘go live’ on social media, or record a short message to your customers/followers. It’s versatile, you can say what you like and most importantly, you will reach your audience more quickly. In a few seconds, you can convey a mood, a setting and your message can be received shortly and succinctly in less than a minute. There are lots of ways to use video in your marketing…

  • Live stream – in real time on social media accounts. As it’s recorded ‘live’, it will be a ‘warts and all’ recording, so you won’t be able to edit out any mistakes – but this does add to the excitement and appeal. People see you as you are!
  • Recorded stream – the same as the ‘live’ stream, but you’ve pre-recorded it before you put it out, so you can edit out anything you don’t like and add in anything that might have forgotten with the ‘live’ version.
  • Vlogging – the same as blogging, but using video. This can be longer that the ‘live’ or pre-recorded videos. Your audience love these as they feel they are getting to know you as a person – if you Vlog regularly, they will get used to seeing you and this helps build a relationship and trust.
  • Whiteboard videos – these are animated or sketched videos, so the subject matter and scenery is not real.

Images

Using images is also a great form of content marketing. They are usually on your website, on social media or within a blog. Images can be very powerful to help you convey a message and help you create more impact. They say that a picture paints a thousand words, and whilst this can be true, I tend to use them more to enhance my messaging.

The only downside is that search engines don’t necessarily recognise images, so a good tip is to make sure you add a caption to your images, wherever it is relevant. If using in a blog, use keywords to help the search engines find the images.    

AND SO, ONTO YOUR ACTUAL CONTENT

Writing your content

Here are a few tips to help you write your content to help make it more persuasive.

  • Write the headline first. Make sure it is compelling and sparks the curiosity of your reader to want to read on.
  • Write your subheadings next. This will help you plan your content and split it into readable chunks for your reader.
  • Add a few captions. Captions catch the readers’ eye, so add a few in for good measure!
  • Opening paragraph – this is what will draw the reader in and help them decide whether they want to, or can be bothered to, read the rest. People spend seconds scanning an article and, if the opening paragraph and headline doesn’t draw them in, you’ll have lost that reader.  
  • Closing paragraph – Depending on what you’re writing about, this is the end of your article/blog or whatever. Use it well; maybe reiterate the most important take-away from your article and have a CTA (call to action) so they know what to do next.  
  • Bullet points – these are easier to remember and, if someone is just scanning your article, these are likely to be read. So, make them stand out, make them full of good hints or tips and great advice. Make them totally fascinating!

Now we know what to include, let’s dig a bit deeper…

Why is a headline so important?

On average, only 20% of people read an article beyond the headline. If your headline doesn’t grab attention then of those 20%, even fewer people will read your content. So what can you do?

  • Give a benefit in your headline. Give your readers an incentive…’how to’ do something or a recipe. Use numbers…’20 ways to …..’
    Let them know that there is something in it for them.
  • Absolutely command attention. Not always easy, but remember you only have a few seconds to hook someone in. Use power words or positive words, such as ‘inspiration’, ‘revelation’ or even things like ‘is your business doomed because…..’
  • Be specific. Make your headline specific to the article – don’t use a generic headline. For example, if you were writing an article about Mental Health, just having the title ‘Mental Health’ isn’t very inspiring and won’t necessarily pull in your audience, but if you have ‘Mental Health – what does this mean?’ or ‘Mental Health – 10 ways to help yourself’, you’re giving specifics and are more likely to get readers.
  • Don’t get cocky. Don’t try to be too clever with a headline, as these are notoriously hard to come up with. And, they can spectacularly fail!
  • Use a proven structure…as talked about in previous points. Being original is great, but you can try too hard!
  • Keep on, keeping on – practice, practice, practice…makes perfect! Take notice of headlines when you’re reading a newspaper or magazine. Look at headlines on billboards and understand how they capture your attention.
  • Action – Know what action you want your readers to take and make sure that is incorporated throughout your article and in your headline.        

Write content your readers will remember

Here are a few tricks to help make your content unforgettable.

  • Emotion – appeal to your reader’s emotions – this makes them care about something and if they care, they will remember.
  • People have short attention spans – use sound bites to grab attention. I’ve heard the term ’60 is the new 40’, referring to the fact that people now live longer…this is a sound bite.
  • Surprise your reader – Say something unexpected – the element of surprise always makes people remember
  • Use solid details. As well as all the trivial stuff, make sure your content has some real concrete solid details and information that help your readers understand your content.
  • Use stories. It could be a case study, or just a little ‘aside’ piece from your personal memory. People love stories, so be a good storyteller.

Using persuasive writing

If you want your readers to buy something, subscribe to your course or newsletter, you need to be persuasive. Here are some of the reasons you can give your readers…

  • Tell them why…why they should buy your product. Keep it simple – use the word ‘because’ – that tells them all they need to know.
  • Expect objections. If you’re on social media, you’ll know that no matter what you post, there is always someone who objects or who doesn’t agree with you. So, when writing copy, anticipate those objections up front and address them!
  • Give an incentive. Most people have endless curiosity. So give incentives to read to the end of your content…. ‘As well as this, you’re going to love…..’, ‘Here is the best bit’…’Here’s the most awesome part…’. You get the picture!
  • Use stats – these give credibility to your content. And quote your source if there are lots of specific stats.
  • Be passionate about what you do. If you love what you do, it will shine through your work.
  • Give the benefits of what you are offering. You might have told readers why to buy your product/service, but also list the benefits – what can it do for them? How can it make their lives easier? How can it save them time and money?
  • Write about a subject you know about. It will be obvious if you are just spewing out information. KNOW what you’re writing about as it will be easier to be more persuasive about it. And bear in mind that the person reading might not know anything about the subject you’re writing about, so keep the ‘beginner’ in mind.
  • Have a clear call to action. Once they’ve read the article, tell them what to do next and remind them why it’s good, and why they should click or subscribe or buy!     

At the end of the day, you know your customers and you know who your ideal customer is. Write for those people. Write as if you’re talking to a friend in a pub over a drink. Use easy to understand language and not jargon.

Entertain your audience, educate them, inspire them – ultimately you will sell to them. But as with most marketing tactics, it’s important to have that all important engagement first.

If you would like help creating your Content Marketing Strategy, but don’t know where to start, contact me via this blogsite, or drop me an email at cindymobey@outlook.com for a free 30 minute consultation to find out how I can help.

Content buckets and how to use them

Most small businesses are on social media, and as a small business it’s important to have a good presence. But it can be difficult to know where to start, or what to post. If you’re building your brand on your website, shop, or social media accounts, content buckets will help you decide what to post and help you build an effective content strategy to grow your business.

What are content buckets?

The first step in building an effective content strategy is to know what type of content you want to post. This is where content buckets help you. This term refers to identifying the different categories for each type of content you choose to post, that most appeals to your target audience. They’re not topics, they are types of content, under which your various topics sit depending on your business and your goals.   

Let me give you an example. My content buckets include educational posts, entertaining posts, engaging posts and inspiring or motivational posts.

One of the content buckets I choose to use regularly is under the heading of ‘Educational’. So under this ‘content bucket’ heading, I have a list of posts I can create to support that type of content, such as:

  • Blog posts like this one, teaching my audience
  • How to…posts
  • Infographics with statistics
  • Tips and tricks of marketing for small businesses
  • Q&A about my business and what I offer

So, when I am planning my posts for social media, and planning my blog posts, I try and incorporate at least one post/blog from this list.  

An example using the same principle and type of content could be…

You have your own small business selling a product. You could film a short video or a series of photos showing you making a product from start to finish.

How does this help my marketing?

If you make a product that improves someone’s life, you could give tips and hints as to how to best use your product. It might be you sell a drinks bottle that is personalised or has a slogan on it. Give ideas as to how this improves the buyer’s life, such as handy to keep in the car, so you have a drink on the go. Good for picnics and day trips as the lid seals, so it doesn’t spill. For the same reason, it works well at the gym as you can carry it in your gym bag, knowing there will be no leaks. It could be used to make your morning smoothie in, or a special diet drink. There are all sorts of things you can come up with as to why your product helps your customers. It’s about painting a picture, so your target audience can see themselves using your product. You might give them an idea they hadn’t thought of.    

Content buckets work because they help you create variety in your posts, which keep the attention of your audience and they want to come back for more. And you get to choose the types of buckets that you know will speak to your audience and therefore the posts that sit under that.

This kind of content strategy works really well, but does require planning and scheduling posts, but it is really worth it and pays off in the long run. Knowing what to post and when saves you shed loads of time and effort.

Content buckets work as they are a good solid content marketing strategy that will help your small business increase engagement and build your brand.

Examples of content buckets

  • Educational – I’ve already covered this one in my previous paragraph.
  • Entertaining – this targets the audience that likes a bit of fun and takes a more interactive approach to content. Examples would be:
    – Memes or gifs
    – Showcasing a fun day out or holiday
    – Sharing joke posts
    – Showcasing throwback posts
    – Looking at a current trend
    – Holding a contest or giveaway
  • Engaging – posts that get your audience to join in with a thread or participate in a post, such as:
    – Ask questions such as ‘what is your favourite……’
    – Use a poll with a few multi-choice answers
    – Posts such as ‘this or that’
    – Show a new product and ask for opinions
    – Ask for new ideas for products
  • Inspirational – posts that make your audience think, or posts that motivate or inspire them. This could be:
    – Motivational or inspirational quotes
    – Memes or gifs with an inspirational theme
    – Share something you do that inspires you – could be you meditate daily or enjoy a yoga class or a sport.
    – Share your story of why you started your business – what inspired you to do what you do?  
  • Personal – this is about increasing your brand awareness. YOU are part of your brand – your audience gravitate towards you and your business because who you are – not a faceless business. Examples of posts could be:
    – Introduce yourself on a regular basis and share a little information about yourself. You will constantly be picking up followers, so it’s good that they can get to know you.
    – Live Q&A sessions
    – Action shots of you
    – Pictures of your workspace
    – Share details of your hobbies
    – Tell your audience about your likes and dislikes
  • Conversational –  This is linked to engaging content- it’s about creating two-way conversation, so you’re listening to your audience as well as talking to them. You could:
    – Simply ask some questions and then engage in the answers, even if the back and forth conversation is only a couple of comments.
    – Show a genuine interest in your followers – if you follow other small businesses, engage with their posts and ask questions, starting a conversation.
    – Do a live webinar or just go ‘live’ on Facebook (advertising it first) and encourage your listeners to ask questions. You could host a Q&A about your business inviting listeners to ask you anything they like.
    – If you include a poll in your content, once you have the results of the poll, do another post, or series of posts, looking at the answers and asking further questions around those answers.
  • User-generated content – This is content that is original, brand-specific and created by your customers and published on social media or other channels, and seriously helps your business promotion. If you see a comment from a customer, you can ask if you can use it on your posts to tell a story around that comment (if it’s a bespoke item you made, for example), or you can just make a positive post. Content like this comes from:
    – Testimonials
    – Blog comments
    – Forums
    – Networking events or forums
    – Podcasts
    – Reviews
    – Facebook comments or posts  

The best bit about User-Generated content is that it costs nothing and you’re not putting in the work to create it!

  • Listicles – you may or may not have heard of these. They are the second most popular type of blog post, after how-to content. A listicle is content that you create in list format, such as Top Ten movies of 2022. You probably use these without thinking too much about it. If I’m looking for a product I want to buy, I’ll often check out an article that gives the top ten brands of the product I want to buy, so I can compare them. So, how can you use this in your marketing?
    – Top tips for …… depending on what you do. You’ll see this type of post on my FB and IG, when I’m giving specific marketing tips.
    – If you’re a product based business, for example, selling soaps, you could do a list of the top five favourite fragrances.
    – List your top three products – your most popular products etc.
    – If what you sell is seasonal, you can do seasonal lists. If you sew, you could list the top five hats or dresses to make this summer, or the top styles of hats for winter.
  • Success stories – This type of content is about sharing a case study or a customer story, that tells how your product or service really helped them and how it changed their life or business for the better. Customer stories are different to case studies. A case study focuses on data. A customer story focuses on the experience they have had with you, your business and your products or services. Here are some ideas of how you can use these:
    – Have a success story page on your website, course site or sales page – then share the link from there on your socials.
    – Write a blog post about a success story or case study and share the link.
    – Create a case studies section on your website
    – Add testimonials and video clips of your customers telling their stories.

    This is a bit more time consuming, but really helps show you as an expert and your business as super professional. 
  • Promotional – This is probably the kind of post you see the most on social media, especially for product-based businesses. Promotional posts are used to make your audience aware of your deals and offers. But beware, as promotional posts can deter people from following you, especially if you are constantly trying to sell your products and your posts are repetitive. It can damage the relationship you have with your audience – instead of providing value and nurturing your audience, they may feel you only care about making a sale.

    Now I know that, at the end of the day, every small business relies on sales and needs those sales to survive. But potential customers need to know that they can trust you, that you care about them, and their opinions are important. By only posting promotional posts, about 20% of the time, and concentrate on other types of post the rest of the time, your audience will be more engaged in what you have to say, they’ll start to get to know you – the person behind the business through personal, fun and inspiring posts. They’ll see you as an expert from your educational and engaging posts and are then more likely to stick around and look out for your posts every day. 80% of your posts need to be about providing value to promote trust and loyalty.
  • Product content – This refers to the text, images and any other descriptive information that tells your audience about your products. Product content tells us about what you sell, whether that be a physical product or a service.

    Product content should clearly define what your product/service is, and what problem it solves. This kind of content is what shoppers look for when deciding what to buy.

    This is the selling part of your content. Make sure that you:
    – speak directly to your audience
    – Focus more on the benefits of your product, as opposed to the features.
    – Include good photos or images, or infographics – make sure they are clear

Conclusion

Now that you know what content buckets are and how to use them, you have the tools to use them in your social media content planning and make your content buckets part of your marketing and content strategy.

If you would like some 1:1 coaching around content marketing for your specific business, or would like help with your strategic marketing planning in general, please feel free to email me or message me on social media.  cindymobey@outlook.com

Content Marketing Strategy – your way to success!

Do you have a content marketing strategy? A lot of small businesses don’t – and if you are one of those businesses, you are missing out on planning your way to success!

A content marketing strategy includes all the things you do to attract, engage, and keep your audiences’ attention, by creating and sharing content, such as blog posts, videos, newsletters, podcasts, and social media content. In fact, anything and everything that keeps your business in your audiences’ minds when they decide they want to buy what you offer.

The strategy is about the planning of that content so that it achieves your goals and is aimed at your specific target audience.

You can’t achieve your goals if they aren’t clear, and you know what steps you need to take to achieve them. Your content is what helps you achieve those goals, so that you grow your audience, and push them towards your website, online shop or whatever you want them to do.

Why is the strategy important to your business?

I’ve seen lots of people on social media saying that they want to grow their business and it’s just not happening.

Is this you?

You’re consistently posting on social media, you might have a newsletter, you show your products or services, publish your blogs, pay for ads – and are consistent – but still you’re not getting as much business as you hoped.

If you’re doing all this and don’t seem to make much progress towards your goals, it’s likely that you don’t have a content strategy in place. It could also be that your goals aren’t realistic.

Content marketing is a long game – it’s not something that you can implement and get results within a few months. That’s why so many big companies have a whole marketing department. They know that they need to have people working on it constantly and over a long period of time to get any return on what they do.

With the right strategy in place, you can:

  • Generate leads
  • Raise your brand awareness
  • Engage your followers and target audience
  • Retain your current customers
  • Position yourself and your business as an expert in your field

You can’t just wing it!

Unfortunately, content strategy isn’t something you can wing! You need to conduct research, know your target audience, know what keywords to use and have a clear idea of your buyer personas.

Most small businesses will know their target audience(s), but quite often still post and focus on what they believe to be important or interesting, rather than what their audience and perspective customers need and want. Having a strategy addresses this matter.

If you do take the time to develop a content strategy, and work to it, you should expect to see growth over the first six months.

It’s not a secret that creating content is time-consuming, but writing short blog posts, or putting up a social media post just because you haven’t done one today – or trying to put out three posts every day, means you’ll probably do something quickly, just to get it out – and this could end up with you losing out in the long run.      

High quality content helps you to rank better in Google, helps you to build trust with your customers and followers, brings you leads and importantly, helps you to convert those leads into customers.

I’m not saying that there isn’t a place for short-term content strategies, as these can produce some instant results, but a long-term strategy will allow you to build a rapport with your audience, provide real value to them and keep your business in the front of their minds long term. Long-term strategies also tend to build bigger audiences and don’t concentrate on the hard sell, which puts a lot of people off.

How do you build a content strategy?

Your content strategy is the foundation of your customers’ journey with you. It helps you have better customer satisfaction and helps you with sales.

These are the things you need to know and include:

Your audience

Who will be reading your content? Who is your target audience? Do you have more than one?

Create a buyer persona for each of your target audiences – this will help you tailor content specifically for them.

What problems do your products or services solve?

What are the benefits and features of your products/services? What are your customers’ pain points and how do you solve them?

What makes your business unique?

What do you do that is different from your competitors? What makes your products/services better than theirs?

It might be that you have years of experience; you might have a distinctive way of speaking to your customers (your tone of voice).

What are your business goals?

This is very important as you need to know what goals you want to achieve, so you can tailor your content to help you achieve those goals.

What kind of content format will you use?

Bear in mind that you need your content to reach your customers, so where do they hang out? This might be social media, a blog, a podcast, a YouTube channel, and of course an email newsletter.

Once you know what format you need to use to suit your audience and to reach them where they are, think about your budget and what you can afford to be able to use all these channels effectively.

Where will you publish your content?

Linked to the previous point, where you publish your content will depend on where your audience are. This might be your website, or social media. If social media is a big part of your strategy, which sites will be best for you? Which sites do your audience use?

If you target a younger audience, you might want to opt for TikTok and Instagram.

How will you manage your content?

Once you know what channels you’re going to use, you need to think about how you will create and publish all your content. Will you be doing it all yourself?

Have a plan, and plan at least two weeks ahead, so you know what posts are happening and when. For social media, you can batch-create content and schedule it in advance. Blog posts and email can also be planned and written ready for publishing.

If you plan your content around a particular theme each week or month, it makes content creation much easier. If you write a blog, or have a podcase, you can also repurpose that content to make social media posts/videos.

Make sure that your content tells your customer how you can help them solve their problems, use your unique voice, and try and weave in your overall business message.

I try and use the 80/20 rule for my content. 80% entertaining, engaging, educating, or inspiring my audience and only 20% sales posts.

Your strategy also needs to:

  • Ensure your content points your audience to your website or online shop…or somewhere they can get more information
  • Be cost-effective
  • Include an audit of the content you’ve already published. Look at your insights on social media to find out what kind of posts work best you’re your business. And, if you blog/podcast, look at your stats to see which articles/episodes are the most popular. What works and what doesn’t?
  • Does your current content align with your goals, and will it help you achieve it? If not, you may need to look at changing what you do and how you do it.

There are loads of different types of posts you can create to keep your audience interested, and to help you achieve your goals.

Content Marketing is all about reaching your target audience with the kind of content they want to see, in a place where they hang out.

Planning and having a strategy are key and will really help you achieve your goals, reach your audience, build trust and rapport with your followers…and ultimately make those sales.

If you’d like help with your content marketing strategy, I’d love to help and get you moving towards building your audience and growing your business. Contact me via email (cindymobey@outlook.com) to book your free 30-minute consultation – I look forward to chatting to you about your business.

Why consistency is key

Consistency is crucial to your business, as it helps establish awareness of your brand, builds trust with your audience, and helps deliver your products or services more efficiently.

Running your own business is hard work and I’m sure you’ve seen countless articles or webinars on how to be successful. But if you concentrate on the key element of consistency, across all the social media platforms you’re on and in your day-to-day processes, you’ll soon find your business gravitating towards success.

Know your brand!

I know from my own experience, that when you start in business, you pick the colours you like and the kind of image you want to convey to your target audience…then you get bored with it and go for a complete change. I’m not saying you shouldn’t make any changes, but if you are constantly changing your colours, images and fonts, it can make your brand appear unprofessional. A good, solid branding is what makes you stand out from the competition. If you look at any of the big brands, such as McDonald’s, they are highly consistent and instantly recognisable…because they rarely make big changes, if at all.  

Have a plan

Every business needs to have a plan. This keeps you on track and by following a plan of action, this helps not only keep you consistent, but also makes you focus on money so you can ensure your costs don’t rocket. If you’ve just started your business, this is even more important, so you don’t make costly decisions based on inconsistent actions.

Measurement

Measurement

No matter whether you’re a new business, or been going for a while, it takes time to see results. If you’re not consistent in your marketing, business processes, sales etc., you will see inconsistent results. For example, if you decide to pay for an ad, running it for just a couple of days is a waste of time and effort, but if you run it for a set period, you can measure much more easily whether the ad is working or not.   

Consistency in all its forms, but especially in the interactions you have with your clients, will help you build a loyal customer base, and your customers will get a great customer experience. This all comes down to the basics of knowing your target audience and understanding what they want from you and ensuring they get it. Being consistent means that your customer understands who you are, what your business stands for, what your business focusses on and how your products or services can help them.   

Three pillars of consistency!

The three pillars of consistency

The three pillars of consistency help you to focus on ensuring that your business has a sound base and is successful.

Accountability

If you are a small business, then it’s likely that the buck stops with you! You are totally accountable for everything that happens within your business, so it’s even more important to be consistent in everything you do.

  • Check your business goals and action plan regularly – adjust any goals that aren’t working.
  • Look at your products/services and regularly review to ensure they do what you say they do.
  • Look at your website and ensure that all the links work and that your copy is still relevant to your business and amend if you need to.
  • Look at your customer feedback – is there anything you can do to improve the service you give? Are all your products working for your customers? Do you have any complaints? If you do, try and address any problems and improve on your products/services.
  • Look at the communication you send out to customers – this might be a monthly newsletter. Is the content you’re putting out still relevant to your audience?

Relevancy

It’s really important to be consistent in your messaging. Your customers and potential customers rely on you for information about your products/services, things that make their lives easier.

It’s crucial that you stay the course and exercise patience. Things won’t happen immediately and it’s easy to be impatient and think that something isn’t working, but as with all things, whatever you decide to do with your business will take time. But if you’re consistent and keep plugging away, your brand will start to be in your target audience’s minds and your business will be successful.

Make sure your messaging is clear.

This might seem like an obvious point, but consistency with your messaging is key to a successful business. Wherever you advertise your business, be it on your logo, your flyers, your website, or your blog for example, you need to ensure that your overall message is the same. If your messaging is inconsistent, it will confuse your customers – they won’t be sure that what you’re selling is actually aimed at them.

As with everything in marketing, it’s about keeping things simple, clear and concise. Make your messaging memorable and use the same kind of wording, or ‘tone of voice’, so your audience recognise your style and know that it’s you – and more importantly, know that what you’re saying is meant for them.  

These pillars all help you to ensure consistency in your business. Consistency helps you create awareness of your business and brand, build trust and loyalty with your customers and deliver your products and services more efficiently. 

The 4 Rs of Content Creation

If you write content, you’ll know how long it takes. It’s not just about the time and the money, but as a content creator, you put your heart and soul into everything you write.

This is where the 4 Rs of content marketing comes in. It puts the oomph back into what you’ve written before and gives it a whole new lease of life.

So, let’s take a look at those 4 Rs of content marketing:

Repurpose

As a content creator, you’ll have written hundreds of blog posts or articles and, in order to reorganise that content, you need to take a long, hard look at that older content. How can you repurpose some of your content and make it into something else?

Repurpose content

You could tie some blog posts together and make an eBook that you can sell, or give away as part of a lead magnet. You could make an infographic, or break down a post into several parts and make social media posts. And the great bit about that is that you’ve already done all the hard work to produce the content in the first place – it’s just about repurposing it into something new and fresh for your audience.

Retire

Sometimes you will come across an old piece of content that is just past its sell-by date! It might be that things have moved on and it is no longer relevant, or it could be that it just wasn’t something that performed well and probably still wouldn’t.

The other thing to look at is, ‘is this still relevant to my target audience?’ If it isn’t something that they would care about, it’s time to retire that content.

Revamp

I’ve talked about retiring old content that is out of date and no longer relevant to your target audience. However, you don’t want to simply delete or archive that content, as it may have good links attached to it or great SEO (search engine optimisation). Have a look at ways that you may be able to replace it with something more vibrant and current…revamp it!

It could be that you can rewrite some of it – has technology moved on, so you can update some of the information that is out of date? Can you add new statistics? Don’t forget to also add new images and bring your design up to date, so it’s more in keeping with how you do things now.  

Everything you write, or have written in the past, has its value, so updating is a very worthwhile exercise. Simply put a note at the top of the article, blog or whatever, saying when the article was first published and noting that it’s been updated with new information.  

Readability

Do you read other peoples’ content? I’m sure you do, but most of us only remain focused on something for a few minutes, unless it is something we are personally interested in. The internet has so much information, with loads of articles on similar subjects, that choice for your reader is vast.

So, ensure that your readers stay on your page. But how?

Make your content easy to read and easy to scan for information. Use bullet points, small paragraphs, headings and sub-headings and numbered lists. This breaks up the text and makes it easier to read.

Call to Action

Don’t forget to put a CTA (call to action) at the end so they know what to do next and you could offer an incentive to go somewhere else on your website, such as a freebie that takes them to an opt-in to your newsletter. For more useful articles on marketing, please visit my blog. If you need some help with writing creative content for your blog, website or social media posts…or if you’d like help creating your lead magnet, please feel free to email me – cindymobey@outlook.com

The 7 Cs of Communication

Communication is the most important aspect of your business. It is the general term used to describe how you speak to your target audience and how you write your blogs or emails.

Our language enables us to share our ideas with other people, and communication is probably the most important aspect of our culture. Without communication, the pyramids wouldn’t have been built, the Eiffel Tower wouldn’t be standing – communication enabled the architects to convey their plans to their workers. 

Effective communication helps avoid any misunderstanding with your audience, employees and customers alike.

My blog this week looks at the 7 Cs of communication and how, if you keep these seven things in mind, your written communication will be much more effective. 

Clear

It’s important to always keep in mind the purpose of every message, email or post you put out. So, what is the purpose of this communication? As long as you keep this in mind, you will better be able to put your message across to your target audience.

If you don’t know the purpose of your communication, your audience won’t either!

Being clear is also about giving clarity to your reader – avoid complex words, long sentences and jargon. Keep it simple and to the point.

Concise

Keep your message short, simple, concise and to the point. Why use a whole paragraph to explain something that can take one sentence?

Being concise will also keep your audience’s attention, saving them and you time and energy.

BUT, keep in mind that, although you are keeping your message concise, you still need to give detail for the message to be complete.  

Concrete

This is about being specific with your communication, avoiding it being too general, vague or obscure.

Use words and sentences that can’t be misinterpreted, and it’s a good idea to add facts and figures if you can to underline your meaning. But keep the balance so that any illustrations or examples don’t detract from your main message.

Correct

ALWAYS proofread your message before publishing. I find that reading it aloud ensures that it makes sense. If you use facts and figures, put a link to the source, so you have proof that they are correct and that you haven’t just plucked statistics out of the air!

Check for typos or spelling mistakes, and ensure that sentences are short – this makes it so much easier to read.

Doing these checks saves you time in the long run and boosts your credibility.

Coherent

Look at the structure of your communication. Does it flow in a logical way? You don’t want to be jumping from one subject to the other, as that makes it harder to read and understand.

Do a sense check to make sure you haven’t tried to be too in-depth and cover too much in one message. And ensure your communication doesn’t go off on tangents and side issues.

Complete

In order for you to get the desired response to your message or communication, it must contain all the necessary information.

The best way to do this is to think about your message and about any questions your target audience might have as a result of reading it. Then you can make sure that those questions are answered in the communication.

Include a call to action, so your audience knows exactly what you expect them to do next.

Courteous

Always be polite. Being polite builds trust and goodwill with your readers. Make sure that your communication shows respect for your readers and their feelings.

My parents always taught me that manners cost nothing and this is just as relevant to written communication as to verbal.

Conclusion

Overall, the 7 Cs of Communication is an effective checklist, which will ensure you are communicating with your audience more effectively.

If you use this simple checklist, you can be assured that you are delivering the best and clearest message you can, with little in the way of misunderstanding.

Ultimately, this will boost the reliability and trustworthiness of your business, as well as saving you more time.

Let me know how you get on with this checklist the next time you write a message or communication.   

Market Segmentation & Your Small Business

It’s a term we hear a lot as marketers, but what does it actually mean?

Market Segmentation is the process of dividing your target market into groups; these groups will need different products or different types of marketing to pull them in.

How do you divide your target market into segments?

First of all, you need to absolutely know your target market or target audience. Who are they? What motivates them to buy? What are their interests etc.?

Once you know who your target market is, you can then divide them into different groups. The groups need to be big enough to give you a solid customer base.

You can use several different ways to segment or divide your market.

  • Demographics – this includes age, family size, occupation, job
  • Geographics – this is all about the location of your market – could be local, regional, nationwide or international markets.
  • Psychographics – things such as lifestyle, values and personality – for example, someone might like to visit the gym, have a Vegan lifestyle, focus on mental health, and be environmentally aware…this list is absolutely endless in possibilities – but all hangs on knowing your target market.

How to identify your segmentation groups

OK, so you know your target market – now it’s time to break that down into smaller groups.

Try and create a detailed description of your ideal client – a persona that describes them in detail.

For example is you sell children’s’ books, one persona might be female, aged 25 – 45, stay at home Mum with young children. Interested in eco products and the environment, and healthy eating for her family. Her hobbies could be reading, family time, socialising with friends and hiking in the countryside.

The questions

Once you have this persona, you can more easily target that audience with specific books that would be interesting to that target group.

You will most likely need to work on several different personas. I give each persona a name as it makes them more real for me!

Here are some questions that might help you sort out your different segments. 

  • What are your highest and lowest value customers regarding the revenue they bring to you and profitability?
  • Are there any things that your customers have in common – or any patterns of buying you notice that they have in common?
  • Can you divide your customers into demographic information – age, income, gender?
  • Can you divide them into location?
  • What interests and hobbies do your customers have?
  • Have you noticed that customers with a particular interest or value are interested in your services/products?
  • How much do your customers know about your industry, products or services?
  • Do your customers buy online? If you have several online outlets, which is the most popular?
  • Do your customers need to have a consultation before they buy anything from you, or is the purchase just a transaction?
  • From your reviews and records, are your customers more likely to be satisfied with a particular purchase, or are they likely to want to exchange or return it?
  • Do customers ever make a suggestion to improve any of your products or services? Again, look at your records to see if any have the same opinion. Maybe that’s something you can improve and then target that audience?  

The more information you can find out about your current customers, as well as your potential customers, the easier it will be for you to segment your market. You will find groups by age, which is quite a broad spectrum to target, but if you look at feedback and reviews, you may find other things that certain customers have in common. For example, it could be how they found out about you? They may have googled your products or services, or maybe had a recommendation. It’s good to know these things.

Segmentation allows you to aim at the right market for your products. It helps you to focus on the way you interact with your customers, based on their interests, hobbies and behaviours.

This article wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t give you a quick overview of the pros and cons of segmentation. This gives you lots of information so you can make up your own mind as to how you would segment your market.

The pros of segmentation

  • You can look at each segment and determine if your current offering satisfies the needs of that segment. If not, you can adapt your products/services to make sure that you do – this might involve new products/services.
  • If you have a marketing budget, knowing who you want to target and how, you can better allocate that budget.
  • Segmentation helps you to set realistic targets or goals for your business.
  • Understanding your market in more detail, can help you when looking at what your competitors do.

The cons of segmentation

The cons are around, quite simply, costs.

If you are serving several different segments with different wants and needs, you could find costs escalating due to the increased number of products or services, or product variations.

Marketing costs will also increase as you will be serving different groups of people with different marketing. If you do paid ads, you’d need to do more than one to target the different segments.

I think the benefits outweigh the downside, but you need to take everything into consideration if you’re going to go this route.

Donald Norman, an American researcher, professor and author, once said, “Market segmentation is a natural result of the vast differences among people.”

This is so true, even people with the same hobbies or interests have huge differences between them. It’s just about finding those differences and how you can use that information to your best advantage.

Seth Godin, an entrepreneur, best-selling author and speaker, has been quoted in saying, “Don’t find customers for your products; find products for your customers.”

This absolutely puts it all into perspective. If you can work out exactly what your customers want and work to improve or change your products/services to meet their needs, you’re there! Customers always buy for their own reasons, not ours!

Do you know how to market your content?

According to the Content Marketing Institute, “Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Content marketing isn’t anything new, but it is a term bandied about a lot in marketing circles. Those who have always got involved in the traditional kind of marketing would argue that they use content to advertise. But this is the crux of the matter and where the differences lie.

Traditional marketing vs Content marketing

Larger businesses will typically use traditional marketing as it is the kind of content that is pushed into the view of the public. For example, TV commercials, radio ads, print ads, brochures etc. You will see traditional marketing everywhere; on billboards, sides of buses, the ad breaks in the cinema, but they are all high end marketing which require a big budget to reach that large audience.

For the small business, content marketing is the way to go; it involves having a content marketing strategy, which comprises of all types of content being created and then published online in multiple locations. Instead of forcing your content on the public, your content will sit online forever, with the end goal of attracting your ideal audience or customer.

Content marketing is also different in that it doesn’t concentrate on just advertising your products or services, it’s about drawing your audience in by providing useful information that is helpful and solves problems. Your readers can follow you on social media to read more of your content, or follow your blog, in order to find out more. This helps you gain a loyal audience who trust you…and ultimately, will sign up to your email list in return for some kind of offer…be that a newsletter or a freebie checklist or e-book.      

What kind of content can I share online?

When your audience find your content useful, their connection to you and your brand is strengthened. They will share your content, so that your audience widens further. So, what kind of content can you share?

  • Your website copy (this is everything you write about on your business website)
  • Your Blog
  • Social Media posts (status updates, tweets etc.)
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Infographics
  • E-books
  • Printables
  • Guest posts on other websites 

To make your content work, it needs to be optimised for your target audience and it needs to be relevant to the niche you are in.

How do you market your valuable content?

Now you have your content online, what do you need to do to market it?

Website

If you have a website for your business, you can add a blog to it, so you are creating content that people will see when they visit your website.

Email

Do you have a ‘subscribe to email’ button on your website? If not, do it! When you have subscribers, you can send them a monthly email as a newsletter. You can include:

  • Links to any blogs you’ve written
  • Details of new products or services
  • Special offers
  • Send links to videos you’ve produced on YouTube
  • Links to any podcasts your record
  • Links to any articles, news or videos you think they might be interested in (not ones that you’ve done)
  • Generally talk about new trends in the marketplace, a little bit about you and what you’ve been up to, ask questions make them feel like part of an exclusive ‘club’. 
  • You can also enable buttons so that your audience can follow you on your social media channels

Social Media

Share your content to all your social media pages. You will have different audiences on Facebook to those you have on LinkedIn for example, and again different to those you connect to on Instagram.

  • You can schedule your posts, so you’re not constantly on social media (and therefore getting distracted by other things!).  
  • Share the link to your blog in your profiles on social media.
  • Ask questions linked to your content and respond to anyone who makes a comment. In fact, respond to any comment you get and thank people through messenger or private DM for following you.
  • Share you blog posts as soon as you publish them. The more immediate responses, likes and shares you get, the more credibility your post gets.
  • Share your blog posts more than once…share again the next day, with a different caption and image. And again a week later. This way, you will pick up people you have missed, or who didn’t see your original post.
  • If you notice that an old blog post went well and got lots of engagement, then share that again…not all of your posts, just the ones that had great stats.
  • Posts with images get better engagement, so really think about the images you use to entice your audience in. There are lots of free image sites out there (such as Pixabay, Pexel, Unsplash and Canva) that you can download licensed images for commercial use. DON’T just google images and use one as you could be fined for copyright.
  • Join groups on social media and participate in group discussions, giving advice, answering questions etc. This helps get your name known and helps you get seen as an expert in your niche. They also have ‘share your blog post/business page’ type events, which help get your content in front of a different audience.
  • Use hashtags, which categorise your content for your audience.
  • You can also pay to boost your reach on social media.
  • Write a guest post for someone else’s website or blog – you then tap into their audience.
  • Make sure your blog/website has social media sharing buttons, so your audience can click to go look at your social media sites.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Choosing the right keywords will help your content get seen.

  • Google’s keyword planner will help you pick the right keywords and help you brainstorm ideas.
    Log into the Google Ads platform with your account, then choose ‘Tools and Settings’, ‘Schedule’ and then ‘Keyword Scheduler Tool’.
  • Write a long, compelling blog post and use your keyword(s) and variations of it throughout the blog.
  • Optimise your whole post for the keyword you decide on. Include your keyword in…
    – your title
    – your Meta description
    – your main headline (H1)
    – use the keyword frequently throughout your blog post, without stuffing it anywhere – it has to make sense! And you don’t want Google to think you are being spammy!
    – Use related keywords in subheadings and in the first 100 words of your main body of text.
    – use your keyword in your URL slug
    – use keyword and related keywords in your tags and categories

Link building

Internal links: A good way to get your content noticed is to build internal links into your blog post. This simply means that you link to previous posts you’ve written. For example, in this article, you will see highlighted phrases or words – these are links to articles I’ve written about that subject before, so my audience can take a look at those.  

Revisit your older blogs from time to time and add internal links to newer blogs that you’ve written.

External links: where other people link to your blog post.

  • If you send out a newsletter email, ask your customers to share a link to your blog posts.
  • When you publish your blog on social media pages, ask your audience to share.
  • If you publish entertaining or educating blogs that capture your audience’s attention, they are more likely to share.

Headlines

A headline really matters – the ones that seem to get the most traffic are lists, how to, or a question. Also, headlines that contain numbers, e.g. 101 ways to …….

Emotional headlines also seem to hit the mark too, as well as a bit controversial headlines!

Images

Using great images can help market your content. Images don’t just have to be photos; it can be GIFs, infographics, graphics or video. These help capture and keep the attention of your audience.

If you have a Pinterest account, make sure your images can be pinned (shared) by other Pinterest users.

If appropriate, also put a caption on any image as this helps with search engines – images alone won’t necessarily be picked up by search engines, but if there is text, they will be.

Revisit and repurpose your content

Revisit your old posts and content regularly. Revisiting content means you can update it with new information, add new images/infographics and maybe add a short video you’ve made on the subject.

You can also repurpose posts into e-books, video or a podcast. You can also use ideas from them to make social media posts.

Conclusion

I’ve shared loads of different ways to market your content. But the most important thing to keep in mind when marketing is to always have your customer/target audience at the heart of everything you do. Do it for them, aim it at them, and make sure it’s something you know that they will be interested in.

Keep your brand in mind and write in your own particular style – don’t try and copy anyone else. Keep your content original and engaging. Remember, content should always entertain, educate and engage your audience.

If you found this post valuable, please share on your social media site. And if you have any further ideas as to how to market content, please leave a note in the comments box.

Happy content writing and please get in touch if you need help with your content!