10 content marketing tips for small businesses
You’ve been creating consistent content, but you’re just not seeing results. It happens to the best of us! The truth, plain and simple, is that content marketing isn’t easy. It covers so many different channels, metrics, and variables, and it can take a lot more time than other marketing efforts.
If you already have a strategy or a content workflow, but you’re looking to make some improvements, I’m here to help! Above all, I recommend investing in a custom content strategy for your specific business and audience. But these content marketing tips can also help you get on the right track!
Start with understanding your competition and audience
In my experience, I’ve noticed businesses tend to do one of the following:
Kick off their content marketing based on their own brainstorming, intuition, and ideas
OR create a strategy that’s only focused on their audience or their competition, not both
A solid strategy needs to come from a strong understanding of your audience, and that includes the messaging that they’re already getting from your competition.
When I put together a content strategy for my clients, I always create a target customer profile that aligns with the SEO research I conduct. From there, I take a look at what the competition is doing to show up online, both from an SEO and brand perspective.
When I put it all together, it’s easy to develop the brand positioning that my clients need to stand out from their competition, as well as the content plan that will help them reach their audience. The comprehensive research sets them on the right track from the start, making their content marketing efforts much more impactful.
2. Create separate strategies for your website content and social media marketing
Content marketing is a broad term–it can include everything from SEO to email marketing, lead gen, and social media.
But creating the same strategy for all of these tactics isn’t the way to go, especially when it comes to content that lives on your website vs. your social channels.
Sure, social channels are a powerful tool for repurposing your website content. A blog post can become a Thread, an Instagram carousel, and even a TikTok video. However, social media is also where you can focus more on community building and building your brand awareness, both of which need a unique content strategy.
3. Set goals and KPIs for each channel
This tip might feel a little too obvious, but that doesn’t make it any less important. Even if you’re just getting started, there are always content marketing KPIs that you can measure.
Take it from me–as I’m writing this, I’m only on week three of launching my business. I know that my SEO is going to take a lot of time, so my goal for that channel is to rank in the top 50 for three of my target keywords this quarter.
Ranking around 50 honestly won’t mean much in terms of my ultimate goals–more leads and conversions. However, setting that KPI still helps me track my progress from the get-go, and I can keep moving the goal post each quarter until I’m closer to my ultimate goals.
4. Prioritize your content marketing workflow
This tip is super underrated, in my opinion, but your content production workflow is arguably just as important as the content you’re creating.
Ultimately, you can’t grow and scale if you don’t have processes in place. That’s especially true for your business operations, but it’s also true for your marketing.
Especially if you’re starting out on your own, you need a repeatable process that makes sense for your workload and is easy to hold yourself accountable for. Without a workflow, your marketing will end up haphazard and inconsistent, which doesn’t give you a lot to measure or optimize.
5. Repurpose all of your content marketing efforts
Creating content takes so much time and energy, so do yourself a favor and repurpose what you have! There’s no need to sit down once a month and come up with amazing, fresh new ideas when you can transform what you’ve already created.
Seriously, it’s a win-win for everyone. It saves you time, and it makes it easy to discover your business across multiple channels.
6. Focus on offering a unique POV
A huge part of content marketing is SEO, and a lot of businesses tend to create the same exact content to try to compete for keyword rankings. It makes sense–if a certain type of content is ranking, you do want to try to emulate parts of it to make sure you also show up.
But unfortunately, I’ve seen that this type of focus on SEO makes a lot of business owners forget about how important branded content is. In fact, offering a unique brand perspective on the topics you know about can be even better for your SEO.
Make sure you’re prioritizing content types like thought leadership, original research, and your own anecdotes in order to make your content marketing stronger.
7. Prioritize local SEO over high-volume keywords
Here’s another SEO pitfall that I see small business owners fall into: Targeting the highest-volume keywords. I really hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you probably aren’t going to rank for those.
Never say never, but higher volume typically means higher difficulty, and if you’re a small business, you just don’t have the resources it takes to compete.
But that’s ok! It just means you need to focus more on the aspects of SEO that make sense for you, like localization. That means targeting keywords that people are searching in your market, making it easier for you to get found online.
8. Consistently review your content analytics to optimize or pivot
Since I’m a content marketer, I’m practically addicted to my analytics. I check my Search Console every day, and I always know what content is currently performing well.
But that’s because it’s literally part of my job. For other business owners, content analytics are frustrating, boring, or just not a priority with everything else going on. I get it! I don’t want to encourage any kind of addiction, okay?
But a healthy balance is OK, so that means setting aside time to check your numbers once in a while. My recommendation is to just take a look once a month–see what’s catching on based on views, engagement, or conversion- and make a point to lean more into that next month.
9. Take advantage of content marketing tools
Let’s be honest–sometimes all you need really is a Google doc and a spreadsheet. But when it comes to growing your content marketing (and ultimately your business), you need to lean on tools from the start.
I’m a brand new business owner, so I’m trying to be super lean with my expenses. That said, I still use a keyword research tool, a social media scheduler, and a project management tool that I use to organize my content workflow. Getting started now means that I have systems and processes set up from the start, and I can always scale up to more advanced tools or more expensive subscriptions when I’m ready.
10. Make a plan to outsource and delegate
No matter where you’re at in your business, make a plan to at least consider outsourcing 1-2 times per year. Especially with content marketing, it can take up so much time (I know!). By intentionally reviewing your own workload and growth goals, it’ll be easier to figure out when it’s time to get help.
If you’re ready to take your content marketing to the next level, I’m here for you! My content marketing solutions are designed to grow with you and evolve based on your needs. Contact me today to learn more–I’d love to chat.
