How to Grow Your Business with Content Marketing

The popularity of social media and other digital platforms has made content marketing more accessible to businesses than ever before.

But it can also be overwhelming, ineffective and down right confusing! 

Unless you have the right strategy. 

In this video training, I share tips for creating the right kind of content, how to maximize your efforts and streamline your process or outsource some (or all) of it.

What is Content Marketing?

The purpose of content marketing is to:

• Educate and entertain current and past clients
• Get people’s attention without being “salesy”
• Instill loyalty and remind past clients you exist
• Generate referrals
• Demonstrate your expertise
• Attract new clients

The concepts used in “old fashioned” direct mail and other content marketing are relevant today in digital media. Knowing the purpose of your content marketing can help you determine what kind of content to create.

What Kind of Content Marketing Works best?

Content marketing can be delivered in various ways. Some examples of content marketing delivery methods are:

• Blogging
• e-newsletters or email marketing
• Books
• Podcasts
• Direct Mail
• Social Media
• YouTube or live streaming

Your goal is to get your content in front of people in the way that makes the most sense. Where is your target audience consuming content? That’s where you should be! So, the best platform for you and your business will depend on your goals and target market.

Common Mistakes Content Marketers Make

1. Not having a clear strategy
2. Not knowing your target market, what they want or what would be valuable to them
3. Not being consistent in delivering your content
4. Trying to be on all platforms instead of doing one or two really well
5. Not knowing what platform your target market would respond to best
6. Not having a consistent brand look
7. Not hiring help with the things outside their zone of genius

Content Marketing Tips for Success

1. Have a strategic plan and content calendar
2. Make sure your content is designed to lead your customer to buy
3. Include calls to action
4. Batch create your content in advance, including photos, graphic templates, writing and pre-scheduling
5. Re-purpose your content on multiple platforms

Outsource or Automate Your Content Creation

1. Hire a branding photographer and videographer to help you create a library of brand specific photos
2. Hire a designer or brand strategist to create brand specific graphics templates in Canva
3. Delegate the delivery of your content (posting, scheduling, emailing, formatting, transcribing) to an virtual assistant or a member of your staff
4. Take one day per month to create and schedule content using a software like Loomly, Later or Hootsuite to post to multiple social media accounts
5. Hire a writer to turn your outlines or videos into blog posts or to repurpose you blogs in to social media posts

Measure the Effectiveness of Your Content

Make sure you’re tracking and evaluating metrics for the effectiveness of your campaigns. Whether you’re tracking via software, like google analytics or Facebook Pixel, or manually by asking clients how they found you and recording data, you’ll want to take a look at the data. This can help you decide which kind of content is working so you can spend more time creating more of that and less time creating the content that isn’t producing results.