If you are a small business owner, you have probably already heard of content marketing. As a matter of fact, you may have begun to create content for your website. Like most business owners, you are constantly looking for new marketing ideas for small businesses that will work for your company. However, just creating content haphazardly for your website is not enough to gain traffic for your site. You can’t just plop your content down in the middle of the Internet and expect people to find it .You have to have a strategy to get your content found. And you need to have content that your target customer is interested in.
Why Do I Need a Strategy?
The vastness of the Internet is a difficult concept for people to comprehend. It is similar to standing in the middle of the ocean without any knowledge of where you are. If you post a piece of content–article, video or image–on your website, a few people might stumble upon it accidentally. But it is just floating out there in the middle of the vast ocean of the Internet. Therefore, you need a strategy to market the content. You need to let people know that you have the information that they are looking for.
How do you let them know? You start by figuring out where your prospects hang out and marketing to them there. Depending on your business, you may find them through social media, email lists, organic search, search advertising, YouTube, or other sites and forums. Once you find them, you can market your content to them.
Why Should I Give Up Valuable Content for Free?
When we are in business, it is hard to understand why we need to give up anything for free, especially in our area of expertise. It is better to think of it as an investment in future sales. Just like any other type of marketing you may do such as networking groups, trade shows or sales calls, you need to invest before you can earn. Your free content is an investment in multiple future sales. It is a way for you to connect with a buyer before they are ready to buy, to give them value in expectation that they will come back to you for more insight.
What Content Works Best?
That is a great question. All you can do is offer the best content you have to answer the questions that your customers typically have before they buy, and for some industries, after they buy. If you continue to offer valuable content, some of your content will go viral and some won’t. But it will all bring in traffic to your company’s site for leads or sales.
Writer Bio: Paula A is a freelance writer available for projects at WriterAccess.
