Content Marketing Ideas for Small Business
You wanted a blog. Everyone said it was an essential tool for marketing your business. But no one mentioned what a chore it can be to keep up to date, to continually think up new content marketing ideas for your small business, and to feel enthused about writing yet another blog post. You have enough to do! You have to run your business, learn about marketing strategies, be an accountant, a copy writer, a product developer, a web guru as well as all of the other things that you already are in your personal life. Let’s face it, you could use a new trick or two.
Here are a few ways to help you generate new content.
1. Add Value
You’ve probably seen those headlines that pop up everywhere – The Top 5 reasons to do this, or the Ten Best of these, and the 3 Things you should never do.
There’s a reason for these. Firstly, it’s a great way to grow your database. Secondly, you’re letting people get to know you by giving them something of value, something useful and something that can help their day, week, lives, business etc.
You will be surprised at the good business content marketing ideas, that you can generate when you write a list of what you can help people with. It doesn’t have to be gap filler stuff, you can really focus in on your ideal customers and address their needs, desires and pain points. Give your audience some punchy information, and get them thinking about your brand.
2. Offer Guest Posts
You don’t have to do everything yourself! A guest post is a great way to feature someone through your business. Come up with a list of people that are doing great stuff in your industry as well as people who simply inspire you. Send them an email. It really is just that easy! You will be surprised by the willingness of people to participate. They get great exposure to your audience, and you get to offer content on a range of topics, some of which may be quite different to what you would normally write, and all without you having to string a single sentence together.
3. Get Personal
It’s easy to think up a great blog post idea and the get completely lost in all of the related research. More and more information takes you off track and causes you to possibly question the value of your original idea and you end up in a heap, wondering what you are going to write about and if it is even a good idea to try. You’re making it too hard for yourself. Get personal. Tell your audience a little bit about you. Perhaps something happened during the week that inspired something new in your business… or a customer interaction gave you great momentum for the day…something about you and your business that lets your audience have a sticky beak at the pumping heart of your business. This is a great way to remind your customers that there is an actual person, not too different from themselves, working hard in your business to keep coming up with awesome offerings.
Next time you find your brain emptying of any content ideas for another blog post, give one of these three approaches a try. It will help to mix your content up a bit and keep your ideas fresh and fun.