Great content is essential for successful marketing. There is so much noise in the marketplace from advertisers, spammers. TV, radio, billboards and the multitude of pop-ups online that it's difficult to get your message heard.
The best strategy has always been creating original content and posting it on your blog or website and using your social media channels to drive traffic to your posts.
Whether you run a blog, a website or a combination of the two – Original content should be at the top of your list and the backbone of any marketing campaign.
Here are a few ideas for generating content to help to get your creative juices flowing.
Announcements: If you have a new product or service, if you're a new company or you have a milestone to celebrate, an announcement post is great for telling the marketplace what you're up to. Be sure to add a related image, photo or infographic with your company branding and share it across your social media. You might even want to create a marketing email if you want to add a 10% offer or other reward for your existing customers. Always take time to thank your loyal customers as it's far easier to sell to them, than it is to find new ones.
Step By Step Tutorials: Good, informative and useful tutorials are shared by a lot of people. Especially if you give permission for people to share it with a link back to your website on it. If you have a product that people may find difficult to master, like some realistic scar make-up. Potential customers will see how easy it is to use and may want to try it out themselves. But you don't need to have a product, if you're a photographer for example, you may want to show off your best Adobe Lightroom settings, or show how you retouch a photo. Either way, if your post is informative, useful and educational in some way it will get shared a lot.
Awards, Testimonials and Success Stories: If one of your clients or customers gives you some nice feedback, share online. Word of mouth marketing is one of the most powerful and you are much more likely to buy a product if a friend recommends it. Also, if you've won an award or achieved something special, this can also show that your product or service is great and well worth a look.
Top 10 Lists: Curated lists are very popular for a number of reasons. The main one may be that they save people a lot of time and research. If you know a lot about something think about putting a list together of your own for example if you're an avid wine drinker you could do something like “Top 10 white wines to bring to an Xmas party” or "Top 10 Halloween party decorations for under £10". There could be more professional or product based ones relating to your industry. Have a think and see what you can come up with.
Guest Blogs: It's fairly common for website admins to invite guest bloggers to post on sites. Think about professionals in your industry that you admire or who blog about similar things. The best thing about having a guest blogger is that they will share the article on their social media, introducing you to a whole new group of people that may not know who you are. Be sure to return the favour and offer to write one back in return. This way you'll benefit twice.
Social Media 'Check In's: If you're tight on time a very quick and easy way of populating your social media is to 'Check In' to an event. This is extremely popular on Facebook, but you can also do this on your other social media channels. If you're at a conference or a multi-day event, you might want to check in to all of the lectures or talks you attend, then pull a quick list of your top 5 so that other people can benefit. If you allow comments on your blog, people who couldn't be there can ask you questions, this is a great way to get a little bit of engagement around your post and a good way to introduce yourself to people that you wouldn't have met any other way.
Video's: Varying your content keeps it fresh and gives your readers more reasons to come back to see what you're up to. A video is a great way to show off a performance or to demonstrate something that wouldn't translate easily to a blog post. Be sure not to make them too long, too high in resolution and ensure that the lighting and sound quality is good enough. Large video files can put some viewers off, and there's nothing worse than really poor quality audio.
How It All Started: If you have an interesting story about how you set up your business or how you chose your company name - share it in a post. These are particularly interesting if your company has grown a lot and it started in a garage like Amazon, Apple, Disney, Google, Harley Davidson, Hewlett-Packard, Lotus Cars, Maglite and Mattel. Success stories are great to read about especially if the company overcame some difficulties along the way - what's your story?
Meet The Team: You and your colleges are the heart and soul of the company and it can help to bring your potential customers and clients closer if they know who they are partnering up with. Having a personal face can help to build trust, which is essential especially if your products or services are expensive. There is also a opportunity to talk about where your team came from, their experience and what they bring to the company. It can also help if you or your colleges speak at conferences. If people know who you are, they'll attend and come and talk to you - another great opportunity to build lasting friendships and business contacts.
Pull It All Together: Once you've generated a lot of content in a specific area of expertise you might want to pull it all together and release it as a FREE ebook from your website. Everybody loves something that's useful, valuable and free, and it can be a great way to build up your email list if everyone has to put in their email address to download it. This could open you up to lots of potential new clients, partners or interesting people to team up with.
For more information on any of these, or if you'd like some help to produce content for you blog or website - get in touch and we'll be happy to help you out.
Andy - The Pixel Bullies