Certainly one of the biggest barriers that holds businesses back from having stellar online presences is content creation itself. It takes an investment in time, research, strategy, and creativity–qualities that busy small business owners don’t always have at their immediate disposal.
1. Schedule your content in advance.
There are moments when you are going to feel more creative. Take advantage of these times to develop compelling content topics for social media or your business blog.
As you build this list of topics that you want to cover, be sure to include a targeted keyword and a link to a landing page on your website with a relevant offer.
Use a content calendar to organize when these topics will be covered and which marketing channels they will be shared on.
The further out you can schedule your content, the better. For example, some companies come up with all of their content ideas a week in advance. Others prefer to have this decided for them a month in advance. You determine what will work best for your organization.
2. Find ways to incorporate real-life experiences into your content.
Ultimately, the goal of creating content is to build a connection between your brand and your audience. An effective way to do this is insert your own real-life experiences into your content to help humanize your brand.
Your social media pages, website, and business blog are your brand’s online voice. They are your marketing channels to make your business more relatable and likable. Use this to your advantage.
3. Make your content easy to scan.
With so much content on the internet to compete with, your audience isn’t going to take the time to read your content until they scan it and determine it’s worth the read.
For this reason, your content needs to be easily scanned and digested. Here are several ways you can accomplish this:
- Use short paragraphs–2 to 3 lines max
- Use subheadings to break up the sections of your content
- Use bullet points or numbered lists when applicable
4. Get your audience involved in content creation.
Taking advantage of user-generated content helps to relieve your own burden of creating content, boosts engagement, and provides credibility for your business.
Here are several ways that you can encourage your audience to be a part of the content creation process:
- Invite your audience to write reviews about your business
- Host a social media contest that involves your audience sharing their own content on your social media pages.
- Create a custom hashtag for your online followers to use when creating their own content relevant to your business.
5. Identify key performance indicators before you implement a content strategy.
Testing how your visitors are responding to your content is so critical to developing a stellar content creation strategy.
As you set your goals, know ahead of time which KPIs you will be using to measure the success of each goal. Doing this will lead you one step closer to creating better content for your audience.
The arrival of a new year is an incredibly exciting time for your business as it has you daydreaming about all of the success you’ll experience in 2016. Be sure to take advantage of these 5 ways to give your content creation strategy a welcomed boost over the next 12 months.
