Content marketing strategies, content marketing tactics, Inbound Marketing, blah..blah — they are indeed the bread-and-butter for marketers.
For entrepreneurs who run businesses, however, all of this is an extra piece of work to do.
You have to write, publish, share, distribute, reshare, redistribute, and then repeat it all.
Imagine just how chaotic this so-called “content marketing strategy” would seem for a solo-business owner who owns a restaurant, a coffee shop, a consulting business, or a traditional real estate consultancy.
I mean, did you ever think that you’d have to be more of a “publisher” than a business just to make good on the promise of an effective content marketing strategy?
Yet, it’s a good thing that some businesses have joined the content marketing strategy bandwagon.
According to Semrush, 84% of businesses surveyed had a content marketing strategy in place. A whopping 89% of these businesses depend on organic traffic — sourced from their blogs, social media traffic, and other sources — as a way to generate leads and make sales.
To make it all happen though, businesses have small teams averaging around three people. Only 11% of these businesses evaluate themselves as “excellent” when it comes to their content marketing strategies.
Remember that we aren’t talking about scores of businesses that haven’t yet taken advantage of content marketing strategies yet.
Also, we aren’t talking about small business owners who have no “time”, the motivation, or the inclination to depend on content marketing for their respective businesses.
The question still remains: What’s an average business owner to do with content marketing strategies? Does it make sense to stay invested with Inbound marketing at all?
Content Marketing Strategies: Making the case
Every single business out there should embrace content marketing strategies. According to OptinMonster, more than 30% of adults in the United States are always online.
The global online population is just over 4 billion. More than 91% of B2B businesses use content marketing strategies to generate leads and make sales. Further, 86% of B2C businesses deem content marketing as a reliable way to grow their respective businesses.
This isn’t even getting anywhere close to the sheer billions of people on Social Media, those who watch YouTube, and several others who are now making a beeline to new social platforms such as TikTok, Signal, and others.
We are also not taking email marketing, Facebook Messenger, Social forums (such as Quora), and other avenues that people spend their time at.
Convinced?
Now let’s take a look at what a typical busy entrepreneur should do when content marketing isn’t exactly something you discuss with your team or if you think you don’t have the resources to apply.
Blog. Regularly. Period (Minus anything fancy)
First, stop getting polluted with the scores of blog posts and articles that talk about fancy things like The SkyScraper Technique. Forget about the need to publish on social media everyday, writing blog posts each week, creating other pieces of content such as Infographics, and doing more of the same.
Writing 5000+ blog posts each week, creating infographics, and chasing the SkyScraper technique is for us marketers; not for you as an entrepreneur.
Further, don’t assume or think for a moment that you have to write to win the “publication of the year” or the Pulitzer Prize.
No one cares about the level of English, how smart you are, or if you do sound like Stephen Hawking.
Your audience needs a solution to their problems. Do you have the solution? Can you help? If yes, write blog posts (or a series of blog posts).
So, what should you do? Do what you should (and that you can). At the minimum, do this:
- Use Google’s Keyword Planner, UberSuggest, or Semrush Free account to quickly pick keywords that you can write humble 1500-word blog posts on. That’s it. A grand total of anything from 750 to 1500 words per blog post.
- Be sure to write blog posts topics in a way that really helps your audience. Don’t always focus on your team getaways, happy weekends at the office, or keep harping about your products.
- Focus on Publishing Velocity — a regular cadence of blog publishing (much like magazines and newspapers do).
- If you can’t bring yourself to write in a way that business blogging demands, just hire someone from Upwork (like me) or from PeoplePerHour. Just leave it to the professionals. [Pssst….If you’d like me to write your posts, you can consider picking up my blogging services as well. I take up blogging services on request]
Because of the constant barrage of tips, techniques, this secret (and that), most small business owners just freeze. Entrepreneurs have enough to deal with and “publishing” is only a new demand on entrepreneurship that most people get it wrong anyway.
If you have to focus on one thing, focus on Publishing Velocity: The Speed and consistency at which you post a blog or new content on your website.
Share on Social Everyday (Automate or hire)
A large part of success when it comes to content marketing strategies is “consistency”. The same applies to social media.
Share what you publish. On repeat, 24 X 7, everyday, forever and ever.
On top of that, respond to those who share, retweet, comment, or mention you (or your brand) on social media.
There’s “social” in social media. Don’t ever forget that.
Remember that you can’t really automate the personalized comments, small talk, conversations with others on social media.
If you want to make it easier for yourself (which I am sure you do), use the following tools to help you automate this work to a certain extent.
Social Media Poster by Semrush (I personally use this, everyday) (Psst..It’s free)
Grow an Audience. Use email Marketing to nurture
No one is going to buy what you have to sell if they don’t like or trust you. The sooner you internalize this, the better your success rate is going to be.
To be able to develop that skill and trust, you’d need a captive audience. People who don’t mind listening to you, to read what you have to write about, and those that really like what you are putting out there.
One of the effective ways to do this is with email marketing. Don’t overthink this. First, grow your email list by giving something away to start a relationship.
Then, nurture your subscribers by sending out emails regularly.
For every email that’s designed to sell something, there should be five emails that “sell nothing” to your audience. Those 5-6 emails that sell nothing should include tips, insights, strategies, and pure value packed as content, delivered to their inbox.
Tools for email marketing:
That’s it. That’s all that you have to do. If you can’t find the time or the energy to do it, just hire someone from Upwork or PeoplePerHour.
Forget fancy content marketing strategies, spending millions on PPC, creating landing pages, split-testing, optimizing, and more.
You can bring in results even if you just did the exact three steps above.
Need some inspiration? Sew how these brands and companies are killing it:
8 Best Content Marketing Examples To Inspire You
22 Companies That Grew With Content & Sweat
