Content Marketing - what is it, how can it help?

In its simplest form - as the name suggests, Content Marketing, is marketing using your content. That is, blog posts, video, podcasts, social media etc.
In this post we will focus on just a few of the relatively easy and effective methods for promoting your small business.

Google is getting smarter everyday, and just having a website is no longer "good enough". Your site not only needs to relevant and remain relevant, but so does your whole brand. As a small business owner, anything you can do to help build your brand and business without consuming a lot of your time has to be good right?
Content is still king and you need to remember when creating new content a few things that Google loves:

• Original content - copy pasting something from somewhere else on the internet will not help your SEO, in fact it will potentially harm your SEO
• Make it informative - it has to be something a potential client or customer would actually search for. Just generating a blog that is no better than an advert won't help. Make it educating or entertaining, or both!
• Deliver it promptly - Having great content is one thing, but if it isn't loading on your client side quickly and efficiently, it will be demoted by Google in favour of something that loads quicker. Ensure the server is up to speed, and all your images and code are optimised.

As any of my clients know, a blog is included as part of your website package and for good reason, it's incredibly easy to utilise and add your own blogs on the fly. Hopefully your website allows you the same confidence and you should definitely be using it and regularly.

YOU'RE THE EXPERT

Remember, no one knows your business better than you. Share your wisdom and knowledge on the subject with the masses, and use what time you can spare to keep writing. You should aim for once a month at a minimum, 1 or 2 times a fortnight is ideal. Whatever your strategy, absolutely stick to it.

Use pictures in your blog, all Irez sites have access to 100's of thousands of stock images from anywhere within their site, including the blog.

Once you have your wonderful content, remember to share it on your socials and newsletter.

On much the same lines as a blog, use video to educate and entertain your readers and listeners. Video is simply the visual version of a blog that allows you to utilise a faster absorption form of media. There are plenty of outlets for your video such as Youtube, Facebook, and Instagram. You can even combine your video with your blog to get a best of both worlds.

Use of social media is an important part of your website growth strategy and should form part of your overall growth both as a combination of your other content uses and a stand alone.

Use not only your video and blogs in your social media but create short content and images you can share independently of the others.

If you are posting to multiple social networks it is also just as important to keep the content to each unique for the same reasons in your blogging.

There's no such thing as a fixed strategy, and what works for you won't necessarily work for someone in a different industry, area or even time zone. Worse yet, what worked for you last month may not work next month.

Constant monitoring of your analytics is important to ensure you stay on the right path, don't be afraid to try new things, or old things that didn't work before. Keep it fluid and regular.