Are you a new business just starting up? Does your business stand out from other businesses? Is your content unique and creative? There are many important components to content marketing. In this article we will explore content marketing for startups.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a strategy that uses blog articles, videos, guides, and more to attract buyers, build trust in your company, shorten your sales cycles, and ultimately help people buy your products and services.
Content Marketing for Startups
Here are several essential things to remember when you’re just starting out. You want your content to stand out above the rest. Content marketing is all about creating informative, relevant, and interesting content for your audience.
Be sure your business services and products are not a mystery to your audience. Listen to your audience and share engaging content.
Types of Content
- Social Media Advertising
- Guest Blogging
- Short, Clear Headlines
- Email Marketing
- Add Sharing Buttons
- Repurposing Old Content
- Consistent Blogging
- Invest in Quality Videos
- Improve the Visual Aspects of Your Content
- Create Infographics
- Track Analytics and Data
- Content Promotion Strategy
- Write Long Form Content
Social Media Advertising
Advertising on social media is a rewarding way to get your products and services to a wide audience. Explore your social media platform options such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest.
You should figure out your target audience and advertise accordingly. Knowing your audience will help you decide which social media platforms you should advertise and where you should put your resources.
Guest Blogging
As a startup, guest blogging is a great way to get your content out there. Rather than publishing your content on your website, reach out to other more popular websites in your niche as a guest blog.
Many times websites will allow you to link a post within your content or link your startup from your contributors’ profile at the end of the article.
Short, Clear Headlines
Your headlines should be short and concise. They should catch your audience’s attention and cause them to want to read on.The more people reading your content, the more likely they are to share it with others. This will translate into more traffic to your website.
Email Marketing
As a startup, it is a great idea to collect email addresses in the beginning. Customers who give you their email address want to hear from you via email later on. You should always have a catchy subject line and headings.
You want people to open, read and share your emails. Your emails should provide relevant information, promotions, or discounts.
Add Sharing Buttons
You want as much of your content shared as possible. Add sharing buttons to encourage and make it easy for your audience to share your content. Startups can leverage these buttons to increase the chances of readers sharing their content.
Repurposing Old Content
Creativity and new content is important. However, it is ok to repurpose old content. As your business grows you can update old content and reshare it to a newer audience. For instance, you could update or add some new content to an old blog post and make it relevant for your current audience.
You could also turn a blog post into a different format such as an infographic or video. Just make sure you keep your content interesting and engaging for your current audience.
Consistent Blogging
Consistent content is another essential to content marketing. More specifically, decide when you want to publish your blog posts. Your readers will appreciate and look forward to new content. By blogging consistently, startups can increase their leads and sales.
Invest in Quality Videos
Everyone is different. Some people prefer to read content while others prefer to watch or listen to content. It’s important to have a variety of content to reach different people. Your videos should be high quality and intriguing.
Your video should include elements that engage your target audience and have a clear call-to-action at the end of the video.
Improve the Visual Aspects of Your Content
People love visuals. Sharing photos, videos, and infographics is a great way to tell your audience who you are and what you are about. Your website should be well designed so that the content on your website is informative and engaging and makes people want to check out more about your business and products.
Create Infographics
High quality infographics are a great way to share information. You should pay attention to the content you’re creating, make sure it is high quality so that it doesn’t go to waste. Your infographics should be informative to your readers.
Track Analytics and Data
Tracking your analytics and data is essential to the success of your content marketing. You need to know which types of content your audience likes so that you can make adjustments as needed.
Are your photos getting more views and engagement? Maybe your videos are of more interest. Leverage your data to make the most of your content marketing.
Content Promotion Strategy
Startups should have a plan when it comes to how you’re going to promote your content. You should list your social media networks and other strategies you intend to use to promote your business. You want your content to perform well and drive traffic to your website, generate leads, and sales.
Write Long Form Content
Google ranks content by what people love to read. Long form content is detailed and receives more attention from people who see that as a stamp on the writer’s authority in the niche or topic of discussion.
Generally the highest ranked content has more than 1000 words. The higher the ranking, the more website traffic you will receive.
Startup Content Marketing
As a startup you should have a solid content marketing strategy.
- Outline Your Goals
- Define Your Audience
- Review Your Budget and Bandwidth
- Choose Your Channels
- Build a Game Plan
- Execute
- Review Your Performance and Make Adjustments
Outline Your Goals
Every startup should know its goals. To begin, ask yourself a few questions:
- Do you want to drive more traffic to your website?
- Are you looking to influence revenue directly or generate high quality leads for your sales team?
- Do you want to just build brand awareness?
Asking questions will help you define your goals and help guide you in the right direction and achieve your goals.
Define Your Audience
You must know your audience. Once you’ve defined your goals, begin learning about your audience. Who is searching for or using your product? Think about demographics like age, gender, and income.
Where is your audience getting their information? Is it from social media, emails, blogs, websites, or podcasts to name a few?
Review Your Budget and Bandwidth
Every business has a budget and it’s important to stick to it. How much are you willing to spend on your content marketing campaign? When do you want to see a return on investment? Is it in four or twelve months? These are all things to consider.
Next, think about your bandwidth. It may seem cost-effective to write five blog posts a week, but can you keep up with the demand or burnout? If this is the case, hiring a digital marketing agency may be the ticket.
Their skills and expertise can help you with your content marketing and pick up the pace.
Choose Your Channels
Let the fun begin! Now you can choose your social media channels. If it’s in your budget, you may want to hire a freelancer to help grow your business across your chosen platforms. You could also partner with a video company and create how-to videos.
There are many options out there, so do your research and figure out what’s best for your business.
Build a Game Plan
Building a game plan is the next part of your content marketing strategy. Decide how long you plan on running your content marketing plan. Do you need to hire someone to help make it happen? When are the start and end dates?
Using a project management system will help you create a valuable, realistic plan that optimizes your time and budget.
Execute
Now it’s time to make things happen! Content does nothing for your business when it’s sitting in the right side of your brain or your Google Docs. Your content needs to be published, promoted, and working for you.
Review Your Performance and Make Adjustments
Not all your content will get the top views, shares or likes. What works today, may not work tomorrow. It’s important to set key performance indicators (KPIs). These will help you evaluate your success. KPIs will help you decide where you should use your money.
If your videos are doing well, it would be wise to invest your money in videos on YouTube.
To conclude, content marketing is an essential part for businesses today. After reading this article, what content do you think will help your business? What goals do you hope to accomplish? What’s your strategy and game plan?
Research all your content marketing options and have fun!
Author bio
Katie Meyers is an SEO Specialist at SEO Design Chicago. Before joining the SEO Design Chicago team, she interned for them, as well as interned as a Content Writer at HZD Creates. Katie is from Washington State and has an AA and a Social Media Marketing Certificate.
