The Dos and Don’ts of Content Marketing for Small Businesses

Creating and sharing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract your target audience is very important for growing sales sooner rather than later. Consider the following dos and don'ts.

If you’ve paid any attention to digital marketing strategies since starting your business, you know that content marketing is key for increasing traffic to your website. If you’ve developed great products and a sound business plan, all that’s left is getting your name out there through catchy content. The concept of creating and sharing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract your target audience is very important for growing sales sooner rather than later.

However, as a small business or startup, you probably haven’t had the chance to achieve a lot of the victories and make mistakes similar to those who have gone before you. For that reason, it’s important to pay attention to things the industry discovered before you entered the market.

Every piece of content will not have the power to engage every consumer. Likewise, most products are not designed for every person out there. You wouldn’t try to sell a refrigerator to a 15-year-old, for example. For that reason, you’ll need to define your target audience and create content that’s relevant.

A good company blog will encourage people to make a purchasing decision, while remembering that people hate to be forced into things. A blog that’s too assertive or promotional will make a customer want to leave. The occasional promotional blog post is encouraged, but lean more on the side of education and entertainment versus promotion.

You’ll never know how well your content strategy is succeeding unless you receive feedback from your customers. Don’t assume it will find you; seek it out. Run surveys, ask for social media engagement, and begin a conversation to generate discussion from your customers that can help shape future content.

You’ve probably been told that the key to keeping up with your competitors is to follow them on social media and keep tabs on their marketing campaigns. This is very helpful for information gathering, but it can also be stifling. Beating the competition requires coming up with new ideas and tactics to draw people to your business. Following and mimicking other strategies too closely will keep yours from standing out.

Both your blog and your website should be well designed, both for desktops and mobile devices. The ultimate goal of your content marketing strategy is to get people to visit your website, make a purchase, or read more content. If the interface isn’t well designed, you’ll have a hard time making people stay.

Plagiarism is a very serious offense in the content marketing world, one that will tarnish your brand’s name. Furthermore, stay away from duplicate content. This happens often if you hire writers from a content mill. Duplicate content not only makes your brand look bad, but it also hurts your rankings according to the Google SEO algorithm.

If people read a piece of your content and love it enough to share it a thousand times, you better hope your brand is unique and prominent enough that they’ll associate your name with the brilliance of the piece. The widespread nature of effective content is one of the best methods for building brand awareness.

Though you want to build your brand name, don’t focus too much on yourself. Readers like the media they engage with to focus more on education and entertainment, and content that revolves around your brand will feel distant. Aside from that, many social media platforms have begun to penalize promotional posts.

Ultimately, the trick to mastering content marketing revolves around finding a balance. It’s a difficult medium to achieve, but it can be done through research and trial and error. This is the road that every major corporation has traveled, and the sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll be at the top.

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