Category Archives: Content Marketing

10 Tips to Make Your Blog Popular Abroad

Making your blog popular abroad

Do you want to market your blog to an international audience? Perhaps you want to offer your products and services to a wider demographic, or maybe you just like the idea of reaching people all over the world.

Here are a few tips to grow your following in other countries.

1. Account for your audience’s time zones when publishing and promoting posts

Research shows that the best time to published a blog post is on a Monday morning. However, “Monday morning” in your country may not be “Monday morning” on another continent.

Use Google analytics and similar tools to identify when your readers are most active, and where they are based. You may need to experiment to find the best local time to release your posts and any accompanying promotional content on social media.

2. Be sensitive to cultural differences

If you write purely from your own perspective without consideration for other views, your international readers will quickly feel alienated. Acknowledge that you are writing as an individual raised in a specific time and place.

For instance, if you were raised in a culture that values hard work for its own sake, do not assume that readers of all cultures will automatically applaud people who put in 60-hour work weeks. Don’t be afraid to question your own values and background from time to time.

3. Show you keep up with global events

When targeting people from a specific country, catch up on the latest news from the area before writing a post and acknowledge it in your post if necessary. For instance, if you are writing a blog on business matters, be sure to talk about key trends and market activities in the country you are targeting.

4. Publish your blog in multiple languages

If you are serious about marketing to an audience that does not speak English, you will need to translate your content. There are a couple of ways you can do this:

You can have multiple versions of the content on the same page, but this could rapidly become overwhelming. It may be a viable option if you only publish very short posts.
A better solution in most cases is to have two copies of your blog hosted on one site, and let visitors view the version of their choice.

If you have a lot of content on your site besides your blog, it may be simpler to set up two websites. You may choose to give each site its own domain name, or set up one version as a sub-domain of the other.

Note that seemingly trivial differences in spelling can make a difference when it comes to readability and SEO. For example, where Americans may use “z,” Brits and Australians often use “s,” as in “realise” or “personalise.” Decide who your main audience is, and tailor the spellings accordingly.

5. Ask yourself, “How can I tailor this marketing strategy to attract an international audience?”

This question should guide your marketing efforts. For example:

If you normally use forum marketing to gain traffic, you will need to create new profiles on forums that cater to your target audience.
If you are a fan of guest posting, you will need to approach new blogs that attract readers from your country of choice.
If you use influencer marketing, you will need to track down new influencers popular with your new audience.

When going after search engine traffic, cater to the search engine most often used by your intended demographic. For example, in China, the most popular search engine is Baidu. You may need to consult an SEO specialist to make sure you make good use of unfamiliar search algorithms.

6. Interview people from different countries

If you are writing about a social issue or hot topic that is receiving a lot of attention in the press, expand your reach and add depth to your blog by interviewing people from several different countries. You don’t have to endorse their opinions, but diverse perspectives will make your work appealing to a broader range of people.

7. If you have traveled, write honest, gracious blogs about your entries

Do you have interesting travel stories to tell? If you’ve explored other countries and your accounts are a good fit for your blog, write posts about your experiences.

Talk about other cultures in a respectful manner. If you have traveled extensively, discuss the lessons you learned along the way. Make your entries useful for anyone else thinking of following in your footsteps. You may inspire someone to start their own adventure.

8. Be careful when making reference to units and currencies

Don’t overlook the little details. For example, some countries use metric units, whereas others favor the imperial system. Offer currency conversions where appropriate.

You can also make reference to the cost of living where necessary. For instance, the price of a house in London is probably much higher, in both relative and absolute terms, than most other places.

9. Review products and services from around the world

If you run a review site, don’t restrict your coverage to products and services available in your country. Do a little background research on which brands are most popular in other parts of the world.

You don’t have to order items from abroad if doing so would be too expensive, but you should at least demonstrate an understanding of what people in other countries buy. You can summarize other online reviews if you cannot write your own first-hand account.

10. Make it explicit that you want to hear or partner with from people in other countries

Finally, ask other people for their opinions and feedback. If you welcome guest posts, ask your readers to pitch ideas for posts pertaining to their experience living in a specific country.

Writing a blog for an international audience isn’t easy. There are practical and cultural considerations to bear in mind. However, if done correctly, you will soon win praise from readers around the globe.

This is a very good example of storytelling for content marketing

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Content marketing through storytelling

In the morning I received this ZDNet email newsletter, and there was a story titled How Apple Watch saved my life.

The author tells how previously he wasn’t enthusiastic about Apple products, and in fact, he was very critical of them. He constantly switched between Apple and Android devices. He owned most of the mainstream Apple products, but he wasn’t a regular user.

Being in technology, it is his work to use gadgets from all the brands objectively without getting personally involved.

One day he decided to purchase a refurbished Apple Watch because his many friends had it and he was just a little curious about the gadget. This is why he didn’t purchase a brand-new watch because he thought that after a few days he would just put the watch in a drawer and forget about it.

After a few days he received an email from Apple asking him whether he would be willing to participate in the Apple Heart Study, a large data-gathering exercise the company was partnering with Stanford University. Always interested in big data studies, the writer joined the program.

Apple heart study screenshot

Through the Apple Watch, heartbeat patterns are constantly recorded and then sent to Apple or Stanford University servers, necessary analysis is done and further action is advised.

A few days later, the writer received a message on his iPhone saying “Irregular heart rhythm observed”. The message also advised him to contact a Heart Study Doctor as soon as possible.

This led to a series of tests and discoveries and ultimately it was found that his heart had a condition that could have turned serious if left neglected.

In the article he has also described his heart condition and his previous problem of high blood pressure, a bit of obesity and high blood pressure.

Although any gadget could have helped him with a similar study being done with a similar gadget from another company, he just happened to be wearing an Apple Watch and the Stanford University study is being exclusively carried out using this gadget, the author has now totally fallen in love with all Apple products.

It is not a feature-based love and dedication because the features remain the same, it’s just that the watch played an important role in detecting the anomaly in his heartbeat and this led to his early diagnosis and treatment, emotionally he wants to repay and the only way to repay a company is to buy its products.

What can be more powerful testimonial than someone telling you that a product or service saved his or her life? And not metaphorically, but actually.

This is a good example of content marketing through storytelling.

The author uses a title you cannot resist: How Apple Watch saved my life – everyone would like to know exactly what happened. For example, I’m not crazy about Apple products and even advise people against buying an iPhone but still, I was persuaded enough to click the link and read the story.

He builds up a narrative. Initially he tells you that although he abundantly uses gadgets, he wasn’t very gung-ho about using Apple products, and in fact, he even disliked using Apple products. This could be anyone, even a person like me. Many readers would relate.

Then he very cautiously brings up Apple Watch. He even tells you that he didn’t go for a new watch and instead, he purchased a refurbished app because he wasn’t sure if he would use it regularly.

Then he signs up for this Stanford University project that exclusively uses the watch from Apple.

Two things happen here: the mention of Stanford University immediately injects a sense of credibility and, it is study on the heart conditions.

The mention of Stanford University itself invokes respect in many. Then, you read that this university trusts Apple Watch to gather “big data” on heartbeat of many people. A very big influencer.

Then, a sequence of events reveals that his own life is saved or at least, he is saved from a big health-related disaster because of the early warning provided by Apple Watch.

Now, Apple Watch didn’t directly save his life. It wasn’t a feature in the watch itself that saved his life, but it was instrumental in discovering his heart condition and him taking remedial measures. Any watch with similar features and with similar research team affiliation could have done that.

But, a positive story gets associated with Apple Watch.

In the end, the author tells readers that not just Apple Watch, now he’s going to buy everything Apple offers including iPhones, iPads, and whatnot.

Maybe it’s a paid article, or maybe it’s a real incident, but that’s not the issue. This is a good example of doing content marketing with storytelling.

Why should banks invest in content marketing?

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Content marketing for banks

Open Forum is my favorite example that I often give to my customers when I try to explain to them how continuously publishing helpful content can get them a loyal following.

Open Forum is the business help publication from American Express. They regularly publish high-quality information to help small and medium-sized businesses.

In fact, when I recently visited their website, I saw that their tagline is: “Insights, Inspiration and Connections to Help You Get Business Done”.

This information in the form of articles and blog posts isn’t necessarily about banking. In fact, most of the information is about how to improve your professional life, how to do your business well, and sometimes, even life hacks.

For example, recently they published this: 3 Qualities That Can Make or Break High-Performance Teams

The point is, creating positivity and encouraging productivity and through this, building a loyal readership that repeatedly visits the website and gets exposed to the American Express brand.

This Forbes article talks about why, to target young millenniums, it is very important that banks invest in good quality content marketing.

The article lists many reasons – the millenniums spend most of their time on their mobile phones, etc. – the most important reason is being visible in the times when content in all forms has exploded.

Every social networking platform or companies these days wants you to post some form of updates, whether they are images, videos or text. Just post, post and post.

We have become a civilization of content consumers and content publishers. People these days purchase good camera phones, even expensive camera phones, just so that they can publish good-looking photographs and videos on Instagram.

So, with so much content going on, you cannot ignore it.

But, posting random content doesn’t help your brand, especially when you are a bank. Personal content may help or may not help, depending on how strongly that personal brand is built. What do you do?

Content marketing for banks – educate your customers and clients

Educate your customers and clients.

I know, this sounds clichéd, but sharing knowledge and wisdom is a powerful tool.

Take for example the above Open Forum content platform by American Express. Very rarely they promote their banking services, though, you may say that they don’t need to promote their banking services because the brand is quite well-known.

They have built an audience. A loyal audience. Entrepreneurs and businesses can use the insights regularly published on the content platform to grow business and improve themselves.

This generates goodwill. Normally, such useful content isn’t available for free. These are very high-quality blog posts and articles.

Sooner or later, entrepreneurs and businesses have to use financial services. When the right time comes, why go to someone else? You already have a brand you like. You feel like you owe to that brand because you have used its content to improve your business.

In fact, Morgan Stanley also publishes something similar like Open Forum. They call it Ideas.

In the banking sector, even if you don’t want to follow the exact American Express template for content marketing, there is lots of scope for publishing helpful content.

Help for various banking services isn’t easily available. Some helpful blog posts and articles are written by users, but from the banks, very little information is published.

Banks can publish articles on how people can productively use their services for the benefit of their personal lives, professional lives and businesses.

So many people get into credit card troubles. Why can’t a bank start a video series advising people how to productively use credit cards rather than ruining themselves with uncontrollable shopping binges?

Banks have massive amounts of interesting data. They can easily use interactive videos or even infographics with amazing amounts of information on various banking services.

5 ways you can build a personal brand with content marketing

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Personal branding with content marketing

What’s a personal brand?

A personal brand means a unique, identifiable professional identity that helps people recognize you immediately when they come across your name, business name or business logo.

A personal brand is, when people decide to work with you (or not) based on their perception of you.

Suppose you are a well-known motivational speaker recognized for high-caliber corporate leadership training workshops.

People know you.

Some people have attended your workshops and benefited immensely.

Some people have come across your books and articles.

Your name as well as your face is quite familiar to them.

The moment they come across your name or your face, the thoughts of leadership and authority crosses their minds.

They want to listen to you.

They want to be associated with you.

They wish you would endorse them.

There is a sense of pride in being associated with you.

They want to attend one of your workshops even if it means spending more than they can afford and travelling a great distance.

They want to hire you as a business consultant or their marketing consultant.

That’s your branding.

Why it is important to build your personal brand?

Importance of branding yourself

A personal brand opens many doors to opportunities simply because people are familiar with your name, they trust you, they respect your knowledge, they admire you for the stands you take.

You can be an author. You can be a journalist. You can be a business consultant. You can be a public speaker or a motivational speaker. You can be a politician.

Wherever, whenever people want to deal with you because of “you”, it is your personal brand that is working for you.

Many times you must have noticed, especially through blogging and social networking, many authors first create a presence on the Internet, build a brand for themselves as influencers, and then start publishing books, going on speaking assignments and getting published in reputed publications.

There are some great examples of personal brands on the Internet, namely Guy Kawasaki, Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk, Avinash Kaushik and Seth Godin.

Branding doesn’t just help in business. It also helps to advance your career.

It helps you get a better deal when you get a job.

It enables you to charge more for your services instead of constantly having to negotiate and haggle.

As a celebrity, if your branding is good, it can get you lucrative sponsorships and endorsement campaigns.

If you want to publish a book, publishers will be more eager to have a look at what you have written, compared to a totally unknown person.

People take what you say, seriously.

You can do lots of good work if you have built your brand in any manner.

It opens multiple doors for you. Even in unrelated fields.

Building your personal brand with content marketing

Building personal brand with content marketing

Prior to the advent of the Internet it was very difficult to build a personal brand unless you had powerful connections or unless you had striven for years.

It either needed to be a full-time job or a fluke of luck.

Building a personal brand in the times of the Internet is easier compared to the olden days, although I’m not saying it’s easy.

Every worthy cause takes effort, hard work, persistence and creativity and building a personal brand is no different.

All those people I have mentioned above have spent years creating high-quality content – text, video, images – to constantly remain visible and instigate conversations among their peers.

They are always in the reckoning.

People are constantly talking about what they talk about.

Everything on the Internet is content.

This blog post that you are reading is content.

The Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter update that you just checked is content.

The interesting YouTube video that you watched is content.

News websites like New York Times, Washington Post, Drudge Report – whatever they publish, is content.

The email that you read is content.

Basically, whatever is digitally being produced and then being used to convey something, or to show something, or to prove something, or to annoy or to please you or to make you cry with cuteness… whatever, is content.

When you use this content strategically, to achieve something like make people pay attention to what you’re saying, what you are selling, what you are promoting, what agenda you are running, it’s content marketing.

Simple definition: when you use content for marketing, it is content marketing.

With content marketing, you strategically produce, publish and distribute content to:

Keep your audience engaged.
Keep your audience informed (or misinformed, as in the case of politicians and journalists)
Educate your audience
Entertain your audience
Help them solve problems

Eventually, be a part of their lives in such a manner that whenever you reach out to them through your content, they welcome your presence.

In fact, they’re looking forward to hearing from you.

What’s the benefit?

It’s easier to do business with a person you respect, recognize and trust.

You trust that person’s judgement.

You look forward to learning from that person and enriching your life directly or indirectly.

You endorse that person by sharing his or her thoughts and insights with friends, family members and colleagues (or with random Twitter followers who don’t care about what you are sharing with them).

To sum it up

People know what you do.
People respect you for your wisdom, wit, insight and knowledge.
People know that you can be trusted.
When they need something that you provide, they get it from you.

As I mentioned above, you can be anyone.

You can be a politician.

You can be an author.

You can be a celebrity.

You can be a corporate trainer, an IT consultant, a motivational speaker, a financial adviser or a business consultant.

In any field, where it can make a difference how people think of you, building your personal brand with content marketing can help you.

5 ways you can build your personal brand with content marketing

1. Have a clearly-laid out content marketing plan before you begin building your personal brand

Have a long-term content marketing strategy for personal branding

Why planning is important?

It always helps if you know what you’re doing, what you’re getting into, and what it entails.

For content marketing to be effective, to really be able to contribute to building your personal brand, it will need to be persistent.

It cannot be something like “Okay, I will try a few blog posts and see what happens”.

It is just like life, if you treat content marketing casually, it is not going to give you serious results.

Have a plan for at least a year.

Of course, to have a year-long plan you need to really believe that it is going to work for you.

How do you believe something?

Do research. Read case studies. Watch videos.

Unless you truly believe that you need to use content marketing to build your personal brand, it will be very difficult for you to succeed.

You will easily give up.

Anyway, assuming you’re pretty sure content marketing is the way to go, have a plan for at least a year.

Having a plan means

Deciding where mostly you’re going to publish and market your content – your own blog or social networks and social apps.
Knowing what sort of content from you will be appreciated by your audience – food pics, cute baby and animal photos, pics of your butt (if you are one of the Kardashians), authoritative blog posts in your field, conversations with industry experts, latest news updates from your area of expertise, advise, views and reviews and so on.
What is going to be the frequency of content publishing – you may decide to publish every day, whenever you feel like, or on fixed days, something like every Wednesday. Depends on how eager your audience is to lap up your content and how much time it takes for you to create quality content.
What is your budget – your budget is going to have a big impact on your overall content marketing. Remember that your personal branding solely depends on the quality of your content. Save your money anywhere else, but when it comes to getting quality content, don’t try to save a few bucks here and a few bucks there.

Recommended reading: How your typical content marketing evolves

2. Build a mailing list

Building your own mailing list for personal branding

When you set up a website or a blog, having a lead capturing form should be one of the topmost priorities. Despite social media apps and websites, people still check their emails every day and they prefer to receive updates in their inboxes, provided you don’t spam them.

Keeping track of one’s timeline on Facebook and Twitter or even LinkedIn, can be a challenge. If you follow lots of people and if these people are very active, you may miss many important updates.

The same may happen with your audience.

But they are sure to check their emails.

You can use your mailing list to let your subscribers know whenever you publish new content or whenever you do something that needs to be shared.

I mostly send an update when I publish a new blog post on my Credible Content blog.

I have another mailing list that I use to distribute my journalistic opinions and since most of the people who have subscribed to that mailing list are strongly opinionated, my open rate is normally 35% and click through rate is 25%.

3. Don’t ignore search engine rankings

Content marketing to boost your SEO

Search engine rankings are very important for your personal branding, especially in the field of business.

People are constantly looking for information on search engines.

If you provide the information they’re looking for, they should be able to find your content on search engines.

99% of your audience won’t be specifically looking for your name. They will be looking for the topics you write on, or create visuals on.

The best way of drawing people to your website or blog is by making your content visible on social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, and by improving your search engine rankings.

The click through rate on social networking websites is mediocre because when people are browsing through their timelines, they are reluctant to leave their timelines. They would rather miss an important update than move away from Facebook or Twitter.

Also, timelines move very fast. If they are not staring at their timelines all the time, there is a big chance that there are going to miss your update.

On search engines on the other hand, since people are already looking for links to go to, they don’t think twice before clicking the link.

Once your links begin to appear in search results, they are going to remain there for a long time.

How do you improve your search engine rankings?

By publishing very focused content.

Content that solves specific problems and handles specific topics.

Writing for search engines, while maintaining quality, takes practice and experience.

No matter what the “experts” say, keywords and search terms matter.

But you need to use them in such a manner that search engine algorithms don’t conclude that you are trying to trick your way into top rankings. If this happens, instead of improving your rankings, they reduce them.

Strategically use your keywords and search terms in the topics of your blog posts, videos and images.

4. Whatever content format you prefer personally, don’t ignore YouTube or IGTV

Video marketing for personal brand building

There are many reasons people prefer videos to other content formats.

A video is easier to watch. It is a full audiovisual experience.

It’s also faster: something that may take 1000-1500 words if you write a blog post, can be communicated in a couple of minutes in a video.

Besides, people trust you more if they can see you live, moving, talking, making expressions, pointing at things, twisting your lips, rolling your eyes or rubbing your chin, and saying cool stuff.

YouTube is of course one of the most known video streaming platforms.

Now you also have IGTV on Instagram.

You will need to see where your videos perform well.

Making a video is not very difficult these days.

You can make a video with every mobile camera.

You can even create a slide and then turn it into a video if you don’t prefer to create live videos.

Any animated bit of information that can be uploaded on a video platform will do, provided it is interesting, crisp, fast-moving and above all, useful.

5. Publish valuable content to build credibility and authority

Build credibility and authority with content marketing

The visual quality of your content is icing on the cake. Even the regularity doesn’t matter much these days as Google increasingly focuses on credibility and authority.

This is where you should focus the most when you are trying to build your personal brand with content marketing.

There is no use creating a very sleek video that people should be able to enjoy in 4K HD if after watching the video they don’t gain anything except for feeling impressed.

The same goes for your blog posts. There is no use writing a 2000-word blog post if it is just a meaningless monologue written solely to improve your search engine rankings.

Always deliver value.

Doesn’t matter if you are not Salman Rushdie.

Doesn’t matter if you’re not Steven Spielberg.

As long as you deliver value. As long as people can use your content to enrich their lives, to improve their work lives and personal lives, you’re good to go.

Through regularly sharing useful information – information that can be used in some manner to solve problems and make life easier – you build your credibility and authority.

This makes it easier for people to listen to you carefully and believe in what you are saying.

They are more inclined to share your content and recommend it, or react to it.

The influencers in your field feel good about being associated with you.

Recommended reading: Relevance of relevant content

Conclusion

When you have a personal brand image it opens many doors for you and creates unique opportunities that are otherwise not available to lesser-known people.

Through content marketing you don’t need to force yourself up on people.

Content consumption is very natural these days. Publish something valuable, and people automatically consume it.

You just have to figure out what your target audience appreciates and then start producing it and publishing it.

Make sure that you are not known for the nuisance value of your content. Be known for your content’s authority, credibility and trustworthiness.

Constantly, persistently publishing high-quality, relevant, valuable and authoritative content is the best content marketing strategy for building your personal brand.

How to grow your small business with content marketing

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Grow your business with content marketing

How do you plan to promote your small business (I’m assuming you have a website and you need to promote it)?

Google AdWords?

Pay an SEO company to improve your search engine rankings?

Spend hours on social media posting random messages and replying to people?

All these activities are important and I’m not going to discourage you from using a judicious mix of them to promote your small business.

The problem (here we go!) with these activities is that they’re becoming less and less effective.

Conventional advertising has become boring

If you can use AdWords, so can your competitors. If you outbid them, they can outbid you.

And anyway, people on search engines pay less attention to paid links when they’re searching for useful information. The nature of paid links is that people don’t expect these links to contain helpful information.

Even if people do click your paid links, you can easily imagine how much you will end up spending on just a single campaign – businesses run multiple campaigns to cover multiple search terms.

Advertising has been exploited so much that people no longer trust it. In fact, they are constantly looking for ways to skip advertising. Many users have add-ons in their browsers to block advertisements. This is because most of the advertising is always about selling, selling, and selling. People get put off.

Read: Want to know how content marketing is better than advertising?

More than 650 million devices use some form of ad blocking.

Increasing number of people are using ad blockers

The problem with SEO is multi-faceted. Much of SEO these days has to do with good quality content and if you don’t recognize this and want to improve your SEO without investing in high-quality content, you will just spend money and effort without any results. There is no SEO these days without content marketing. You can acknowledge this today, or after a few months, after spending a ton of money and effort.

Moreover, without quality content, SEO is very easy. You can create “optimized” content in great quantity and go on publishing it. Since, low quality content is very cheap, you can use brute force to improve your SEO and sometimes, it actually works (it depends on how much effort your competition is putting).

Read: How content marketing actually improves your SEO

Since it is very easy, and also egotistically gratifying, many people do it. If you can get cheap content, so can your competitors.

Social media is full of noise. Timelines move very fast. There, unless you are paying to highlight your updates, most of your followers are going to miss your messages. You will be constantly catching up.

Since you will be spending most of your effort (and even money) maintaining a presence on social media, you won’t have any intellectual wealth to show for yourself.

Content marketing is the answer.

Here is a nice infographic of how you can use content marketing for making every part of your sales funnel effective.

Using content marketing to make every part of your sales funnel effective

Source

Why content marketing is the answer to all your small business growth troubles as far as promotion goes?

First, let us understand what content marketing actually means.

I won’t go into esoteric definitions of content marketing as many blogs have it. I will use very simple language to explain what content marketing to you is, and how you can use content marketing to grow your business.

Isn’t this the ultimate goal, growing your business?

So, what is content marketing? Especially in the context of a small business like yours?

Everything that you publish online is content.

All your web pages on your small business website, are content.

The images accompanying those web pages are content.

The publicly accessible PDFs that you have, are content.

If you are publishing blog posts, they are content.

If you constantly publish FAQs and answers to questions from your customers and clients, they are content.

When you send out an email campaign, that’s content.

When you post updates on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, you are publishing content.

So, whatever you publish online for the consumption of people, you are publishing content and in a crude manner, you are also indulging in content marketing. You just don’t know it.

Content marketing means using a strategy to regularly publish content in such a manner that people not only want to get more of your content, they go out of their way to make sure that they don’t miss your content.

Remember that the ultimate aim of content marketing (your content marketing) should be the growth of your small business.

So, when you publish content, when you attract people to your content, they should be your prospective customers and clients, and not all-and-sundry.

If you try to attract all-and-sundry, you will simply waste money and time, which you don’t want.

In the context of your small business, content marketing means publishing useful content using your preferred channel, on an ongoing basis, so that your business name or your brand becomes familiar to people, and since you are publishing useful content, your target audience is not annoyed.

Not being familiar with you is one of the biggest reasons why people on the Internet don’t want to do business with you.

In bulleted form, your small business content marketing would include:

Publishing high-quality content regularly.
Providing answers to people’s problems and questions.
Highlighting the benefits of your product or service from different angles, in different ways.
Promoting your content using multiple channels like your blog and social media platforms.
Using analytics to note down what sort of traffic your content is attracting.
Tweaking and adjusting your new as well as existing content according to the feedback that you got from your analytics tools.

Things you need to know in advance if you want to grow your small business with content marketing

Content marketing is way more effective than the other promotional methods listed and not listed above, but don’t opt for content marketing as a tool for your small business growth thinking that it is cheap.

The key is “content marketing is more effective”.

Sure, you can go for cheap content and then like a hamster you can go on running inside a spinning wheel thinking that you’re doing something very important.

Hamster-like conditions with cheap content

Image credit

Your choice.

I’m not saying that you’re not going to succeed with content marketing unless you go bankrupt. I just mean to say that just like any other advertising and marketing cost, or any other business-related cost, content marketing is going to cost you.

Another thing that you need to keep in mind is that content marketing doesn’t stop at a few blog posts and articles. It is an ongoing process. You can take it as an operational cost.

This is because just like you are using content marketing, so are many more businesses.

You may say that the same thing happens with conventional advertising and SEO, again, I want you to pay attention to “content marketing is more effective”.

Just like SEO, you are constantly going to face competition for your small business in content marketing.

Just like advertising, you may have to spend money getting quality content for your website or blog or social media updates.

Yes, it comes with all the existing attributes like costing money, needing effort, and having to compete with the others.

What makes it different from other forms of marketing is, it is more effective, and if implemented properly, it will certainly help you grow your small business.

So, what makes content marketing so effective for growing your small business?

Don’t roll your eyes, but to benefit from content marketing, you must understand that you are providing something unique.

Unless you yourself recognize the potential of your business – your product or service – how are you going to convince the others? If you are half-hearted about your proposition, so will be the reaction to your proposition.

Once you become a big fan of your business, you have a lot to say.

Compare this with an interesting topic. How easy it is to have a conversation on a topic you find interesting.

Anyway, the biggest benefit of content marketing is that it gives you a unique identity.

A big problem with the Internet is – despite the fact that its potential for your small business is almost infinite – that there is too much noise. The noise doesn’t just come from your competitors. There are millions of distractions on the Internet.

How do you distinguish yourself?

How do people recognize you in the crowd?

Why should they do business with you if scores of other people are prompting them to do business with them?

You give them something to like about you. Something to respect you. Something to hold you in awe.

When they like you, when they respect you, when they hold you in awe, naturally they want to buy from you.

But how do you do that?

One way is to provide them exceptional service once they have bought something from you. But, this can only be done when they have become your customers or clients. What do you do when they haven’t yet become your customer or client?

You can offer them something free.

If it is something digital, although the cost might not be a problem, zillions of digital products on the Internet are free, so, again, people won’t be able to distinguish your small business from others. Heck, even Google provides free Gmail and a stack of other services free of cost. You will be just another service doing the same.

Giving physical products for free will be very expensive. Even giving services for free will be very expensive for a small business.

Providing helpful, good quality content, on the other hand, isn’t very expensive, and people don’t take good quality content for granted because there is so much lousy content available.

What do I mean by good content?

The definition of “goodness” changes from context to context. Some people may find amusing content good – for example creating and distributing funny GIFs. Some people may find fashion tips good. Some people may find recipes good. Some people may find web design and SEO tips good. Some people may find Internet marketing tips good.

Visited boredpanda.com? As the name suggests, it’s a website for people who are bored. So the content over there that unbores them is good content for them.

“Good” here means something that is useful, something that entertains, something that is relevant, and something that is topical, and last but not the least, something that is written well that shows that you respect your readers.

We live in a screwed-up world but fortunately, people still appreciate help, and are grateful for it.

Suppose, you sell scented candles from your website. If you search for the phrase “buy scented candles online” on Google you will see that most of the listings are from famous online retailers. It will be very difficult to get your link featured with these mega-million retail stores. I’m not saying it is impossible, but it is difficult.

What do you do?

You first create a very unique line of scented candles, and then build a community around your business through content marketing.

You have to offer people something that is not available on all these retail shops.

Fine, even if you come up with something very unique, how do you promote your small business with very limited budget?

Through content marketing.

Start posting high-quality pictures of your scented candles on Facebook and Instagram. Invite people to share their experiences of using scented candles from various sources.

Create a video of how you typically create scented candles.

Write blog posts on the process of making scented candles.

Find references of scented candles in classical books and create a blog post on this theme.

Send regular email updates to people on how they can use scented candles for different occasions.

Educate people about the therapeutic benefits of scented candles.

Once you start using content marketing to promote your small business of scented candles, you will keep on coming up with different ideas.

But, no matter how appreciative and grateful we are, we easily forget. We need to be reminded regularly. So, good quality content needs to be published regularly.

For that, create a content publishing and content marketing calendar for your small business.

Remember that there is a reason why it is not called “content publishing” but “content marketing”.

It takes strategy to use content to market your small business.

Once you have released your content into the World Wide Web, you need to make sure that the right people get access to that content. No matter how great your content is, unless your target audience is able to find it, it is not going to achieve the desired results.

Use all the available channels to promote your content. Promote your blog on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Build a mailing list and broadcast your links whenever you publish them. Encourage people to subscribe to your mailing list.

Here are some nice statistics published in an infographic on Demand Metric:

70% people prefer to learn about a company or a product through articles and blog posts rather than an advertisement.
82% customers and clients have a positive outlook about a company after reading content from the company.
On an average, marketers are spending over 25% of their marketing budget on content marketing.
91% B2B marketers use content marketing.
86% B2C marketers use content marketing.
Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing.
Per dollar spent, content marketing generates approximately three times as many leads as traditional marketing.
86% people skip TV advertisements when given the means.
90% consumers find custom and informative content useful.

What makes content marketing cheaper and more effective compared to traditional marketing, especially for small business?

Social sharing. Search engine traffic. Direct referrals.

For every non-content marketing promotion, you pay for every benefit that you derive.

When you advertise on Google AdWords, you pay for every click. If you’re paying one dollar per click and if you get 200 clicks in a day, you are spending $ 200 per day for those 200 clicks.

But when you publish high-quality content after adopting content marketing, if your content is good and valuable, people promote that content on their own. You don’t have to pay them to promote your content. It is so valuable that people want to share it with their colleagues, friends and relatives.

The quality of your content, coupled with social sharing, improves your search engine rankings. Whether you get 200 clicks from Google or 2 million clicks, you don’t have to pay even a single cent to Google (or any other search engine). After your initial investment in getting high quality content, the cascading effect is totally free.

The benefits of content marketing for your small business

As you do content marketing for your small business, just in a couple of months you will begin to see the following positive changes:

Improved search engine rankings (of course, better search engine rankings are needed)
More targeted traffic to your website
Increased referral traffic to your small business website, because more websites and blogs will be linking to you and more people will be sharing your links on their social media profiles
People pay more attention to what you have to say
More leads are generated from your website and other sources
Your sales increase

Conclusion

Although, as a small business, you may want to try out many marketing methods, content marketing for small business is not only cost-effective but also result-oriented.

With little creativity, you can gain a competitive edge over businesses that are not using content marketing to promote themselves, or who are using content marketing wrongly.

You can place yourself as an expert or an authority figure if intellectual branding matters in your field. When people respect you for your wisdom, it’s easier for them to do business with you because they trust your intelligence.

You also become familiar to people. When you continuously publish content, people become used to your presence, and not in a negative sense. They associate you with high quality content and timely help.

The overall visibility of your small business increases with consistent and strategic content marketing. More people link to your website. More people share your links. Search engines begin to rank you higher.

Clarity of purpose is very important if you want to promote your small business with content marketing. The entire strength of content marketing lies in strategy and execution. You must know what you want to publish, why you want to publish and what should be the end result. Once you have figured that out, there should be nothing holding you back.