How to do content marketing on a shoestring budget

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In my blog post Can content marketing work for a very small business I have written that you can start carrying out your content marketing strategy within an hour. The beauty of content marketing is that you can do it on a shoestring budget and nobody even has to know it. Here I found an interesting blog post titled No money, no problem: 5 content marketing strategies for the shoestring budget that explains, with real-world proofs, how you can do content marketing on a shoestring budget.

Why it’s possible to do content marketing on a shoestring budget?

You can do content marketing on a shoestring budget because all the basic tools for doing content marketing are mostly available to you for free. Although the above-linked blog post gives you various reasons you can do content marketing with a very small budget, here are a few things you need to kickstart your content marketing within the next hour:

Start a blog
Create a Facebook business page
Set up a Twitter account for your business
Set up an Instagram account for your business
Create a LinkedIn business page
Set up Google analytics
Incorporate the Google analytics code into your blog
Compile a list of keywords and search terms your customers and clients may use to find you
Find copyright-free images to use with your blog posts (you may like to read 21 free image sides to spruce up your visuals)
Start publishing blog posts
Write blog posts using your keywords and search terms
Start sharing your blog post links on your social networking accounts and business page accounts
Create small infographics using the blog posts you are already publishing and post them on your social networking accounts
Create small videos with your mobile phone and start posting them on YouTube
Create slides describing the benefits of your product or service and upload them on Slideshare
Open account with MailChimp and start building a mailing list by putting the subscription form on your blog
Start sending a small newsletter to people who subscribe to your mailing list

Although I have mentioned 17 things that you can do to do content marketing on a shoestring budget there are many more activities you can perform to do content marketing without spending a dime.

16 more ideas to enable you to do content marketing on a shoestring budget

Interview your customers and publish their feedback on your blog
See testimonials and publish them
Whenever your customers and clients ask you questions post the answer on your website along with the question
Conduct a poll on your social networking websites or on your own website
Describe various jargons of your profession in simple language
Curate great content from other websites
Participate in memes
Use Google trends to find what’s trending and create content around that
Offer a free e-book from your website (you can write an e-book in a week)
Get involved in controversies (without hurting sentiments) by writing opposing opinion on your blog (these things go viral fast)
Create small GIFs from YouTube videos and give your own twist to them
Engage with people on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter
Try to get linkbacks from popular websites
Use press release websites
If you are a small business depending on local customers, you can create content on local events
Routinely analyze your competition and share your thoughts on your website.

Whatever people say, the one thing you need to understand is that on the Internet content is king. Everything on the Internet is content and you can make everything interesting and engaging. If you are ready to work hard on a persistent basis and you are fine with out-of-the-box thinking, you can easily do content marketing on a shoestring budget.

Should content writing come first or web design?

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Many times my clients (especially web design agencies) send me a design/layout and then ask me to create content that fits into that layout.

So, I was pleasantly surprised when recently one of my clients, after having a look at what I had written for her organization, decided to ditch the design she already had. She insisted that first I should have all the content ready and then the web design will be done around the content.

This is a new development: that content should be written within the various sections of the web design. Sometimes they insist that you just write 100 words because one section of the website will not accommodate more than 100 words. So, whether the message needs more words or not, you have to fit everything into 100 words.

This happens mostly because people these days by predesigned templates and most of these templates are made to look aesthetically pleasant whether they can accommodate content flexibly or not.

I believe if web design takes precedence over content writing, you are worried more about the looks and less about your conversion rate. Are you getting a web design because you like the design or you want to do business with it?

Design and content need to be modular these days, especially when more and more people may access your website from their mobile devices. I’m not saying you have 25 paragraphs of content on a page and then you design a website that can go on and on vertically – nothing wrong in that by the way.

But you need to keep in mind that it’s the content that is going to do business for you. It’s your content that is going to convert people. It’s your content that is going to get you better search engine rankings. It’s your content that is will engage your visitors and turn them into customers and clients.

Hence, if there is a choice, content writing should always come before web design.

Can content marketing work for a very small business?

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Today someone left the following question on my contact form: Can content marketing work for a very small business?

It might be unnerving to read about big companies like Coca-Cola, IBM and American Express putting all their energies into content marketing – this must make you wonder, if such big companies are using content marketing, does content marketing work for a very small business too?

My answer is, the smaller the business, the better content marketing is for you.

Content marketing can definitely work for a very small business because

The cost of content marketing can be easily scaled according to the size of your business.
Even if you are a very small business, you can start content marketing today, right this very moment.
As a small business, you can do content marketing yourself, if you have the time, and if you have some budget, you can even hire someone to do content marketing for you. You may like to read Hire a professional content writer for your business.
Most of the tools needed for content marketing are available for free or on trial basis. Read 14 tools you can use to optimize content marketing.
If you can write, much better for your very small business because then you can kick start your content marketing at this very moment.
For content marketing to work for a very small business all you need is a blog and the right social networking accounts. Read Why your business needs a blog (20 reasons).

There is all the more reason for a very small business to use content market instead of conventional advertising. These days people skip most of the ads. Just imagine, you are spending all that hard-earned money on ads people don’t even see. When was it the last time you voluntarily saw an ad unless it was irresistible? A very big reason why Netflix and Hulu are popular because people don’t want to see ads.

As a very small business you simply cannot afford to lose so much money on advertisements and the best option for you is content marketing where you can rest assured the investment that you make is going to get you more business. Read Why content marketing is important for your business.

Why content marketing works for very small businesses?

I think content marketing is ideal for very small businesses who don’t have very big budgets for advertising and marketing. If you use something like AdWords you pay for every click. So, if you have to pay, let’s suppose, $0.50 for every click for multiple keywords, for every hundred clicks you are paying $50 to Google. This will definitely get you instant traffic provided you know how to manage a PPC campaign.

PPC advertising is a marketing branch in itself and there are companies specifically helping businesses optimize their PPC campaigns. So, for a very small business, online advertising may work and may not work. If you want to be sure that it works, you will need to work with the search marketing company which means, aside from spending money on every click that you get, you will also have to pay the search marketing company.

Plus, there is always your competition. Since there is always going to be someone who is ready to spend more money than you, you will have to go on increasing your ad budget. This can lead to your very small business to ruin.

Content marketing on the other hand – assuming you do it the right way – always works no matter what small business you are running.

This is because no matter how much content there is on the Internet, your business is unique so your content is also going to be unique. There is always going to be some factor that will distinguish your content from your competitor’s content, and this gives you an edge, and this is why content marketing can work for a very small business.

If you are wondering what’s content marketing, you may like to read What is content marketing? Explained in detail.

The advantage that a very small business has is that you can be very flexible. You can quickly create content needed by your target audience. You can be very specific.

Unlike big businesses, a very small business has a very narrow market, so you don’t have to put a lot of effort in carrying out your content marketing strategy. You need to generate content catering to only a small audience. You can also easily find out which social platform your target customers and clients prefer: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat or LinkedIn (contemporary platforms, at the time of reading this, there might be many more).

Benefits of content marketing for a very small business

Content marketing improves your SEO: If you are a very small business that depends on search engine traffic then an improved SEO would help, right? You will get more traffic without paying for every click. The nature of content marketing is such that it automatically improves your SEO. Read Can content marketing improve your SEO?
Content marketing can help you build a reputation as an industry leader: Reputation in business always helps. When people know you and they respect you for your knowledge, they feel more eager to do business with you. And it has a cascading effect: you get more business with your reputation and since you get more business, your reputation increases and because your reputation increases, you get more business. This can easily be achieved with targeted content marketing. As a very small business since you have a deep knowledge of your customers and clients, you can create highly targeted content for them, sharing your wisdom and knowledge and answering their questions.
Content marketing reduces your marketing budget: With content marketing, you don’t have to spend on traditional marketing. You get so much visibility on the Internet that people come to your website rather than you interrupting them at odd moments. Once you create a search engine and social media presence for yourself you won’t have to pay for every click. On their own people will be coming to your website.
Content marketing helps you build a loyal customer base: When you continuously publish helpful content, people begin to like you and feel good about associating with you. They tend to share your content more among their friends and colleagues. They also tend to recommend your business because they trust you. Having a loyal customer base is far better than targeting people with advertisements.
Content marketing helps you engage people continuously: Interesting content encourages people to share your content and talk about it with each other. You never know which piece of content may go viral and millions of people come to know of it within a few hours. Yes, this has happened to many businesses.
Content marketing helps you build your own mailing list: A mailing list that you have built on the strength of your own content is one of the best business assets you can ever develop. These are the people who have subscribed to your mailing list on their own. They are open to getting messages from you on a regular basis. They like to hear from you. If you keep sending them helpful content they will always know that when they need that particular service or product, you are there to provide. It doesn’t matter to them that you are a very small business; provided you provide them with great content they’re always going to do business with you.

What sort of content marketing can a very small business do?

As a very small business you have multiple content marketing channels available to you that you can start using right now. Some of these channels I am describing below:

Start a blog: This is the best content marketing step a very small business can take immediately. If you already have a website all you have to do is go to WordPress.com, download the installation files and set up a blog in a separate directory (something like yourdomain.com/blog/). If you don’t want to do it yourself, every web host these days has this “one click” feature that allows you to install contemporary content management systems in a jiffy.
Create a list of keywords relevant to your very small business: You don’t need to start publishing blog posts the moment you set up a blog. Do some keyword research. You don’t have to target very small keywords because they will be very competitive. Instead, focus on longtail keywords. Here is a blog post you may like to read: 11 essential ingredients for creating great blog posts.
Create a list of questions and queries your target customers and clients may have about your business: People these days use questions and queries on search engines. If you have a flower shop people won’t simply search for “flower shop”. They will probably search for “is there an online flower shop in my area?” or “is there an online flower shop that can deliver fresh roses immediately?” List down all possible questions your target customers and clients may have before they decide to do business with you.
Start creating blog posts out of the questions and queries you have compiled: This is a very good way of creating relevant content as a very small business. By the time you have covered all the questions (the question is the title and the blog content is the answer) you will be having lots of blog posts on your blog and you will have covered lots of keywords relevant to your business.
Share your updates on your preferred social networking platforms: You can post your links on multiple platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. You can use a service like Hootsuite or Buffer App to post your content across multiple social networking platforms in one go. Even a very small business can afford to use these services.

Is content marketing a quick fix work for a very small business?

Not at all. Just because lots of things on the Internet are free and easily available, it doesn’t mean content marketing is one of those things. It’s a legitimate form of marketing. Whether you are a very small business or a very big business content marketing requires effort. Being a very small business, may be the effort won’t be very big and hence you may be able to manage your content marketing on your own, but effort WILL be required.

If you don’t have time for that effort, you will need to hire someone who can take care of basic content marketing like creating and publishing fresh and relevant content and then distributing your content using your social networking platforms. Good content writers are easily available. You may like to read 20 benefits of hiring professional content writing services.

As your very small business transitions into a small business and then a medium-sized business and then a large business, your content marketing will also evolve. Just like you have to continuously promote your business using conventional advertising and marketing, you will need to employ content marketing to keep yourself in the race.

Can content marketing improve your SEO?

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Many businesses are attracted towards content marketing because they think that it will improve their SEO. Is it true? Does content marketing really improve your SEO?

Yes, it does. Strategic content marketing definitely improves your SEO.

Better SEO is a byproduct of efficient and persistent content marketing.

What do you do when you use content marketing to promote your business?

You publish content that helps your visitors.
Your content provides answers to questions your customers and clients seek.
You are continuously providing content to search engine crawlers to crawl, index and rank.
By promoting your content using all available channels you earn social validation for your website (which is used by search engines to rank your website).
You are continuously using your keywords and key phrases to generate content.
The more quality content you publish the greater are the chances that other websites will link back to you.

If you notice, all these content marketing tactics are exactly the things you need to do to improve your SEO.

How content marketing improves your SEO

Search engines like Google and Bing are all about content. When people use these search engines your landing pages and the main website rarely show up. It’s your content pages and blog posts that show up in the search results. The entire process of content marketing is such that it automatically improves your SEO.

Take for example Google. What does Google consider to rank your individual webpages?

The overall quality and relevance of your content.
The keyword and key phrases that you have used in the title, in the body text and in the headlines.
The contextual analysis of your content.
The number of external websites linking to your content.
The number of social shares of your content.
The overall quality and quantity of your website or blog.

All these can only be achieved through content marketing.

This is how content marketing improves your SEO

You publish relevant content that solves your customers’ and clients’ problems.
You publish content on an ongoing basis so that you are constantly feeding the search engines with good quality content (this alone improves your SEO).
Strategic content marketing makes you create content around your relevant keywords and key phrases consistently, increasing your overall website keyword density.
Since you are creating valuable content, it is often shared on social networking websites, providing validation, which further improves your SEO.
When you publish quality content that is relevant and helps people, other websites and blogs link to your content, again contributing to your SEO.
Improved SEO makes it easier for people to find your content, link to it, share it and talk about it, further improving your SEO.

Your average SEO agency may beg to differ, good content marketing automatically leads to an improved SEO.

Are there times when content marketing doesn’t improve your SEO?

Although I repeatedly stress on my website that good content marketing always improves your SEO there can be instances when content marketing does not improve your SEO.

To understand why sometimes content marketing may not lead to improved SEO you first need to understand what is content marketing and what is SEO.

What is content marketing?

In layman’s terms, content marketing is publishing lots of useful, relevant content that helps your customers and clients so that they begin to trust you and readily do business with you. Content marketing includes

Publishing quality content on a consistent basis.
Using social networking channels to distribute your content.
Publishing content on all available channels so that it becomes easier to come across your business name, brand or your own name.

This is the basic crux of content marketing. Read more on What is content marketing? Explained in detail.

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization. The concept is as old as search engines themselves. SEO means creating content so that it’s easier for search engines to

Find it
Crawl it
Index it
Rank it higher compared to other links for your desired keywords

The last point is the most important to people who are trying to improve their SEO. They want their content to be found, on the first page, for their preferred keywords. Keywords and key phrases are the most important when it comes to improving your SEO. If your content is being found for all the wrong reasons, it doesn’t help you.

This is very important: your content needs to be found for the right keywords and search terms. Read more on What is Organic SEO?

Content marketing can exist without giving you SEO benefits

This is because you can create quality content without using your keywords. You can use heavy images and complicated JavaScript on your website so that it’s very difficult for the search engine crawlers to crawl your content despite the content being of exceptional quality.

For an improved SEO the source code of your website matters a lot. The source code of your website should be in such a way that it makes it easier for search engines to access your content as soon as possible. The crawlers shouldn’t have to sift through a ton of gibberish before it can reach your main content.

When you don’t use proper tags, when you don’t hyperlink to your relevant pages using the right anchor text, when you don’t have a site map, when the other websites linking to your content don’t use the right anchor text, you don’t get much SEO benefit from your content marketing.

When does content marketing improve your SEO?

Your content marketing can be exceptional but you also need to help search engines crawl, index and rank your content, either from your own website, or external websites.

Here are a few things to keep in mind in order to help your content marketing improve your SEO:

Do comprehensive keyword research – create a long list of keywords and key phrases that your customers and clients are likely to use when trying to look for your service.
Without overdoing it, use your keywords and key phrases while creating and publishing your content.
People these days normally use questions on the search engines, so provide answers to these questions.
Don’t use lots of JavaScript, at least in the beginning of your webpages and blog posts. If using JavaScript is unavoidable, use it in such a manner that you include the JavaScript code at the end of your webpages and blog posts.
Try to follow W3C guidelines to create an accessible website because an accessible website automatically improves your SEO on the technical side.
Use proper tags like h1, h2, h3, ul, li, etc. to organize your content.
Get quality back links to your website on the strength of your quality content.

Although quality content marketing in itself improves your SEO, you just saw above that good content marketing can exist without giving you any SEO benefits. But if you maintain a website or blog that doesn’t stop the search engine crawlers from accessing your main content as early as possible, then persistent content marketing definitely improves your SEO.

Simple content marketing for a small business

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Content marketing isn’t just for big businesses having deep pockets. In fact, small businesses are in a better position to leverage content marketing due to the flexibility and abundance of creativity small business owners enjoy compared to highly bureaucratic and red-tape-tangled big businesses.

Yes, it takes efforts. I’m not saying content marketing is a quick-reward tactic. It’s a mistake to call it a tactic, it’s a prolonged strategy with long lasting results. You have to build it brick by brick. You will even have to pay content writers and content creators if you cannot create content on your own. It’s just like any other business asset that requires investment and effort.

Need to know what’s content marketing? You may like to read What is content marketing? Explained in detail.

Why a small business should embrace content marketing?

Here are some reasons why content marketing benefits your small business:

Conventional advertising is expensive and unscientific
PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns can totally blow up your budget
Content marketing makes people trust you
Content marketing helps you build your own media platform
Content marketing increases your visibility on search engines as well as social networking websites
You don’t have to pay for every click
The visibility that you create with content marketing is long-lasting
Once you have created a presence for yourself through content marketing, you no longer have to depend on search engines
Frankly, there is no other way, whether you realize it now, or later

Simple content marketing for a small business

The entry barrier to content marketing is very low. It is not as formidable as it may initially seem. In fact, you can formulate a content marketing strategy right now and start implementing it within the next one hour (first complete reading this). Here are a few simple things you can do to start your own content marketing campaign for your small business:

Define your purpose: Content marketing is very precise and it is advisable that you clearly define your purpose right in the beginning of launching your content marketing strategy.What do you intend to achieve with content marketing?
Of course, every business wants to get more customers and clients and this goes without saying, but what should be your key performance indicators (KPIs)? Are you looking for brand visibility on social networking websites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook? Do you want more subscribers for your business newsletter? Do you want more customers (duh!)? Read 12 most important KPIs of content marketing.
Do keyword research: Keyword research is not as simple as it may seem in the beginning. You have to think how your typical customer or client would think when he or she needs to find your business. Don’t assume what keywords and search terms they should be using. There are many good keywords tools available (you can begin with this Google keyword tool).Keyword research isn’t just for better search engine rankings, it also helps you keep yourself focused and create the most appropriate content using the most appropriate language that your prospective customers and clients use. Keyword research gives you a direction.
Create content topics: These are the blog posts and webpages that you are going to write or create content for. Remember that you need to create your topics keeping in mind what sort of traffic you want to get to your website or blog.If I want to get more clients for my content writing and content marketing services I write content that shows how much I know as well as how interested I am in getting your business.
If you provide a consulting service than you want to tell people how much you know and how you help your clients. If you sell a product you would like to describe what are the benefits of those products in every possible way.
Set up a domain account in Google Analytics and Google’s Webmasters Tools: These will help you monitor what sort of traffic your content is attracting. You will have to combine both of them to get a better insight.These tools will tell you what keywords people use to find your content. They will also tell you from where you get your traffic the most. Here is a good blog post on how to use Google Search Analytics to enhance your content marketing. If you find it difficult to understand, stay tuned, one of these days I will create a simplified version of how to use these tools to improve your content marketing efforts.
Start publishing blog posts: Publishing blog posts is the easiest form of content marketing. Although, I repeatedly say that simply publishing blog posts on your blog isn’t exactly content marketing, it is your base. Without having quality content, there is nothing to market. So, everything starts with quality content that you publish under your domain name. Publish posts based on the topics you have created, based on the keywords you have researched.
Use social channels to share your content: If you have a LinkedIn account (better for B2B businesses) start sharing the links of the blog posts you have started publishing. Use Twitter, use Facebook, use whatever social networking channel you prefer and where you would like to build your audience. This will bring visibility to your newly-created content.
Monitor performance using Google Analytics and Google’s Webmasters Tools: You will need to be patient. These tools won’t get data initially. Google won’t even index your new content in the beginning if your domain is new. It may take a couple of months before you begin to see some data in Google Analytics and Google’s Webmasters Tools. Be persistent without worrying – every small business or big business goes through this process.
Curate content from other sources: You don’t always have to create content from scratch. Awesome content is being created every minute on other websites and blogs. You can curate content from these sources from time to time and share it on your social networking timelines. You can also create smaller blog posts with your unique point of view with the help of curated content. Read Can you use content curation as a viable content marketing tool?
Repurpose your popular content: If you observe that particular blog posts are getting more attention you can re-purpose their content. You can pick up the main points and create slides and then share the slides on a platform like Slideshare.com. If your blog post contains data, you can create an infographic and share it again on social networking platforms. If possible, you can create a small YouTube video, upload it on YouTube, and then share it again. There are many ways you can re-purpose your existing content. You may like to read How to repurpose old content.

These are a few simple ways a small business can use content marketing. As I mentioned in the beginning, just like any other business activity, it takes effort, consistency, a bit of creativity, and persistence. It’s not a shortcut. It’s an alternative, a way better alternative to conventional advertising and promotion. Revisit the above point: Why a small business should embrace content marketing.