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:

1. Start a blog
2. Create a Facebook business page
3. Set up a Twitter account for your business
4. Set up an Instagram account for your business
5. Create a LinkedIn business page
6. Set up Google analytics
7. Incorporate the Google analytics code into your blog
8. Compile a list of keywords and search terms your customers and clients may use to find you
9. Find copyright-free images to use with your blog posts (you may like to read 21 free image sides to spruce up your visuals)
10. Start publishing blog posts
11. Write blog posts using your keywords and search terms
12. Start sharing your blog post links on your social networking accounts and business page accounts
13. Create small infographics using the blog posts you are already publishing and post them on your social networking accounts
14. Create small videos with your mobile phone and start posting them on YouTube
15. Create slides describing the benefits of your product or service and upload them on Slideshare
16. Open account with MailChimp and start building a mailing list by putting the subscription form on your blog
17. 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

1. Interview your customers and publish their feedback on your blog
2. See testimonials and publish them
3. Whenever your customers and clients ask you questions post the answer on your website along with the question
4. Conduct a poll on your social networking websites or on your own website
5. Describe various jargons of your profession in simple language
6. Curate great content from other websites
7. Participate in memes
8. Use Google trends to find what’s trending and create content around that
9. Offer a free e-book from your website (you can write an e-book in a week)
10. Get involved in controversies (without hurting sentiments) by writing opposing opinion on your blog (these things go viral fast)
11. Create small GIFs from YouTube videos and give your own twist to them
12. Engage with people on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter
13. Try to get linkbacks from popular websites
14. Use press release websites
15. If you are a small business depending on local customers, you can create content on local events
16. 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.