“Content is the emotional and informational bridge between commerce and consumer.” - Jay Baer
While creating content is more time consuming than more traditional methods, you the business owner know your business inside out, you know what problems you are solving, and you know how you are addressing them. Focusing on this allows you to really showcase what you know.
Why should small businesses consider it?
- Builds broad awareness of your business
- Helps drive visitors to your website
- Helps drive increase in sales
Another aspect that customers like to read more about, is you? Who are you? What's the personality of you and your business? What makes you unique compared to other businesses, when addressing problems and concerns for potential customers? Unlike bigger brands, the small business owner is in a much better position to be able to showcase it's personality.
Blogs are great for longer form content and for those who like to read a nice meaty piece of content. What about those who prefer to see content in short form? Consider check-lists or lists.
Other forms of content include; case studies, infographics, e-books, email, video, podcasts.
Once you have created content you need to think about how it is going to be shared and what you want people to do. If it is a blog, this will sit on your blog site or website, and then will likely be shared across your social media platforms. What do you want them to do next? In an ideal world you want them to be a customer immediately. Reality is they may not need you just yet. This gives you an opportunity to consider new approaches and content as part of their journey. The more they see you, the more concerns you address, the stronger that bridge of trust.
Content marketing is a very deep topic and this article just skims the surface and hopefully there's enough here to enable you to explore it more fully for your business. Content marketing is successful for a variety of industry types, and there is absolutely no reason why it should not work for your small business.
Yours socially
Micala