Great content is the foundation of your marketing efforts, no matter your goals.
For marketers today it’s a war of attention, no matter if you’re at a two person startup or a 100 person company.
You’re constantly vying for the attention of customers and prospects in the hope they’ll come across your marketing and sales material in the sea of information that’s out there.
The content creation process can be overwhelming, frustrating and time-consuming. Especially when you and your marketing team put in serious time to create quality pieces of content: whether it be blog posts, infographics, whitepapers or other collateral.
You want customers to find these resources, regardless if your goal is lead generation, education or awareness. And if you’re a startup or small business odds are you have a lean marketing team. So you need to be laser focused on how you’re investing time and resources.
The good news is there are a number of things you can weave into your approach to help accelerate and hone your content.
Let’s take a look at four tips you could put in place today to jumpstart your content efforts:
1. Talk With Your Customers
Your customers are perhaps your best source of learning. Whether you interact with them frequently, or have an account management team that does.
Cconsider asking them the following:
- What are some of the hot topics they are hearing?
- What’s keeping them up at night?
- What types of initiatives they are focusing on in the coming months?
Odds are other potential customers in their industry are thinking about similar questions, so there’s an opportunity to get out in front and position yourself as a helpful resource.
2. Be Friends with Your Sales Team
Another great source of insights is likely sitting close by: your sales team. They are constantly interacting with prospects day in and day out. Be sure to have an open feedback loop with them - whether it’s a weekly meeting or an informal coffee walk and talk. Ask them about common themes and questions they are hearing.
It’s likely you can easily turn this feedback into blog posts, articles or podcasts that will help your marketing efforts as well as give sales some additional ammunition. Trust me, they will never say no to a solid piece of content that will help them with a prospect. It’s a win-win.
3. Keep an Eye on Social Chatter
You’re likely using social media channels to help promote company news and marketing efforts. But social channels can be a treasure trove for finding popular topics and commentary from potential customers. Listening and monitoring channels like Twitter for relevant topics to you and your business can help uncover potential areas to drive content.
For example, if you’re working on a health and fitness product, you’d likely want to check out what people are saying on Twitter around topics such as #healthtech, #fitnesstech and #wearables. Tools like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Social Mention and even Google Alerts can help with you keep a pulse on the latest conversation.
Next- Extend the Life of Your Content
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4. Extend the Life of Your Content
With the amount of information out there today, it’s wise to have different formats for your content to make it as easy as possible for potential customers to digest.
A helpful way to keep your content engine running is to look for ways to repurpose some of your existing content.
One thing to note is that not every piece of content you make will lend itself to this. But where possible, it will help save time and get more out of your existing efforts.
Let’s take a look at two scenarios here…
Say you spend a lot of time doing research for a big blog post. You come across great stats, quotes and other resources. Some will make it into your blog but don’t toss the rest. Consider sharing those meaty stats on your social channels or turn them into a quick infographic or visual using tools like Piktochart or Infogr.am.
They even offer pre-created templates to make it a breeze.
Another option is to look for ways to create premium content. This would be content you could gate on your website, behind a landing page with a form, to help with lead generation efforts. Things like eBooks, whitepapers or templates would fall in this bucket. Consider converting a series from your blog into an eBook or a brief webinar.
Great content is the foundation of your marketing efforts, no matter your goals. You can spend a lot of time trying to make high-quality, super-viral content, but for early startups and small businesses it is important to stay focused on how you’re investing time.
The tips above are ones that I’ve found particularly helpful along the way, whether you’re trying to kickstart your content marketing efforts or look for refinements. Good luck and let the good content flow!
And stay tuned for the next post as we’ll highlight 7 awesome ways to show your customers love!
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