Enjoy this special three-part series on how to find Content Marketing success! If you missed it, head back to check out Part 1 and Part 2.
You’re all bought into that content marketing is the right way to attract the right clients and customers, showcase your expertise and build a long-term relationship.
Fabulous. Now, how the heck can you possibly get it all done?
Boost your brand with content marketing. But be super smart + efficient about it! (Tweet this!)
Here are some of my favorite best practices and tools ensure you can be efficient and more importantly, effective, with your content marketing efforts.
- Make Content Shareable: No use creating all that luscious content if folks don’t do some of the sharing for you, right?
- Use Forward to a Friend or Social Share Buttons on your website and emails.
- Pre-write posts to share. My favorite tool is ClicktoTweet to enable your audience to share with the click of a button.
- Use Images and Infographics: Two very important data points for you:
When people hear information, they are likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a relevant image is paired with that same information, people retained 65% of the information three days later. (LifeLearn, 2015)
Visual content is 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content. (Buffer, 2014)
- Use Free Images: Here are some of my fave free image resources. Be sure to add a photo credit, depending on rights agreement and terms.
- Optimize Images for Each Social Network: Each network has its own size requirements so make your image comes out crisp and clear otherwise, there’s no point. Bookmark this Page! It’s an always- updated image sizing guide for every social network. How can you resize for all the right dimensions if you’re not a designer? Easy….use these free image editing tools:
Canva: Get every template you need, pre-sized and with compelling imagery. They have templates you can use or you can upload your own images.
PicMonkey: Re-size images to any size you like and add eye-catching banners, effects, titles, etc.
Milanote is a tool for organizing creative projects into beautiful visual boards. By design, it feels a lot like working on the wall in a creative studio – visual, tactile and sometimes a bit messy – Milanote is a great fit for designers who work in teams remotely.
- Batch And Pre-Schedule Content: Be super efficient by cranking out a bunch of content, whether blogs, videos or podcasts, all in one sitting, maybe for the next month or even six months and scheduling it to publish over the long haul. Many successful bloggers operate this way.
- Pre-schedule content delivery in advance so you can set it and forget it:
- Blogs: WordPress https://wordpress.org/ enables scheduling posts in advance
- Email Platform: All of them have the ability to schedule in advance
- Social media: Popular scheduling tools include Hootsuite, Buffer, Meet Edgar, and you can use Tailwind specifically for Pinterest and Instagram
- One caveat: If pre-scheduling to a Facebook brand page, only use Facebook’s native scheduler, not a third-party tool. Otherwise, the Facebook algorithm will not show the post to as many of your fans.
- But…Set Aside Weekly Time For Live Engagement: You can’t just quite “set it and forget it.” Remember, social media is SOCIAL so make sure you are active within the platform
- Schedule 15 minutes per day to dip into social networks and interact, even if you pre-schedule content.
- Follow proper etiquette for each network. They all have their own rules so make sure you know what you’re doing. This is a great book on that.
- Respond to comments, give shout-outs, thank people, share valuable content from other trusted sources, promote complementary businesses or organizations if applicable
- Recycle and Reuse: You’ve put so much into your content. As your audience grows, many of them may not have seen your earlier stuff–or frankly, they may not remember it. Plus, people like to consume content differently. Avoid reinventing the wheel and repurpose what you have.
- Spruce up old content for use again
- Repackage into other forms: A blog post becomes a media pitch; an article becomes a podcast or video. A series of blog posts becomes a free guide.
- Find at least three uses for every piece of content
- Gather Continuous Feedback: Keep polling and interacting with your audience to figure out what they want and need. Do they want to see more of a certain topic? Do they have questions? Use this info to keep delighting them.
- Monitor social media for questions, comments
- Provide mechanism to solicit content ideas
- Ask clients about your content efforts when they come in for appointment
- Poll your audience annually
How Can I Get It All Done?!
- Create a plan so it’s easier to divide the workload. This is why an editorial calendar is super useful.
- Hire a full or part-time content marketing manager
- Hire a skilled freelancer on Upwork, Fiverr, or Airtasker
- Hire a virtual assistant specializing in content marketing/social media from somewhere like Worldwide 101.
- Contact a local college or university and bring on an intern who is studying marketing, communications or journalism to build the plan and execute the content. You may be able to do this in exchange for course credit rather than pay!
Remember the most important tip: Have Fun!
This is your opportunity to showcase your unique brand personality and voice. Get creative! If you’ve never done video before, experiment with simply using your phone. If you’re a closet artist or photographer, create and capture unique images. The more you can have fun when creating content marketing, the more engaging the content will be to delight your clients, as well as attract new ones.
Missed the entire series? Check out Part 1 and Part 2.
