Whether it’s for social media, your blog or your website, generating content for online marketing can leave small business owners with a serious case of writers block. But it needn’t be a headache. Take a look at these tips that we’ve compiled to give you some ideas on how to generate great content.
Personal experience:
Your personal experience can provide great online content for blogs and social media. For example share lessons you have learnt the hard way so that others can avoid them, talk about how someone who has had a big impact in your personal/work life helped you and what tips others can apply to their own lives. You might also discuss how you approach challenges or problems.
Provide solutions to your customer’s challenges:
Clients and potential clients are looking for benefits and solutions rather than just features, so rather than just write about your product’s or service’s features, look to generate content that demonstrates what they can do for your customer. You could create simple ‘how to’ video tutorials for your products if appropriate, create a tips and tricks feature, produce customer case studies that show how your services or products have solved a client’s challenge(s) or perhaps record sound bites from your customers. If you provide a service, giving brief insights into your expertise is a good way of enticing prospects to contact you for further help.
Industry based:
Review a current opinion piece relevant to your industry or look at current trends. You can give your opinion, or perhaps present the other side of the issue. You can also show how your organisation is addressing the issues or trends. If you are confident, you could even write your own opinion piece.
Produce your own research:
This doesn’t have to be expensive. You could run a customer poll on your website, blog or social media and then report back on the results, indicating trends you have identified, key points etc.
Who are you ?:
Online content doesn’t always have to be business related. In fact, sharing information about employees and your company culture can really help to build your brand and reputation. ‘Meet the team’ pieces, ‘a day in the life’ articles, talking about your core values and how you put them into action, introducing and welcoming new staff and congratulating staff/teams for key achievements are all good for generating content with a more personal feel.
Events:
Events are a great opportunity for creating online content that can progressively build interest and excitement. Your initial content may involve announcing the date and the venue, followed by letting people know that registration has opened, perhaps with a limited ‘Early Bird’ offer. You can announce speakers when they are confirmed, providing some biographic information and inviting people to submit questions to them if appropriate. Having a Twitter hashtag specifically for your event (e.g. #virtualassistantlive) enables you and delegates to share searchable thoughts and information throughout the event which can also be fed through to your website. Post event you could even think about sharing transcripts, audio or video clips and PowerPoint slides.
Promotional content:
Promotional content, for example competitions to win a free product, free consultation or tickets to an event, provide a great opportunity to generate online content and encourage interaction from your audience. Other promotional posts may include recognising an employee who has been nominated for, or received, an award, sharing customer testimonials, details of a charity event you have been involved in etc.
Whenever you are brainstorming content ideas, start with as wide a selection of suggestions as possible. You can then refine your selection based upon your goals, aims, objectives and appropriate timing.
We hope that you found these tips for generating marketing content online useful. If you would like help with marketing content strategies for small business or you are looking for a content virtual assistant feel free to call us on 0800 994 9016 or click here to request a free consultation.