There’s an app for that. And that. And that. There are thousands of them. Some are useful, and some are not (I’m looking in your direction, Kim Kardashian: Hollywood).
You know Buffer, and Hootsuite,
And that’s a shame because
But that doesn’t mean we’re not interested in them. So, consider me your spelunking guide, heading deep underground to find buried treasure on your behalf. I get dirty and chased by mole people while you reap the benefits.
Any content marketer can recite the magic content mantra with their eyes closed: get the right content in front of the right people at the right time.
But what is the right content?
If you know your customer, you should know the right content. It answers their questions and solves their problems. They sleep like a baby because you eliminated the big problem that used to keep them counting sheep until the rooster crowed.
But how do you find out what keeps your audience in a state of constant panic? Check out this process to find out anything you want to know about your target audience:
Locally, regionally, or online?
What does “corner your market” even mean?
Who knows?
Breaking down the definition of success is tricky.
So we decided to ask. For today’s post, we’re showcasing real-life examples of small businesses who are succeeding in large part due to their blogging techniques. They’re trying to corner their market… and their techniques are working.
From law firms to yoga instructors, blogging is often the least expensive answer to the biggest problem small businesses and agencies have:
We asked and they answered. These small business owners are telling you exactly what kind of blogging they did to get ahead.
What it takes to get ahead — and stay ahead — of your competition can seem like a mystery.
But all of these businesses have one thing in common: while they may not be the biggest, baddest business in their market, they are thriving, successful, and profitable. All because of blogging.
If you don’t have (or want) a big marketing budget, this post is for you.
Here’s 8 examples of small businesses who have cornered their marketing by blogging.
You’re a smart content marketer.
You’ve embraced the power of inbound. You recognize the need to be consistent with your content production schedule.
Heck, every single post on every single authoritative content marketing blog you regularly read hammers all this home.
But you’re struggling to get on a consistent schedule with your content production. You just don’t ever have the time to get it done.
You’ve got a time management problem.
Whether you’re just procrastinating, overwhelmed, or truly don’t have the time, it’s keeping you from doing something you know you need to do.
And if you’ve ever wondered if it’s just you — it’s not just you.
In fact, of the top five challenges identified by respondents to a survey conducted by the LinkedIn Technology Marketing Community, three touch on time management and productivity problems:
Lack of Time/Bandwidth to Create Content (51%)
Producing Enough Content Variety/Volume (50%)
Developing Consistent Content Strategy (34%)
And it’s not just B2C marketers, by the way. Another study, this one conducted jointly by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, found that a full 57% of responding B2B marketers named “producing content consistently” their top content marketing challenge.
So yeah, Houston, we all have a problem. I think it’s especially true if you’re in business for yourself or are a freelancer — two types who tend towards maverick-y, go-it-alone-ness, by and large.
Yes, we’re self-starters by nature — that’s the shiny side of the entrepreneurial coin.
But we also get the not-so-pretty flip side: it’s all on us, and we just feel icky about shuffling stuff off on to others. We resist hiring, delegating, outsourcing. But we also (too often) resist doing.
Couple that with the fact that we want to do our actual work, not market our businesses, and really, is it any wonder that we have a time management problem?
Even freelance copywriters fall victim to the trap by getting out of the habit of content marketing — or so I hear. I have no direct, personal experience with this. (I have a lot of direct, personal experience with this.)
The solution depends on the exact nature of the “why” behind your procrastination problem.
There are no short cuts.
There is no one weird simple trick.
There’s no magic tool or app that’ll straighten it all out for you once and for all.
Yes it’s important to have a streamlined, effective system for creating content in place, to reduce the time it takes to create each piece of content you publish.
But that’s just one piece of the solution. If you want to up your time management game and get your content marketing back on schedule, read on.
My name is [insert here] and I am a [select one from below]:
Wait, you’re not any of those things?
Oh, that’s right.
Your job is to grow your business and implement strategies that generate revenue.
Blogging needs to be a part of your content strategy. You know that.
You’re blogging about things that matter to your audience, but it’s just not clicking. People are responding.
Audience or share wise.
You could hire someone, but spending the money right now isn’t an option. Free and low-cost guest bloggers abound (here’s how to find them), but your blog needs a consistent voice.
You don’t have time to deal with freelancers and edits.
Bummer.
Still, content must be generated, concerns addressed, help provided. If you want to build your online presence, blogging plays a vital role in the success of your online presence.
Your brand’s attitude is most obvious in blog posts.
What’s your blog really saying?
If you’re just throwing up some words and thoughts on your blog, freeze.
Unless you’re a really good writer, those random posts are scaring away potential customers.
You have to write the right thing, share shareable things, and connect with your audience. That’s how a blog supports a business.
Creating custom images for content has been all the buzz lately.
There’s good reason for it, research and data show that when you include visual content (i.e. images or videos) in your blog posts and social media you tend to get more traffic, clicks, and engagement.
Now doesn’t that sound like something you’d be interested in?
After all, unless you’re inundated with traffic and customers, there are very few brands out there that wouldn’t love getting more eyeballs to their websites and more clicks on their content.
That’s where a small change like adding some of your own visual content to your blog posts and social media, can give you big results.
So why the big push behind visual content lately? Well, turns out, the numbers don’t lie, it does make a noticeable difference.
Check out some of these statistics from both Twitter and Facebook to start.
According to some in depth data analysis performed by Twitter, “photos averages a 35% boost in retweets.”
You can see similar numbers when it comes to Facebook.
Did you know that 50% of online content never sees more than 8 shares?
It’ll take forever to grow your blog and brand with 8 shares per post!
Well, it won’t grow. Which is the point…
Content marketing is having a mid-life crises. Great content isn’t enough anymore, and the 30-page report by BuzzSumo sheds a dim light on the future of content for small business owners.
Anything we write has, most likely, been written by someone else already.
What to do? How do you increase page counts, inbound links, and share counts…all at once?
(Keep reading. This post doesn’t say what the rest of them do.)
Your social media stream is one of the very first things people notice about your brand.
Yup, I said brand.
Regardless if you are the social media manager of a large company, the “marketing department” for a small brand, or a solopreneur, your social media matters.
It helps establish loyalty, 53% of Americans who follow brands on social media are more loyal to them. It also helps with overall influence, “93% of shoppers’ buying decisions are influenced by social media – because 90% trust peer recommendations.”
If that’s not a case for getting your social media on point, I’m not sure what is.
But, the big question is how should you approach your social media? What content should you be sharing? And, how do you find the right content to share?
The last thing you want to do is share all your own content all the time. Gary Vaynerchuck, famed entrepreneur, author, and social media guru of sorts, follows the “jab, jab, jab, right hook” approach to social media.
Jabs are content that you share that highlights others, interesting topics, expert opinions, and information that appeals directly to your readers.
The right hook is the ask. It’s your own content.
This mix of sharing content you think your followers (and potential customers) will love is the perfect formula to educate, provide value, and set yourself up as an influencer or authority.
Now that you realize how important it is to share different types of content, including a mix of your own. You’re next step is to find that content.
This is where a lot of people get stuck.
It can be hard to find great content that both applies to your industry and interests, as well as educate your followers.
As you’ll see with most influencers you’ll find online, they seem to have a “knack” for sharing content that gets tons of shares. Their secret isn’t that they just have access to better content than you do. Nope, it’s that they have systems of finding it.
That’s what we’re going to cover today. I’m going to share with you exactly how you can set up a system to consistently have a pipeline of great content to share online.
The first thing you need to do?
Know where to look.
You want to focus on building your business. You’re trying to keep up with the often-annoying details of running a website. Pages, posts, social media, content promotion, and more.
More is inbound marketing. Otherwise known as how-you-get-people-to-visit-your-site.
‘Cause if no one’s visiting you, no one’s buying (or reading). Case closed.
What if I told you that you can give something away that will have your target audience knocking down your website door to give you their email addresses?
It’s free, too.
Even better, the free thing won’t take you more than a few hours to create and promote.
Sounds impossible? It’s not.
A certain mystique has developed around search engine optimization (SEO).
It’s understandable, when you consider that the details of how search engines go about indexing and ranking web pages are quite literally super-secret, kept under lock and key, protected by multi-million dollar non-disclosure agreements.
And that mystique has left many small business site owners struggling to get found in search results by potential customers.
Even site owners who have embraced content marketing, which makes it much easier to rank well in search engine result pages (SERPs), inevitably feel frustrated and overwhelmed by complicated and often contradictory SEO advice.
