Three Universal Questions around Content Marketing for Businesses
There are universal questions related to content marketing many business owners have, but may struggle to articulate or forget to ask.
How do you create a content strategy that is deep, meaningful and helpful that doesn’t add to the noise?
This requires some content that is at the intersection between:
- Your brand values
- Your customer’s needs and expectations
- Industry trends and data
Finding the balance is how you can create content that stands out and speaks directly to your target audience.
Think of it as leadership marketing. As a brand, you move away from a template and put in the effort to create something new and unique. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but you need to mix and match, test and analyze different elements of marketing available to you to find the sweet spot for your business and customers.
How do you create multiple forms of content (text, audio, video) without burning out?
A good method to keep up your content schedule is via repurposing. Organize your content creation process in a hub-and-spoke model. For every big piece of content you get out in the form of a blog post, video interview or podcast, you can have smaller pieces of content (the spokes) that you can use on different channels to direct people back to the main topic (the hub).
To make this work easily and effectively you need to set up a plan and stick to it. The main topic content has to be carefully picked to be relevant and have the most impact for the business and your clients. Following up, plan what type of bits and insights from your main content piece can be broken down and served in a smaller content format.
How do you maintain an online presence without getting distracted from the activity of the business?
Balancing marketing efforts with business operations is a tough nut to crack, but marketing is just as important as the core activity.
For most of businesses, it’s tempting to spend all of the time serving clients, because that’s where the core competency lies. Operational processes generally have clear beginning and end points, whereas marketing seems to be an endless process.
Furthermore, when a business has plenty of clients marketing falls down the priority list significantly. It slips to “important, but not urgent” on the to-do list.
However, when you fail to invest and manage your marketing, the business starts getting less people at the start of the funnel, which in turn affects the overall results down the line. If you’re not marketing when you’re busy, you won’t have the leads to tap when you’re not.
