The online marketing world is expanding – having the biggest bullhorn isn’t enough to dominate the conversation anymore. Instead, the most interesting voice prevails in attracting an engaged audience. Social media provides a low-cost, attainable channel for small business marketers to take advantage of in order to compete with the big brands in the content marketing sphere.
The Small Business Content Marketing Trends & Insights Report for 2013 found that SMB marketers use an average of five social media platforms, while enterprise peers use an average of four platforms. Many small business marketers have been early adopters in the social media game, leveraging this effective business and marketing tool in order to extend their reach. Social media has provided SMBs a level playing field to reach audiences and attract interest through focusing on content. By using an average of five platforms, SMBs are ensuring that their content isn’t caged into one insular group, lending more opportunity for it to spread to engaged audiences.
When managing social media channels, it is important to set a goal for your content. What do you want to achieve from with each post? Lead generation? Thought leadership? Brand awareness? Define your goal, adapt your writing and choose the social channel that will reach the right audience at the right time.
Creating content is the most labor-intensive task when executing a content strategy. Social media in particular burns up a lot of content quickly due to the quick pace of content published per minute. In order to stay top of mind (and top of news feed), repurposing content is key. It is important to keep in mind that “repurposing” and “reposting” mean two different things. While “reposting” allows a piece of content to appear on a news feed more often to increase impressions (that may not lead to consumption), “repurposing” adds a new value with a fresh perspective that can generate new appeal for new audiences. Schedule different posts to varying social networks of your repurposed content using social media management dashboards like Tweetdeck, HootSuite, and Sprout Social.
Before creating content, small business marketers should be aware of the types of content that draw in their most engaged target audience. Know who you are writing for, which channel they’d like to be reached through, and how they like their information represented. Written posts are great, but multimedia content can often be better. Get creative and produce an infographic, 6-second Vine, or podcast to allow your audience to consume your content in different ways.As social media begins to take a larger role in the content strategy of small businesses, blogs still remain the most important social media channel, supported by others. SMBs now have access to thousands of people they were unable to reach before, sharing their voice, experience, and what they can offeer.