If your small business is looking for ways to increase the number of web visitors—as most of us are—here are seven content marketing ideas. The secret to being found online is a web site updated with an ongoing supply of fresh, relevant content when your prospects are searching for solutions.
Before you can Tweet your way to successful marketing and sales, you’ll want to publish lots of valuable content. Content that sets you apart from your competitors.
Content Marketing Tactics:
- Create original, relevant content that attracts your prospects. Invest time in asking your customers and prospects about their information needs. What kinds of answers/how-to’s/tips are they having trouble finding online? What are their favorite information sites when problem solving? Do they use online forums? Blogs? Trade publication sites? When do they use print sources? More content ideas here.
- Generate content that stands out. Go way beyond FAQs. Your competitors publish frequently asked questions. Break the mold. Be creative. As Seth Godin suggests: “Go to the edges…Start where the last person left off.” Look for innovative content formats that are not common in your industry. Short videos? Coolest case study of the month? Top 10 questions people forget to ask when buying a solution.
- Publish fresh content on your web site as often as you can. Searchers and search engines love fresh content. Don’t wait for a new product release. A press release doesn’t usually equal fresh content. Unless it includes a customer success story using your products/services.
- Monitor your Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts closely. Track appearances of keywords relevant to your offerings. Check out the web site where your industry content is published.
- Monitor your competitors’ content to keep up with current topics. Set up Google Alerts for competitor company names, products. When the Alerts arrive, review the sites where your competitors are getting their content published. Find the holes in competitor content. Fill them with better content. What’s missing? What info can be presented better?
- Publish a company blog. If you don’t already maintain a corporate blog, it’s time to start because blogs are easier to update than (most) web sites. By posting relevant content a few times a week, you will be more findable by the search engines and prospects. I posted more about business blogging here.
- Stay on top of the latest issues/trends talked about online by your prospects/customers. Check in often with the key social networking sites that your prospects use. If you do not have time to do this—find someone that can. Stay in front of your market’s info-needs curve by producing timely content about new issues that your prospects are facing.
A recent Forbes survey here of the online searching habits of 354 top executives confirms the need for relevant content. Some key survey findings from these execs (firms with $1 billion-plus in annual revenues):
- Executives cite a more than 2:1 preference for viewing work-related information online (70%) instead of in print (30%).
- 53% of executives surveyed prefer to gather information online themselves. Not delegate it.
- Are you selling to execs under the age of 40? These folks search online for information over 20 times each day.
- 86% said they occasionally or frequently click on linked words from Web articles and content
So, as an example, given the specific data provided in this post, how likely are you to click through to review the Forbes CSuite Digital Survey? Or to read more about it at Forbes.com?
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