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How to Use Content Marketing and Social Media to Grow an Audience

When it comes to brand awareness, nothing beats a well-thought-out, well-executed content marketing strategy. However, you don’t have to wait for people to come to you. What you need is a system that puts you right in front of your intended audience in the most efficient and cost-effective way possible.

Content is king, no doubt. But with more than 500 million blogs and a new blog post published every 0.5 seconds, it’s almost impossible to build an audience on Google if you’re not among the few established companies and authority sites dealing on a certain topic. In fact, many businesses that rely heavily on website traffic took a beating after Google started implementing some major updates.

We’ve seen this coming a few years back, and we’ve perfected a system that helps small business owners grow their audience more rapidly without slugging it out with the ‘big guys.’ We’ve learned through experience, after working with over 700 clients, to combine different methods of customer engagement that allows them to attract the right people and keep them coming back.

Create a following on social media

Content marketers would often tell you to just create awesome content and let Google take care of the rest. However, things have changed and it’s no longer just putting out great content, but becoming pro-active in getting the right people to see your content.

1. Facebook & Twitter

No, we’re not selling to people on Facebook or Twitter. We’re here to make connections. Sure, you can buy some ads to give your post a temporary boost, but the main purpose is building that relationship and trust with people who might be a customer or a business partner.

Here’s a great thing about social media. You don’t have to be an ‘authority’ (or sound like one) to get an audience. You just have to use Facebook & Twitter the way they’re supposed to work but with a clear purpose in mind – to get more people into your business.

Show people what you do with your business, share some thoughts, some interesting articles or videos. Interact with users. Better yet, if you have your own blog or website, you can share your featured posts or repurpose old content for social media (e.g. quick tips, testimonials, etc.).

Ideally, you want to have a system already in place before going in on social media. People often make the mistake of going in and not being able to handle it right. So they end up either spending too much time doing everything by hand or sending bulk messages that are too generic to create meaningful connections.

Think of social media as your springboard. It helps you start a conversation but you’ll need to follow up on them and move to a more ‘stable’ platform like your email list as you go by.

We’ve developed our own sales and marketing automation which enables you to collect data and keep track of your conversations on social media. It’s a complete system that comes with a landing page builder, sales funnels, autoresponders and many others.

2. LinkedIn

We’ve devoted an entire blog article on this topic about how to use LinkedIn at networking events to increase sales. It’s the same idea with Facebook & Twitter, but we’re looking to find business partners, preferably those which are complementary to yours. Hence, if you’re a restaurant or catering business, you’ll probably want to partner up with event planners in your area.

We recommend having your own blog or website before looking out for potential business partners on LinkedIn. It creates a bit of impression. Like being able to write your own book, people tend to trust you more with your knowledge and experience when they see your blog or website.

Quality content still reigns supreme, but you need the right tools to get them to the right people – precisely what our system does for many small business owners like you.

3. YouTube

Videos will take center stage as technology improves and the majority of online marketers migrate to a much less competitive space. Unlike Google, YouTube is an untapped goldmine for a lot of content marketers. You don’t need a professional studio or expensive video editing software to get a thousand viewers on your channel.

Think of all the YouTube videos you’ve watched with more than ten thousand viewers and subscribers, using nothing more than an inexpensive camera, a whiteboard, or just them talking to you through their smartphones. Even if you’re a little bit “camera-shy,” you can still build a massive following using whiteboard animation software like VideoScribe and Doodly or even a slideshow made from Pixabay images with your voiceover. 

Now here’s the best part. Your audience will get notified each time you have a new post by simply clicking on that bell notification icon. And, unlike a static post or webpage, your YouTube videos will continue to get more viewers, comments, and more people will subscribe to your channel long after you’ve published your videos.

Just like your Facebook and other social media platforms you’ll be able to use your YouTube content to get them to your site and keep them coming back for more.

Collect data for your sales and marketing automation

All your content marketing efforts and social media posts should all come down to this – collecting data for your sales and marketing automation. This is where most small businesses hit a dead end. They don’t know what to do with next, or they don’t have a system to capture all the data and use them to turn followers and subscribers into buying customers.

Small Business Dream offers a solution to take your fans and followers into that journey, whether it’s through sales funnels, landing pages, newsletters, drip mail, email series, and push notifications. We’ve covered every possible way to keep them interested after doing all the work of creating great content for your business. 

Conclusion

Content marketing doesn’t require a lot of resources aside from your time and creativity. Like any other skill set, you’ll get better with practice and gaining more experience. However, not all business owners have the time and commitment to produce high-quality content. We offer services which includes online and offline solutions to drive your message home.

If you need help, you can reach us and take advantage of our FREE Sales and Profitability consultation where we identify key aspects in your business to rapidly boost your sales. Come visit us at www.smallbizdream.com to learn more about our 5-step system to rapidly grow your sales and profits with less stress.

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The 4 Content Marketing Steps To Increase Sales

Content marketing is one of the most successful methods of customer engagement used by businesses for centuries. Although the buzz around content marketing is new, it’s been around way before we had the Internet or the very first website in 1991.

Content creation is probably the most challenging and time-consuming aspect of acquiring and maintaining customer engagement. Rules have changed quite a lot since Google Panda, which now favors quality, substance, and relevance over quantity.

This gives users a much better experience by providing them only the most relevant information from online searches, and, from the standpoint of online marketers, an incentive to create high quality, shareable content throughout the Internet.

 

Defining Your Target Audience

Content marketing revolves around the target audience, customers and clients, who are the main source of revenue for nearly all kinds of businesses.

Defining you target audience should always be the first priority before starting off with any business venture. Over time businesses may expand or evolve to include additional products or services which could also mean redefining the target audience in every stage of a company’s lifetime.

For a small brick-and-mortar business the target audience could be just the people within or around the city who might be interested with what the company has to offer. However if the brick-and-mortar business has an online component then it could include a national or even international audience.

 

Setting the Tone and Purpose of Your Content

When you’re absolutely certain about your target audience, the next step is to determine the purpose of creating content. Depending on which stage of the sales funnel you’re currently working on, you could also set a different purpose in creating your content. Some of these include:

•     To stimulate interest
•     To inform or educate
•     To entertain
•     To persuade

Content creation, to be most effective, should be a part of a larger system which works hand in hand with every aspect of the business instead of being a separate strategy on its own. Most sales funnels rely on a systematic approach to content creation to lead their clients from one stage to another.

During the initial stages of client acquisition, the purpose for creating content is usually to stimulate viewer’s interest.

Writing copy for landing pages is one great example of how content can be used to start a conversation with the clients. This may also include subscription to a free monthly newsletter or a quick survey for collecting relevant customer information.

Potential clients respond differently to different content. If they want to know more about the company, its products or services, your purpose should be to inform or educate the audience about the benefits and advantages of using or applying them, whether it’s in a form of free content, an informative blog post, infographic, or YouTube video.

The latter part which involves your prospects taking action requires a more persuasive form of content or writing. Content creators needs to be able to make the final push to lead conversion by conveying a sense of urgency and what they stand to lose for not taking action.

Following-up with your prospects is essential to lead conversion at this stage of the customer’s journey.

Being able to define the purpose of content creation allows businesses to accomplish their sales and marketing goals more efficiently.

 

Maintaining Interest

Holding viewer’s interest is the next important aspect of an effective content marketing strategy. It not only helps with lead conversion, but in the long run, it would also help increase the company’s visibility through online search or social media.

When creating content, keep the following characteristics in mind:

  • Usefulness – Viewing or reading content will use up some time from your target audience. Creating content that is useful is an incentive to spend more of their time viewing or reading them in the future.
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  • Relevance – What’s in it for them? Creating content that is on point to the viewers or readers is a sure way to keep an audience. This applies to email sequences where clients receive updates based on how they respond to a given call-to-action (CTA) or data gathered from subsequent surveys.
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  • Timeliness – Proper timing is also key to maintaining interest. Blog postings, for instance, should follow a certain schedule or pattern where readers could expect something new from time to time. This applies to any type of content whether it’s a YouTube v-log, new findings or research, press release, etc.

 

Improving Online Visibility

 Online content can be used to leverage your marketing efforts due to the fact that it can be viewed or shared across multiple channels. This is particularly true with high quality, shareable content.

Marketing experts have already developed some of the most effective ways to increase visibility through search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), email marketing, and social media.

Each method has its own ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ but for most startups with limited budgets, improving visibility can be achieved through social media and email marketing.

Some CRM services incorporate these two features to enable small businesses to communicate with their clients at very little or no expense at all. Link-building through SEO or paid inclusion in search engines through SEM, although quite effective in extending reach, could entail higher expenses.

 

A Better Alternative for Small Business Startups

 Having a good sales and marketing app that goes hand in hand with creating content that really speaks to your audience is by far the most reasonable, if not the only way of starting up and growing a small business.

Small Business Dream goes beyond by offering client acquisition tools through its survey creator and landing pages along with sales and marketing automation features. Find out how at www.smallbizdream.com.