Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Angela Ash, a professional content writer and editor, with a myriad of experience in all forms of content management, SEO, proofreading, outreach and entrepreneurship. She currently works with Flow SEO, a boutique agency founded by Viola Eva, that offers in-depth SEO analysis, custom SEO strategies and implementation.
If you are just starting out, it is important to make a growth plan. Your strategy doesn’t necessarily have to be complex at first. Start small, think big! This is exactly how Beekeeper has grown, introducing their communication software for frontline employees in a number of innovative ways.
The most important thing to keep in mind when growing a business is – content! Observe it as your business presentation. After all, your audience will get to know your business based on what you serve it.
That being said, a SEO-optimized, mobile-friendly website is an absolute must. Next on, publish most of the content types that are popular among your audience.
The First Step: Knowing Your Audience
When deciding the content type(s), make sure you’ve already taken your time analyzing your audience. Use segmentation insights and do some research based on demographics.
E.g., if your audience is mostly comprises of millenials, they are more likely to be Instagram fans than Twitter fans, and so on.
From there, build your content marketing strategy for, make no mistake, marketing content from say one is what will make your audience steadily grow.
Popular Content Types
Most popular content types, depending on the demographics, include:
- Blog posts
- Infographics
- Social Media Posts
- Videos
- Ebooks
Blog Posts
Blog posts are the most common content type, and usually the first choice for new businesses. It’s not difficult to see why: they are the easiest content type to write and can be customized to include images and links.
However, that doesn’t mean that just any blog post is a good blog post. In order for a blog post to be effective and appealing to the audience, it needs to be written professionally (not rewritten!), reliable and trustworthy.
Once you establish yourself as an expert in the field, your audience will not look elsewhere for content.
To do that, you’ll also need to publish new posts regularly. “Regularly” means one thing for large businesses and another for one-person blog teams, so let’s go with the slowest frequency – one blog post per week.
Mind the word count, too. Always adhere to Google’s policies, which currently stand at between 1,000 and 2,000 words.
Infographics
Infographics are great for businesses dealing with data, statistics or figures in any form.
They help people follow the content and visualize the stats, similarly to images in handbooks helping students memorize things faster. Furthermore, they are ideal to utilize in your email marketing campaigns.
Social Media Posts
Social media doesn’t need a particular introduction, as it is “the where” of all the action nowadays. You know the popular saying: “If it isn’t on Facebook, it didn’t happen?” For good or for bad, it’s true.
In order for a business to grow an audience, it must be active on social media channels (not necessarily all of them, but certainly on those their audience prefers).
That means – every new blog post or image that is added to the website should be advertised on social media. The more shares it gets, the more people will see it. It’s that simple.
Videos
Do you know anyone who doesn’t like video content? Neither do we!
As a matter of fact, HubSpot has discovered that videos are 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than any other content type.
Everyone loves watching this or that, and many people are fond of binge watching, too. That’s why sharing videos is always a good idea, but keep in mind that producing videos takes time.
Every video should be posted on YouTube first and then shared on other social media channels.
Ebooks
Finally, ebooks are a great way to advertise your business while expanding on popular topics. Ebooks may be linked from your webpage or sent to your audience via email. In any case, they should contain your business contact info.
Since ebooks are a longer written form than other types of content, they should be slower in coming, which will allow you to take your time writing them.
Just remember to market all new content on social media and send email marketing campaigns on a regular basis, and your business will start attracting a larger audience in no time!
