Succeeding in business takes perseverance, planning, and adaptability. Perhaps your "tried and true" marketing strategy has lost its effectiveness over the years, but you’re unclear what to prioritize, why, or how. Here’s where to start.
We've compiled three content marketing strategies to help grow your small business in 2022, covering the importance of blogging, the power of well-produced audio podcasts and videos (content's reigning monarchs), understanding the importance of SEO, optimizing your website for accessibility, and capitalizing on the ripple effects of social networks.
Lastly, we’ll point you at some simple online solutions that anyone can employ.
In This Article:
Create Good Content
Sounds simple, yet surprisingly, many small businesses don’t prioritize content creation as part of their business and marketing strategy. How will the world know about your game-changing product if they don’t understand what it does or how it works? Or, they simply can't find you.
Aside from your product or service, your content sets a tone that becomes identifiable as your brand. Concise, informative, and factual content, optimized for search engines is how people will discover you on the vast worldwide web.
Start with a blog on a topic of your own expertise, something relevant, or newsworthy. Write actionable, attention grabbing headlines that instigate a click through. The best content will generate leads, increase brand awareness, or help position you as a credible thought leader in your industry.
Don't forget to repurpose your blog content in social media posts, and email newsletters to reinforce your brand, and messaging.
If you’re serious about your marketing goals in 2022, start with a comprehensive and well-researched action plan for generating content that entertains, informs — or delights.
Video and Audio Content
If you haven’t already, it's time to set up a YouTube or TikTok channel and get busy with some “movie making.” Videos are now the best way to engage your audience — as long as it's entertaining or informative. And, remember, keep it brief.
The days of the long-form video are nearly long-gone (except on YouTube). Why? People are starved for time and need you to get to the point quickly. We want our info bite sized and easily digestible.
Moreover, as a marketing tool, watching a video is a less intimidating way for a prospective customer to interact with your product or service. A "how-to" video may expedite the decision-making process when a consumer wants to learn more, but can’t test a product on their own.
If your video proves your mousetrap is the better mousetrap (in less than three minutes), chances are it will end up in their shopping cart.
Additionally, use your new video skills to build buzz for online webinars, or live streaming events – like product releases or grand openings. Capitalize on the power of social audience participation, and re-use this content in future posts or email campaigns.
Podcasts
Are you podcasting? This is another terrific way to engage an audience, especially if your product or service is niche. While a podcast can be seemingly easy to make, you’ll want to take time to script and produce yours to build and retain an audience.
Invest in good audio equipment — if you're using your computer microphone and the neighbor is leaf blowing, your audience won't stick around til the end, no matter how good the information is.
Moreover, podcasts help reach an audience who might not be able to watch a video, like daily commuters on their drive to and from work. It's the next best thing to video, which is the next best thing to being there in person.
Ask Your Audience for Content
Don't be shy! Ask your audience for content and let the customer tell their story, then make it your story. Authentic scenarios showcasing how your product fulfilled a need, will go a long way towards building a loyal customer base.
User-generated content (UGC) is a fantastic way to engage with your followers — and turns you into an influencer. Ask your fans, or satisfied customers to provide video (or audio) testimonials about how your business, product, or service helped them personally or professionally.
These kinds of authentic reviews and testimonials capitalize on the power of social media’s ripple effects.
Up Your Social Media Game
If you’re not posting relevant, entertaining, or newsworthy content to your social media platforms daily, you’re missing out on a lot of potential eyeballs. Why? Companies who are consistent sources of time-sensitive or problem-solving information get noticed and remembered — and their content gets liked and shared.
In the daily onslaught of information, it’s hard to find something truly worthy of a few moments of precious time. Ensure your social media content engages and informs your audience — because there’s already a plethora of ways to waste one’s time on the internet.
Consider creating audience-specific “rooms” for people to gather and exchange information and ideas online, interact with their digital colleagues, or speak directly with a social media moderator — or you — the influencer. Facetime takes the “Ghost out of the machine” and gives your company, or brand, a human presence.
Lastly, keep in mind, your social presence isn’t always about selling — become a storyteller too and give your audience something other than the "sales pitch" day after day.
Optimize Your Website
Video and audio are the reigning queens and kings of content, but you shouldn’t overlook your new, or evergreen content. Here are several tips for optimizing your website — not just for content marketing, but for recently mandated accessibility laws.
Build Accessibility Into Your Website
Website accessibility compliance is no longer an option, it’s the law. This recently enacted regulation takes auditory, cognitive, physical, visual, and speech needs into consideration, and whether people with disabilities can access your website under a variety of conditions.
If you’re building a new website, or you have an existing website but you’re not sure how to make it compliant, there are several free accessibility tools to test for numerous accessibility issues. Prioritize optimizing your website for accessibility compliance in 2022 to avoid costly legal actions.
Improve Your Website’s SEO
SEO, short for search engine optimization, is perhaps the most bandied about term on the internet. But, there’s a big reason this three-letter acronym gets a lot of love from marketers — SEO improves your online presence by pairing germane content with what people are looking for.
Now that SEO is less of an art form and more a science, businesses employing these content-enhancing techniques have a higher likelihood of finding, attracting, and retaining their target audience.
Why? Users trust search engines, with most clicking on the links appearing in the top five search results on the page. When your business is found on a search engine like Google, Bing, or Yahoo, using your SEO search term, it's called an organic result - meaning, it's not an ad or paid placement. High ranking organic search results lend legitimacy to your business.
Cloud-based applications, like SEMRush and others, provide a suite of SEO tools that takes the tedium out of search term research, while providing a snapshot of your business’s performance (e.g. rankings) against your competition. Here’s where to mine for SEO ranking opportunities not just locally, but globally.
Integrate Voice Search Technology Into Your Website
By now, almost everyone is good friends with Alexa and Siri, so much so, websites and social platforms are getting in on the act too. Voice search is a natural experience with near-complete adoption in the mobile space. Optimizing for voice search accessibility across your online universe will put you ahead of the competition.
This where having a tight SEO ship can position your business for high-ranking search results. By the year 2023, it’s estimated that eight billion people will use a digital assistant to search the web, mostly from a mobile device.
With that many people carrying their mobile devices with them at all times, it makes sense to simplify how they can find and access your site — any time, anywhere.
That's eight billion people, with a B. Use these marketing tips to help them find you.
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