A content strategy is a roadmap for how you will use your written, visual, and audio content to reach your clients and achieve your small business goals. In this episode, we review the 3 essentials needed to create your content strategy.
We invite you to listen here on our website or from your favorite podcast player. Scroll below for episode summary and other resources.
Episode 14 Summary: Content Strategy 101
- Regardless of the specific set of social media and online marketing tools you plan to use to establish and grow your small business’ footprint and credibility online, you will need to have a content strategy. Your content strategy will vary based on factors like which social media platforms you use, if you are blogging or podcasting, if you’ll be utilizing email marketing, and your capabilities for photos, graphics, and video.
- Developing a solid content strategy is pretty involved and something we’ll dig much deeper into during future podcasts. But today we wanted to lay the groundwork as to the 3 essential pieces needed for building your content strategy for your small business.
- Those 3 essentials are:
- Determining the right mix of information that is both relevant and complementary to your ideal clients as well as your business
- Determining what type of content is needed or that works for each social media platform or online marketing tool you use
- Determining what content you can continually produce in-house or outsource the production of
- Your content mix needs to be more than saying, “Buy from me, buy from me!” all the time. Plus, even your promotional, “Buy from me!” content needs to be varied. Though there is a range of promotional content, with some being much more direct with the “buy” ask than others.
- Each social media platform or online marketing tool works best for certain kinds of content. It could be a factor of the correct image size or video size, it could be the length of a video, it could be a platform that accepts links or not accepts links, it could be a tool where long form content works great. Before you venture out with your updated content strategy, you want to make sure you’ve set yourself up for success. It’s easy to get pulled into a popular, hot, new tool or platform. But if you don’t have a way to regularly produce the kind of content needed for that tool or platform, it’s not going to be successful.
- Every business needs to plan to consistently produce some amount of original content. There absolutely can be uses for curated content – for example, local businesses might share another account’s post about an upcoming community event. But a 100% curated content presence is not going to move the needle. And by curated content, we mean content that is produced by someone else, that you post as part of your content strategy.
Episode 14 Takeaways:
Liz: Don’t be scared by the thought of creating content. It’s very doable and there are many ways to get it done.
Ronda: It’s two-fold. 1. Make sure you hit your 3 essentials, and 2. Make sure you can be consistent with your content strategy.
Resources: How to Choose the Best Social Media Platform for your Small Business episode, All About the Algorithm episode
Listen On: Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Spotify
Continue the Conversation:
Liz Jostes – LinkedIn, Website
Ronda VanBuren – LinkedIn, Website
Connect with Us:
Would you like to be our podcast guest? Or have a question or topic you’d like us to discuss? We’d love to hear from you!