Recently, I have been playing this matching game on my phone. They dump random items in a pile, and you must match them. They’re all different shapes, sizes, and categories. It got me thinking about my approach to playing this game. It would help me understand how my audience is reacting to my content. My approach to this game is to look for the large items first. Things that I know I can get out of the way quickly. Second, I look for things with the same colors. If there are a lot of items on the board, I might start creating piles of items with the same color. If there are not a lot of items, I might randomly look for those specific colors, and I keep narrowing down the pile until I get to the items that are harder to see and match. So, how can that help you with your content marketing? Understanding how your audience sees, reacts, and categorizes your content can help you make content that will resonate more effectively with them.
No matter what your small business sells, you have a lot of options for your marketing. But have you ever thought about Pinterest as a marketing channel?
Do you think that Pinterest is just for people to post recipes and crafts? Yes, it is used for a lot of that type of content. But that is not all that is pinned on that site. Did you know that the site is the 3rd largest social media platform globally with 322 million users?
You can take advantage of this large audience for your business marketing, particularly if your core audience is female with disposable income. You can use Pinterest for product marketing, but it is also ripe for your content marketing initiatives. Here are some ideas for you to try:
Pin links to each of your product pages
Create boards for each of your product categories
Create ‘how-to’ content on your website and pin those on Pinterest
Interact! Follow boards that are relevant to your business or influencers in your industry. Respond to comments on your pins.
Pin content from third-party sites that backlink to your site
If you are using Pinterest a lot, add your Pin code to printed marketing materials (brochures, business cards)
Add Pinterest save buttons to your website
There are a few things you will want to think about when using Pinterest:
Have a plan. Don’t just create an account without having an idea of what your content plan will be. Lay out your goals for your account just like you would any other channel.
Google does search Pinterest for content, so make sure you are aligning to your SEO goals and using keywords in your pin titles and descriptions
If you are linking to your website, make sure you are using ‘pin-worthy’ high quality images
Don’t forget to measure your results!
Do you use Pinterest as part of your marketing strategy? Add your tips in the comments!
Business owners talk to their customers all the time, right? Well…not always.
I am continually surprised by how many large companies do not respond to their customer or potential customers on social media. WHY? If a customer walked into your store or called you on the phone, would you ignore them? I would hope not! If you are not going to engage with your audience on social media, then maybe that is not the right channel for you to communicate.
Don’t be like those big companies. You are in a unique situation as a small business to engage with your customers at a personal level.
Here are some common queries that customers ask and how to respond to them:
Logistical questions: What time are you open? Do you carry a certain product?
Response: Always, always answer these type of questions. As quickly as possible. If you use Facebook, you can even set up standard responses. Or develop a list of answers to common questions so you can easily respond to your customers. These are no-brainers.
Compliments: They love your products, had a great experience with an associate or want to share your generosity.
Response: Some businesses think they don’t need to respond to these type of messages. But that is wrong. By responding (particularly to a public comment), you elevate these brand-boosting messages. If it is a really good comment, you might even think about asking the person who made it if you could use their comment (or image) in your marketing. This is called UCG, user generated content.
Complaints: They had a bad experience with you, your staff or your products.
Response: It may not be comfortable, but you need to acknowledge complaints. Do not just leave them hanging out there without responding. Show empathy. Make it right (if you can). There is no excuse for not responding to a complaint, particularly when it is public. Responding shows everyone else that you are paying attention and make things right if there is a problem.
Does it matter if the messages are direct to you or public comments? In most cases, no. If you don’t respond to public comments and questions, everyone will see that you are not engaged with your customers. If you don’t respond to direct messages, you are ignoring customers who are actively seeking you out. They took the time to find you online to ask a question. You should take the time to respond.
Have more questions about engaging with your customers, contact me for a free 30-minute get acquainted call.
These days we are all moving a million miles an hour. For small business owners, you don’t have time to worry about creating a ton of content to feed your various marketing channels. Between social media, your website, possible newspaper or magazine ads…it can be a full-time job. And if you don’t have a full-time creative team, you need to find ways to make the most of the content you are creating. And how in the heck to find more great content?
There are ways to get the most bang for your content so that you can spend more time running your business and less time tracking down and creating valuable content.
FOCUS
What is the use in creating content that won’t resonate with the correct audience? As a small business owner, you should know who your customers are. What do they like? What are their pain points? What makes them happy? How do they get their information? Are they digital savvy or prefer traditional media? Large organizations with full marketing teams often create personas for their target audience. If you don’t have the resources to go through this exercise, one good way to know is to just ask your customers. Use this information to help you focus your content – the topics, the channels, and the design.
OPTIMIZE
You have spent the time to make sure that the content you are sharing will appeal to your audience, that is it on brand, accurate and looks good. Then what do you do with it? Throw it on your website? Create a social media post to promote it? Send it out in an email? You have to think about what surrounds your content. If it is on your website, are you putting alt tags on your images? Are you using keywords to help with SEO? For social media, are you using hashtags that will help your content get seen by more eyeballs? For email, make sure your subject lines make your customers want to open your communication.
CHUNK IT
The best part of different types of content is the ability to take large amounts of content and chunk it up into smaller pieces. Did you write a blog post (like this one!)? Take different pieces and parts to make into graphics or separate social media posts. If you have a whitepaper, use the various graphics within the document to create a one-page infographic. Take one fact in an article and create a podcast or quick video on that one particular topic.
MEASURE
Just producing content doesn’t mean that it is good content. An essential step that many people miss is to go back and track the content that they publish. Do you even know how many people interacted with your content? Are infographics getting more traffic than long articles? Are you getting more traction from Twitter than Facebook? There are a lot of tools that can be purchased that would give you a full picture of your analytics, but you can do enough using the native platforms, whether that be social media or your website platform.
RECYCLE
It is not only good for the planet, but it is also good for your content. After you have measured the content you have published, make sure to re-share the best evergreen content again. Share it on another platform. Or tweak it slightly and share on the same platform. With the way social media moves these days, only a small percentage of people actually see your content the first time. (Yes, this is sad but true, fact.) For example, I typically recreate my blog posts on LinkedIn and include a link back to my website.
All of this can be overwhelming, but good content marketing will be noticed by your customers. And it will pay off when people become more loyal to your business because you are providing information that they find valuable.
Whether you have a large marketing team and create a lot of content or a single person who does all of the work and has to prioritize content creation, there are several ways that you can use all of that great content in new ways. Be sure that the content you choose to repurpose is evergreen (timeless) and was well-received the first time your shared it.
Break it up. Do you have white papers or long form presentations that can be broken up to social media size nuggets? People often have short attention spans on social media and breaking up your larger content can be an easy way to create a lot of different social media posts.
Visualize differently. There are so many different ways to visualize content. Infographics, text blocks, video, GIFs, lists and more. Find the right ways to show your content (not all content works with all visual styles), pair with your ‘break it up’ method and you have a whole week or month’s worth of content.
Change the channel. Have you traditionally posted on Facebook and Twitter? How about trying a podcast? Or start a blog. Take some of that great content that you have created in the past and post it in a place or in a way that people may not have seen before.
Bundle it. Just like you can take long form content and break it up, you can take short form content and bundle it to create a new experience for your followers. Create a whitepaper from a group of social media posts that have a similar theme. (And don’t forget to collect user data before letting them download your paper!)
Spread the love. Stretch the life of your content by asking your employees or loyal customers to share on their personal social media accounts. Sometimes you just need to push your posts directly to people who would be willing to share it. You can’t rely on them seeing it natively on social media.
No matter how you use your content remember to never use it only once!
OPTIMIZE
CHUNK IT
MEASURE
RECYCLE