Content marketing is a great way of captivating and inspiring your ideal customers with information that they will find both engaging and useful. The aim of your content should be to inform and educate, rather than selling a product or service, and is most commonly seen in the form of articles, guides or videos. Providing this type of quality content will help to communicate your expertise, raise your business profile and improve your reputation within your local community, so you become the first choice when they’re ready to buy.
But how do you make the most of your content so that it is seen and read by as many as people as possible? Here are our top tips to achieve just that...
1) Share a link to your content on social media
Every time someone clicks on your link, they will be taken back to your content to read more. The more traffic that is driven to your article, the more exposure you will gain helping to raise awareness of your reputation and expertise in the local community.
LinkedIn is also a great social media platform to share your content further with the availability of the built-in tool Pulse. This allows you to write articles within LinkedIn with the aim of reaching and engaging more people. To find out more about creating content on LinkedIn, you can read our article here.
It’s also a good idea to craft an engaging post that encourages people to click the link. Examples include numbered posts (e.g. “Read our top 7 tips for a winning BBQ”) or questions (e.g. “How can you clean your home in under 30 minutes? Find out here”). The most important thing is that you keep your customers in mind, what their pain points are and how your content will help them. For more advice on improving social media engagement, read our article.
2) Communicate with your own database
Each time you have a new piece of content, why not send it out to every former customer, or better still include it in a regular newsletter that your customers look forward to every month? By using content marketing, you’ll always have a steady stream of articles to add to a monthly newsletter. This way, customers can expect and look forward to receiving your emails and will look to your business for practical tips and advice. This can help raise awareness of your expertise and increase the chances that they will use your business again in the future.
3) Include the link in your email signature
If you’re communicating with customers on a daily, weekly or even monthly basis, why not add a link to your content on to your email signature? Encourage any other employees to include it in theirs too so that your content is included on every email sent from your business. This way, you’re increasing the opportunity for your content to be seen and reach those interested in your business. How many extra people will your message reach with this simple trick?
4) Share your story with other community groups
Are you part of an industry body or do you have a local parish newsletter? If so, why not send your article into them for consideration for publication. They’re always looking for quality content to fill spaces so an article targeting local people will more than likely be of interest to them.
Don’t forget about your local newspaper too. If you’ve got some tips that’s going to help the local community they can consider publishing it in the paper and on their news site. Check out our advice on how to write articles for editors for the best chance of publication. If you’re struggling to produce content yourself, many can provide services to produce this for you using the editorial skills of their reporters, like our own sponsored content service.
It’s important for your local business to be seen as informative and interesting not only by your customers, but also by your local community as it helps to establish you as a reputable source of information in the area.
By sharing your content in as many different ways as you can, you increase the chances of it getting seen by your ideal customers - plus, you also get more bang for your buck! Make your content work as hard as possible to communicate your professionalism as a reputable business and you’ll soon be reaping the rewards!
For more information on improving your reputation and engaging customers, read these articles:
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