Tips To Help DIY Stores Build Content In Just One Hour A Week
Being an owner or a manager of a DIY store means that you are probably time poor. You will be serving your customers, managing your staff and you may even need to get your hands dirty stacking those shelves! And that’s without even thinking about how you will market your business to attract new customers.
Do not worry... If you dedicate just an hour a week to ‘building’ (sorry for that) your content, you will find that you will engage customers and drive visits to your site and store.
“Why build content?” I hear you say… Try this analogy which will hopefully resonate with you…
If you’re building a shed, you don’t start from the roof and work your way down, that would be insane! You have to ensure that the ground is level and then you can build strong foundations.
Dedicate an hour a week to building your content (the foundations in our shed analogy) and you will be able to build out the rest of your marketing, such as social media and email, around it. If you just post things at random on your marketing channels, you’re basically putting a roof on a non-existent shed. Even worse than that if you’re not using marketing channels at all, you don’t have a shed to begin with!
Firstly, what is content marketing?
Content marketing, such as blog posts, articles and videos, are a great way to showcase your business’s expertise and provide useful information which your customers will find engaging. Post about how to build a shed, offer tips on how to put up blinds or you could even show everyone how to paint a bedroom.
So, let's look at how to get great content to your potential customers time-efficiently.
You may have a million things going on but if you have an project management board like Trello, or a content calendar spreadsheet, you can manage what needs to be written, when and who is doing it. Trello is a collaboration tool that organizes your projects into boards. In one glance,it tells you what's being worked on, who's responsible, and where something is in a process. Imagine a white board, filled with lists of sticky notes, with each note as a task for you and your team. This will greatly aid the creation of your content, its promotion , the delegation of tasks to your staff and it will keep everyone organised.
How it saves you time: You don’t need to spend time managing your content and chasing staff up, it can all be done through this tool by assigning tasks, setting deadlines and automatic reminders. You will notice you will become more organised for seasonal holidays such as Christmas etc, because you can plan your workload well in advance.
Do you find that posting out on social media at key times to your customers isn’t a convenient time for you? Don’t worry, with a social media management tool such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck and SproutSocial you can schedule posts to go out when you choose.
Be careful not to schedule repetitive tweets though as Twitter are clamping down on this and they will punish your account accordingly. You can find out more about their recent update here.
How it saves you time: Rather than having to remember to go on to your social networks each day to post out updates, you can pick a quiet time during the week (Friday afternoon perhaps) to schedule all your posts for the upcoming week at once, leaving you the rest of the week to get on with the day job.
Have you seen some great content by another DIY store that you like it? That’s great! Most businesses will cross over and there is no point trying to reinvent the wheel. If you see something you like then adapt it to suit your business objectives, products, services and “voice”. Just make sure you reuse the concepts only, don’t copy it word-for-word as this could impact on your search rankings.
Or, if you’re even struggling for time to do that, it doesn’t hurt to occasionally send your customers relevant articles from another company that they would find interesting. Just make sure you’re not linking to a competitor. It will still show that you are expert in your industry, keeping on top of updates and sharing valuable content with your customers.
How it saves you time: A fairly obvious one, but you don’t need to dedicate anytime to coming up with new ideas and inspiration. The foundations of your content are already done for you, it’s up to you to spend a few minutes putting your own spin on it.
A lot of what we have talked about above focuses on written articles, but imagery and videos are also types of content. You may not think what you do is particularly glamorous, but it can work really well in this format. Think about posting behind the scenes pictures of your products in action, or the build of a new extension for example. Also consider how you can use Facebook Live to post out very short videos to your following showing them how they can fix common household problems or insider tips for DIY projects.
How it saves you time: The creation of images and videos is something which you can integrate into your day job much more easily than writing articles. Next time you’re completing a job or are trialing a new product, reach for your phone and document what you’re doing to share the experience with your customers.
By following these simple steps and spending as little as an hour a week on building your shed, sorry content, you really could grow your audience by sharing your expertise. Most of your rivals will probably be producing content that is grabbing some of your potential customer’s attention so join in the conversation and promote your own expertise.
If you’re still struggling to find time to provide your customers with regular content, then take a look at our sponsored content service, where we can write engaging articles for you and promote it to our vast online audience.
For more tips and advice on how to market your DIY store, take a look at the following articles:
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