The Content Suite
“Effective marketing can make it seem like you’re everywhere”
When you run a small business your time is usually spent doing whatever it is you do well, and any spare time goes into actually making the business run. Marketing is often the last thing on your mind, and seeing how many platforms and options are available to you to spread your message can be overwhelming.
You probably see slick videos on social media, blogs on websites, and photos, infographics and gorgeous images across various platforms. It’s tempting to think it’s all too hard, but with a little organisation and effort, you too can make it seem like you’re everywhere.
In the early days of content marketing and blogging, people thought that a well-written article about a certain topic would be enough to get them seen. These days, attention is split across multiple mediums and platforms. In order for your brand or products to be seen, whatever industry you’re in, you need a multi-pronged approach.
There are a few things that remain the same, regardless of the industry, and one of those things is that more content is needed now than ever before.
You’re probably less visible than you think
You’ve created the perfect Instagram post with well-thought-out composition? Most people will look at it for less than a second. You’ve written a detailed “complete guide” to your services? Few people will read to the end.
Humans are busy, we don’t actively consume all content that is thrown our way, so to stand out you need to be releasing a lot of content and increase the chance of being in front of customers at the right time.
Creating content can be resource-intensive, both financially and mentally. So to make the most of any content created it needs to be re-purposed as much as possible. That doesn’t mean just constantly post links to an article across LinkedIn and Facebook. With a little creativity and knowledge, a simple blog can become multiple videos, photos, infographics, and snippets to be shared across different platforms.
For every business or product, there should be a number of key messages or themes. The idea with this approach is to thread the same message throughout your suite of content, so while the content is modified for the platform on which it appears, the general theme is consistent throughout.
Here’s how…
1. Create Written Content
This usually takes the most time. You might need to research what your potential customers need, then figure out how to present it in a palatable way.
A good starting point is to think about a single, typical pain point for your customers and solve it for them. The goal of content marketing is to create content that is useful and interesting in and of itself, which builds brand recognition and trust over time.
Whether you’re in B2B or B2C, blogs and articles always need to be interesting and valuable to the reader (and not just a plug for the business).
2. Make it into a Video
With the amount of info being consumed via moving pictures these days, it’s safe to say that all written content can become videos in one form or another.
There are some amazing apps and software available now that let you overlay written text points on images or videos. These videos are great to share your key points on LinkedIn or Facebook and break up the newsfeed for people who may be scrolling through.
But even without fancy apps or programs, you can turn a blog into a video. Your phone has a powerful camera on it, so if you’re comfortable on screen just record yourself speaking about some of the points in the blog. You can then post the video with a link to your blog for more details.
Not comfortable on camera? Use the screen record feature on your phone to simply scroll through the blog. I’m assuming you’ve included some images and it looks good, and the combination of scrolling grabs attentions. Again, post the link to your blog for people to read the full blog.
From these ideas alone, you could produce more than ten videos about the content of your blog, even without filming the actual process. Ten can feel like overkill, but remember, people have their attention in a lot of places, so chances are, they won’t see or remember them majority of your content.
3. Create Images
If you’re a talented photographer or designer then you’ve got an advantage, but these days it’s only a very small advantage. As I mentioned above, making videos has become incredibly simple these days, so too has creating images.
You can make use of in-app filters, stickers, text and basic editing for social sharing (this is also true for videos), or use additional editing apps like Canva.
There are also some amazing sites with copyright-free images for use such as Pexels, Pixaby, Unsplash and Mixkit.co. Double-check the terms of use for the particular image (very occasionally they’re flagged as non-commercial) but once you’ve decided on what you like you can then use those images to enhance your work.
You can overlay quotes from your article to grab attention, then direct people to your blog for more info.
4. Explore Other Marketing Options
The above three points are the basics that can be put in place for every piece of content if you’re serious about getting your message out there.
Depending on what your message and business is, you may also want to create an infographic to illustrate your point, or even audio files to be distributed as podcasts or downloads.
Keep your mind open. If you created one blog on one topic, be open to the idea of a series that can then be bound together as an ebook. If you go down this path, you can re-purpose all the marketing collateral you created to promote the blog to then promote your download. If appropriate, use the download as a lead generation tool by requiring an email address to access it, and all of a sudden you’ve also grown your contact list.
It’s simple, but not easy
Whenever I talk or write about the idea of a content suite, it seems so obvious, but it’s rarely done well or completely. It is a reasonable amount of work, but it is worth the effort.
People take in information differently, so by providing access to your messages in written, picture and video form across multiple platforms, you increase the chance of actually being seen, and that makes good business sense.
