Looking for content marketing ideas for small businesses? Discover ten effective ways to use content to achieve your business goals.

Is there more to content marketing than just churning out blog posts and social media updates and hoping for the best?

The short answer is: YES!

To make the most out of this strategic digital marketing approach there are some content marketing ideas you should implement for your small business.

The following content marketing ideas for small businesses will help you effectively amplify your content marketing efforts to drive website traffic and reach more customers.

1. Produce High-Quality Content

Content marketing is not about creating content just for the sake of creating content.

The content should aim to attract your target audience and engage with them on a deeper level with the purpose of achieving your main business objectives.

One way to produce high-quality content is to create the types of content known to generate leads. These content types should be of high quality, relevant, and effective at nurturing the customer through the buying cycle.

Some common types of high-quality content to use for content marketing include the following:

• How-To Guides. A reader favorite providing actionable advice and instruction.
• Case Studies. An in-depth analysis covering how a product or service has solved problems in the past, detailing a specific scenario and showcasing proven results.
• Whitepapers and ebooks. Long-form content, an exhaustive examination of a topic in depth.

Content marketing is about creating content for a target audience, not content that pleases everyone. The content you produce should be inspired by what matters most to your specific target market. You can then build on this content depending on the level of interest received.

2. Interactive Content To Drive Engagement

Interactive content drives engagement on various social media platforms and nurtures leads through the buying cycle.

Producing content that tells a story or provides a solution to a problem with sharable, and easily digestible content is ideal for driving a higher level of engagement with your audience.

Here are a few ways to make content interactive:

Video content has been a very effective content marketing tool for several years. And more recently, the industry is moving toward more live video content due to the added value for customers.

Infographics are another type of content that can be highly interactive. Infographics increase content marketing efforts by providing information in a visual format. This content type offers content marketers the ability to display data and other crucial information alongside images to make it more digestible for readers.

Polls and surveys are good options to increase interactivity and capture more data. Some options to consider include short customer feedback surveys and product preference polls.

3. Work on Content-Driven Personalization

As content marketing continues to play a bigger role in the future of marketing, content marketers must also focus on content-driven personalization.

Content marketing works best when you target content to specific customer profiles and segmented audiences. By doing this, content becomes more relevant and valuable for those receiving it.

There are various ways to create content-driven personalization within a business content marketing strategy. When content is relevant to a customer it increases the chances of them engaging with that content.

• Conduct surveys or polls that allow you to collect pertinent data from potential customers
• Look for ways to use content personalization software
• Run A/B testing on content

In addition, content-driven personalization goes beyond content marketing efforts.

It is a good idea to personalize content for customers as they interact with your business on multiple channels and devices, such as on the website or through social media interactions. This improves the customer experience which promotes their return.

Customizing content for your audience has many benefits including:

• Improved brand awareness because the content is tailored for customers
• Customers will feel valued as if they are part of the brand
• Customers will feel special since the content is personalized to appeal to their particular needs, interests, or problems
• Increased customer satisfaction and loyalty

4. Go for Niche Content Marketing

As content marketing has proven to be an effective marketing strategy, many businesses continue to seek out options for implementation. The rise in content volume can make it more difficult for the content you produce to be noticed. Therefore, content marketers should focus their content marketing efforts on niche industries.

Content marketers who aim for niche content are able to produce higher quality content that nurtures customers through the entire customer journey. Niche content marketing also helps content marketers develop content that is more targeted and relevant to the audience, while at the same time increasing brand awareness and thought leadership.

A great way to find your niche content is to identify content gaps within your industry. This allows content marketers to cover a topic that otherwise may not have been covered or maybe covered very little.

You should also conduct content audits to find content gaps on your website and company blogs.

By finding your niche, you can become a thought leader in your industry—positioning you as a trustworthy source on the cutting edge of new developments.

5. Build Online Communities

It is human nature to seek out community.

If you can tap into this impulse by fostering a sense of community around your brand and content, you will build lasting relationships with customers.

You can work to build online communities in the way that you address your audience and through community platforms.

Social media presents an excellent opportunity to do this. The process might look something like this: you create a great piece of content, share it to Instagram, encourage conversation, and actively participate in it. Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit also present great free opportunities to connect with your audience and build a community around your brand.

If you choose to utilize this specific content marketing idea, make sure you are prepared to engage properly with your audience by addressing them with care, empathy, and friendliness.

6. More Social Media Lives, Videos, and Webinars

The world of video content is a great place to branch out into and put to use many of the content marketing ideas listed in this article.

Using the live function on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook is an excellent way to make your content interactive while also fostering an online community.

Ideas for live content include:

• Webinars
• Product reviews and demonstrations
• How-tos
• Tutorials
• Interviews with experts
• Q and As
• Mini-trainings
• Unboxings
• Podcasts

Lives present a unique opportunity to connect directly with your audience in a way that is highly accessible and interactive.

Videos and webinars are very popular options and for good reason. Both are very accessible to audiences. It is easy for a viewer to passively watch and listen to informative high-quality video-based content while they do other things.

If your content is engaging and conveys its message properly, then your message will stick with the viewer. This kind of content is also highly sharable making it easier to reach a broader audience.

7. Test and Tinker with AI and Augmented Reality

Artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality content is becoming more popular as content marketers work to embrace the latest content marketing trends.

These types of content are growing in popularity because they can be very engaging and, in some circumstances, they have a higher search engine ranking.

Content that uses artificial intelligence can be an excellent way to reach out to customers and consumers in a very approachable and relatable way. The content will likely feel more like a conversation between friends rather than content for content’s sake, which is what many people have come to expect from content marketing.

Augmented reality content is also growing in popularity because it allows marketers to engage with their audiences in a unique way. This content can be highly effective for brands that are attempting to sell products or services because it provides the content with an interactive element that many viewers enjoy.

8. Exert More SEO Effort

Even the best content may struggle to perform if search engine optimization (SEO) has not been considered.

Content marketers need to make sure content is properly optimized for search engines by using tags and keywords.

Be careful not to overdo it though. Keyword stuffing content is not a method that delivers results. Use keywords and tags to provide content with context and this will assist customers in finding what they are looking for.

So, performing effective keyword research is a must. To do this content marketers need to know what content is already ranking for, which keywords are converting the best, and how content can stack up against content that has already been optimized. Tools like BuzzSumo and Aherfs are great options for finding this information.

You may also consider using the topic cluster approach to maximize your SEO efforts. This strategy makes for very navigable and relevant content that makes use of internal/external linking and backlinking. Together this makes for more readable and useful content that ranks better on search engines.

9. Explore How Voice Search Works

You may be wondering why voice search is included in a list of content marketing ideas. The reason is not as enigmatic as you might think.

Google-driven voice searches are growing in number. One of the reasons for this is the proliferation of virtual assistants like Siri, Google Home, and Alexa. The increasing use of voice search means that keyword and content strategies need to take this into account.

When people perform a voice search it is usually in a longer conversational matter and their hands are usually busy with another task. To account for this Google provides the user with an answer box called a featured snippet. This snippet is a section from a page that Google has identified as best answering the voice search.

As you might imagine, the position as the featured snippet is a coveted location. Keep an eye out for ways to optimize your content for voice search.

10. User-Generated Content Offers Huge Advantages

While content marketing is usually the domain of content marketers, users are starting to get in on the trend.

User-generated content (UGC) can be an excellent source for content marketers. This content has a few notable advantages over content that has been created specifically for content marketers.

First, user-generated content tends to be in more natural language which means it is more likely to appear in voice search. UGC also tends to be taken more seriously by content consumers which means it is more informative and trustworthy.

User-generated content can come from anywhere content marketers should look for ways to harness this content for use in their marketing strategies. This could be through Facebook or other social media platforms, asking customers to contribute their content, or even through content mining.

Final Thoughts on Content Marketing Ideas

The content marketing world continues to grow as content becomes an integral part of all types of modern marketing. These content marketing ideas are just a few ways content marketers can keep their content relevant and effective in the fast-moving world of today.

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