If you promote your business online, you have probably utilised some form of content marketing, without even realising it. Your website, company blog and social media pages leverage content to interact with your audience.

A huge amount of content is created every day, and consumers have endless options to access the same content. While search engine optimisation can still work for generating traffic to your site, it is increasingly difficult to rank on top for every relevant keyword and stay ahead of your competition.

Staying ahead of competition

To cut through the clutter on the internet, your brand must offer original, credible and engaging content to your audience and potential customers. Unless you create interesting and useful content to promote for millions browsing the web daily, your online business will remain virtually invisible.

Contrary to popular belief, content marketing is not about creating a blog post, a web page or social media post that is an obvious advertisement for your product or service. You have to do more than just wave a sign saying, “Buy me!”

Educational content

Talking about your product or service while educating users through interesting or informative content (that they would willingly consume) would make your potential customer spend more time on your site and most likely, visit again. The likelihood of your content being shared with others on social media increases as well, thereby attracting even more website visitors.

Just like it’s crucial that your content is shared, you must share others’ content as well. Try to keep yourself updated about what’s trending in the industry and share your views about the same.

Leveraging Social Media to Promote Business Online

Networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn can bring you closer to an endless number of potential customers for your business. Just be sure that your business profile is complete by adding company information, photos, and other details that may be important for customers to get to know you.

Once you create informative and entertaining articles or blog posts, don’t forget to share them on your company page. People will begin to take notice as long as the information is relevant and timely, but it won’t happen right away. Combining content marketing with social media takes consistency and patience.

Persistence is the key

As a word of caution, do not use your account to hard sell your product or service. Sooner or later, your audience will realise this and will show little or no interest in the content you put out.

An effective content marketing campaign never ends; it is an ongoing endeavour towards getting better at engaging with your consumers. If you don’t publish new content regularly, your business will soon be forgotten.

Make a schedule

Often, a business owner has to divvy up time between running the regular business operations and creating new content. While both need to be done, don’t feel overwhelmed.

Many companies set aside a few hours a day or week to content creation and publishing. Others either outsource the work or hire someone to work dedicatedly towards the company’s content marketing efforts.

Parting Words

Content marketing is an investment of time and money- resources many small businesses cannot afford to spare. Over time, however, creating new, original and valuable content that attracts and engages the audience, helps your business stand out and achieve its marketing goals.

To know more about creating successful branded content to promote your online business, click here.