How to Iron Out Your Content Marketing Strategy

Estimated read time: 3.5 minutes. Contains 650 words

Ever get excited about a new product or company, eagerly go find ’em online to learn more, start scanning their site or Facebook page, getting more excited about what you read and then — WHAM! — you notice that their latest updates are from more than two years ago. Wha wha whaaaa… Sadness. Disappointment. Questions!

A flood of thoughts come unbidden: Are they in business anymore? Do they not care about their product? Do they not care about their CUSTOMERS? What if I buy this and then need something? Will they be there? Will they care? If they can’t be bothered to keep their stuff up to date, what else can’t they be bothered to do?!

Phew. That’s a lot of assumptions from just seeing one old date on a post. From excitement to “they don’t care and won’t bother to talk to me” — all in the blink of an eye!

But it’s easily avoided. And as a small business owner, I know I want to clear away as many questions/hesitations as I can from potential new customers.

Keeping your small business’s online presence current is imperative for establishing customer trust. And the cheapest and easiest way to do that? With a Content Marketing Strategy, of course. A content market—what?! As a solopreneur, I hear that and think “I’m one person! I don’t have a time to come up with some kind of STRATEGY!!” But it’s actually way easier than it sounds. Lemme break it down:

Content

Well, that’s an easy one, right? It’s the stuff contained on sites. For those of you who might appreciate a more formal definition: Merriam-Webster defines content as “the principal substance (such as written matter, illustrations, or music) offered by a website.”

Marketing

Marketing is how we promote or sell our products/services, or “The process or technique of promoting, selling and distributing a product or service,” according to Merriam-Webster.

Strategy

Strategy is a plan or road map for doing something. Formally defined as “A careful plan or method… the art of devising or implying plans… toward a goal.”

“Content Marketing Strategy”

So a “Content Marketing Strategy” is a plan to get some promotion out by creating some online content.

One or two posts to a blog or Facebook… a couple of pics on Instagram… a couple of tweets and retweets on Twitter… Pretty easy, right?

While the process is super simple, keeping up with the constant need for content ideas isn’t as simple. After the first blush of ideas wears off, it can become increasingly more difficult to come up with ideas to write/post/share. Most of the people I’ve known throughout my 20 years in marketing have the same experience: they start strong, with lots of ideas “in the bank” to pull out as needed. Then, after about 6 months or one year, the ideas start to peter out. They get increasingly more frustrated and anxious about having to come up with things to post about.

The idea behind having a plan to keep your content fresh is one thing. Actually FILLING that that plan with original ideas is another. And that’s why we’ve decided to do something about it.

Groundwork and Bloggin’ Ninja are joining forces to bring together an amazing group of local content experts for “Content Camp 2020.”

On April 4-5 here at Groundwork in New Bedford, more than fifteen speakers, panelists, and staff are gathering for Content Camp 2020 to help South Coast small business owners and entrepreneurs develop their online social media content.

We’ll help you develop your Content Marketing Strategy and give you tons of tools to help you implement it. Before you know it, your calendar will be chock full of awesome ideas!

So if you’re a small business owner, entrepreneur, solopreneur or content creator of any kind, we’re putting on an event that you can’t miss.

Let’s tackle content together. Come join us for Content Camp 2020!

To buy tickets: http://bit.ly/content-camp-website

Author
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Noi Sabal

Chief Executive Ninja at Bloggin' Ninja

The daughter of a New York City ad man, Noi grew up breathing marketing. From her first job laying out newspaper ads, through her career as an editor in TV and commercials, and ultimately to national viral marketing campaigns, Noi has spent her life brainstorming creative ideas and helping companies sell their brands. Now she’s bottling her creativity and putting it into Bloggin’ Ninja, an online platform that helps small businesses develop, optimize and organize amazing content for digital marketing.