You can follow all of the best practices, copy the biggest brands in your industry, and still spend a lot of money on content that barely generates an ROI.<\/p>\n
In this article, we\u2019ll look at potentially more profitable and effective content marketing strategies for small businesses<\/strong>.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll also show you how to use SEO tools to find the best content ideas and how you can develop an affordable content marketing strategy.<\/p>\n Generally speaking, the same content marketing rules apply to small businesses that apply to larger companies.<\/p>\n The biggest difference is that you have less room for error and a shorter timeframe to generate value. While larger businesses can throw money at every strategy imaginable and hope some of them work, smaller companies have to be more calculated and maximise every minute of time, every resource and every investment.<\/p>\n The key to developing a profitable content marketing strategy is to plan your approach before you spend anything on content production<\/strong>, and base your plan on evidence instead of gut feeling.<\/p>\n The first step of any content marketing plan is to identify your target audience(s). Draw up detailed customer profiles of the people you want to engage with your content \u2013 including their interests, pain points, motivators, demographics, and anything else relevant to the task.<\/p>\n You can begin this process with a few simple questions:<\/p>\n Tip:<\/strong> As Google\u2019s algorithm becomes more sophisticated, user search queries are getting longer and more specific<\/a>. As specificity increases, commercial intent<\/a> is also intensifying \u2013 so delve as deep as you can into the interests, problems, and needs of your target audiences.<\/p>\n Once the audience profiles have some level of detail to build your content strategy around, you need to answer the following four questions:<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t have some degree of consistency and detail in your audience profiles or lack clear answers to all four of the questions above, investing money in content production risks wasting valuable budget or focusing efforts in the wrong areas.<\/p>\n Now that you know what kind of content to create and who you\u2019re creating it for, you\u2019ll want to draw up a list of topics and title ideas.<\/p>\n For this, it helps to have a good mix of data-driven research tools to identify the best content opportunities. This stage, like all others, requires gathering evidence, and we do this by collecting the right type of data that\u2019s useful for the task at hand.<\/p>\n Keyword research tools are the first place to look for content ideas. For example, you can use Seobility\u2019s free Keyword Research Tool<\/a> to start drawing up your first keyword list.<\/p>\n This tool allows you to search for keywords and content ideas based on your primary topics. The suggestions include insights for relevance, search volumes, competition and more \u2013 so you can identify high-impact content opportunities to start with. You can make three free searches a day without registration. And if you need more, you can sign up here for a 14-day free trial of Seobility Premium<\/a>, which allows you to make up to 50 searches per day.<\/p>\n Trend monitoring tools will help you keep track of interest in topics and identify new topics as they emerge. This is great for checking that your priority keywords and content ideas are still generating enough interest. Trend monitoring tools are also useful for identifying new content ideas that are gaining traction \u2013 before everyone else starts optimising for them.<\/p>\n Google Trends<\/a> is a free, powerful trend monitoring tool and you can get even more insights from adding other data sources from paid options like Exploding Topics<\/a>.<\/p>\n Analysing your competitors\u2019 content strategy helps you make sure you\u2019re not missing anything important: keywords, topics, content formats, etc. It also gives you the chance to identify weaknesses and holes in their strategy that you can take advantage of.<\/p>\n The \u201cURL \/ Domain\u201d analysis in Seobility\u2019s keyword research tool helps you find high-performing keywords that your rivals are ranking for:<\/p>\n Crucially, competitor analysis also helps you set the benchmark for quality in terms of what it will take to beat your biggest search rivals. You want to focus on doing one thing to the fullest each time, rather than attempting lots of low-impact, limited-value content items at once. Since you are looking to disrupt existing ranking\/performing content, you need to aim to provide the most valuable and complete content, suited to the specific audience types you\u2019ve identified, in the most appealing and intuitive formats.<\/p>\n So before you start working on a piece of content, always take a close look at the top-ranking results for that keyword. Take note of the format\/angle of the content, the subtopics covered, the media included, etc., and think about how you can make your own content even more helpful and valuable to searchers.<\/p>\n Social media is a great place to get content ideas from, too. The only problem is that manually searching for ideas is time consuming and you don\u2019t get any data insights to help you identify the best opportunities.<\/p>\n However, if you use a social listening platform like Brandwatch<\/a>, you can keep track of online conversations across social and other platforms, including review sites, forums and other conversation channels. Other tools are also available, including some free options, although they have limitations.<\/p>\n If you prefer to undertake a combination of manual and automated actions, you may wish to search for specific #hashtags on platforms like Twitter, for example, to get an initial understanding of the type of results you\u2019ll receive and the posts being published. You can also look at sites like Quora, which are predominantly question and answer forums, to see content that users are engaging with, as well as the volume and variation of response types, to understand audience sentiment on these topics directly.<\/p>\n You can also get a lot of content ideas from Google Search itself. To start with, Google\u2019s search query prediction offers up suggestions for any search term you start typing in.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say we wanted to expand on this article and we typed \u201ccontent marketing ideas\u201d into Google (above). Immediately, the automatic query completion suggests content ideas for specific industries. We could create a series of posts exploring content marketing ideas for real estate, restaurants, healthcare, etc. This is another example of using evidence (in this case, Google search data and predictive search) to inform and guide your content marketing decisions throughout the process.<\/p>\n Note:<\/strong> With Seobility\u2019s keyword research tool you can also view Google Autocomplete suggestions, along with important data such as monthly search volume.<\/p>\n The \u201cPeople also ask\u201d section is another great place to get content ideas from Google Search. Most results pages include this SERP<\/a> feature, and clicking on any of the questions expands the list to show even more questions.<\/p>\n You can also click through to results pages for each question as the search term, which includes another \u201cPeople also ask\u201d section. Basically, you can repeat this infinitely until you stop getting useful content ideas.<\/p>\n This form of evidence is fantastic for understanding and addressing (with your content) the range of wants, needs, and pain points that your audience cares about.<\/p>\n The final SERP feature that can consistently supply content ideas is the \u201cRelated search\u201d section, which is normally displayed at the bottom of the results pages for related search queries.<\/p>\n This section usually includes a row of related topics and images that you can click on to explore Image search. You should also see a list of related search queries that you can click on to view relevant results pages.<\/p>\n Remember, at the start of every search query is a person looking for help to find the most suitable solution for their search needs. You want your business to be at the forefront of answering this need in the most complete and useful way possible for your key audience types. Related searches can provide valuable additional insights to achieve this.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve identified the best content marketing opportunities, it\u2019s time to implement them as working strategies.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s look at some of the most important approaches for small businesses.<\/p>\n E-E-A-T<\/a> is an acronym used by Google to help its quality team rate its search results and the pages\/content it ranks for queries.<\/p>\n The acronym stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust.<\/p>\n In Google\u2019s quality guidelines (PDF)<\/a>, the search giant asks raters to assess these four characteristics as follows:<\/p>\n Note that Google repeats the phrase \u201cfor the topic\u201d in reference to experience, expertise and authority. This highlights the importance of E-E-A-T and topical relevance for every individual piece of content you publish.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t have the experience, expertise and authority to cover a particular topic, you shouldn\u2019t be publishing content on it. If you\u2019re expanding into a new topic, product or service area, it\u2019s important for you to comprehensively showcase your knowledge and value to your audience and support this with trust signals as you build your experience in the new topic.<\/p>\n On the other hand, if you do have the necessary characteristics to publish content on a given topic, then you need to demonstrate it using the following approaches.<\/p>\n Google is placing more emphasis on experience, expertise, authority and trust every year, especially now that AI content tools are going mainstream. The search giant rewards content written by experts over generic or light content that offers nothing more than the basics.<\/p>\n Fore more information, check out this guide on how to optimize each element of E-E-A-T<\/a> on the Seobility blog.<\/p>\n Topic clusters are a relatively new content marketing strategy that optimises for today\u2019s longer and more specific search queries. Essentially, you create one piece of \u201cpillar content<\/a>\u201d for each of your most important topics and keywords. Then, you create \u201ccluster\u201d pieces covering sub-topics, related topics, long tail keywords<\/a>, FAQs and other relevant content opportunities.<\/p>\n The pillar content should provide well-rounded coverage of the topic as a whole, with the cluster pages going into more detail on specific subtopics. Crucially, the pillar page should link to each cluster page with internal links, including descriptive anchor text<\/a> with the relevant keyword(s).<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve created your topic clusters, it\u2019s important to keep each piece of content up to date. Regularly update your pillar content to include the latest information and do the same for your cluster pages, adding new cluster pages for any sub-topics that emerge, such as new trends or technologies.<\/p>\n Run a content audit every year to make sure your content is up to date and check for multiple pages competing for the same keywords. It\u2019s particularly important that you only have one page ranking for your most important keywords to avoid cannibalisation<\/a>.<\/p>\n You can use Seobility\u2019s website audit tool<\/a> to check your website for content-related issues such as pages competing for the same keywords.<\/p>\n What steps should you take if you discover that you do have more than one page of content optimised for the same keyword?<\/p>\n In this scenario, you want to merge the multiple pages into one piece of content and update it to make sure all of the information is accurate. You may need to reformat the combined content to make it more readable and remove any repetition that may have existed between the original, separate pieces.<\/p>\n Annual audits will take care of any major issues, but you may need to update certain pieces of content more regularly, especially if major events or changes in your industry need to be addressed.<\/p>\n Content marketing doesn\u2019t always get enough attention in local SEO strategies. However, it\u2019s important to send as many local signals to search engines as possible if you want to rank for relevant queries as people search in the nearby area.<\/p>\n As a first step in a local SEO strategy, make sure you\u2019ve got the following essentials covered.<\/p>\n When these essentials are covered, it\u2019s time to think about your Google Business Profile<\/a> \u2013 arguably, the most important channel in your local search strategy. Now, you may not think of your Business Profile as a content marketing channel, but there are several key roles it can play.<\/p>\n Most importantly, the image gallery in your Business Profile is crucial for showcasing the best side of your business. For some businesses, this is vital. For example, restaurants have a lot to gain by showing off their best food, pictures of the menu, images of the interior and visual content that will encourage people to make a booking.<\/strong><\/p>\n Take full advantage of this to show the aspects of your business that will attract customers.<\/p>\n Likewise, you can add video clips to your Business Profile. This opens up a range of opportunities, depending on the nature of your business. Restaurants can show clips of food being prepared or served, retailers can show time lapses of products being delivered to customers and barbershops can show before and after videos or the latest styles.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll talk about video content strategies for small businesses in the next section.<\/p>\n First, though, we have to talk about the content opportunities in Google Business Profile that allow you to interact with customers. Customer reviews are the obvious example and it\u2019s important to build a profile of positive feedback. However, it\u2019s also important to interact with customers who leave reviews \u2013 either by thanking them for the positive review and\/or addressing any issues they raise.<\/p>\n Your Google Business Profile also allows people to ask questions about your business, such as whether you provide certain services or facilities (such as wheelchair access). Like reviews, these questions are shown on your profile for public viewing, so it\u2019s important to interact with people and answer their questions.<\/p>\n Keep in mind that other people can also answer these questions \u2013 so get in there first and respond quickly.<\/p>\n Finally, Google also allows you to publish posts on your Business Profile<\/a>. This is designed to help you post announcements, updates and other important information for customers and potential customers. Posts can include text, photos and video content, so use this channel to engage with local searchers.<\/p>\n Producing video content can be incredibly expensive, but small businesses can get involved without breaking the bank. In the social age, modern consumers want authenticity from companies<\/a> and they\u2019re interested in seeing the human imperfections behind the scenes \u2013 something you can use to your advantage.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t have the budget to seriously invest in video marketing, get your smartphone out and start making things happen for yourself.<\/p>\n Create personal video content<\/strong> that lifts the lid on your business and shows the human side of how you operate. Make your customers the stars, or the staff who run your businesses on a day-to-day basis.<\/p>\n Even for major brands like GAP, personal and authentic video content is what puts them in the top YouTube Shorts for 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, we can\u2019t provide examples for every business type, but the ideas below can hopefully provide some inspiration.<\/p>\n If you make video content that\u2019s personal and authentic, audiences won\u2019t care that you\u2019re not using the best camera equipment. Editing is the biggest challenge on a low budget, but there are plenty of video editing tools<\/a> designed for beginners or for creating short clips for social media.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t need to go to film school or master Adobe Premiere to get started with video marketing.<\/p>\n Another great place to start creating engaging and interactive video content is through tools like Visme. Its cloud based platform offers fully customizable pre-designed templates for videos, animations, and more. Small businesses need affordable ways to create stunning and effective videos, and Visme makes that easy.\u00a0 With Visme video creation becomes simple and you don\u2019t even need a professional designer to get started. Just pick a template, customize its elements such as text, voiceover or music and download your final video. <\/span>Visme\u2019s video maker<\/span><\/a> supports you with royalty free stock videos, and a wide range of animated assets to create powerful and visually appealing content.<\/span><\/p>\n Tip:<\/strong> Tap into user-generated content<\/a> by encouraging customers to leave video reviews, their own unboxing videos and other clips that you can use in your content marketing strategy.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Repurposing content is key for getting the most from every piece of content you create, especially the more expensive pieces to produce. This involves taking content from one format (e.g. video) and converting it into other formats, such as blogs and social media posts<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you\u2019ve created a 30-minute buyer\u2019s guide video for your YouTube channel. Creating quality content takes time, effort and money, so why not get as much content as you can out of the resources you put into creating the buyer\u2019s guide?<\/p>\n For example, you can cut up your YouTube video into short clips for posting across your social accounts. Next, you can repurpose each section as blog posts for your website and use them to promote the video. Then you can take snippets from the video and blog posts to create social media content like Instagram Reels, Twitter Polls and paid ads.<\/p>\n Wistia takes clips from its Talking Too Loud<\/a> podcast and uses them to inform audiences and promote episodes across social media.<\/p>\n Launching a new product?<\/p>\n It\u2019s key to make sure all parts of the launch, from engineering to marketing, are working together seamlessly. Wistia\u2019s @mrjean<\/a> and Delphine Mahos discuss on #TalkingTooLoud<\/a>: https:\/\/t.co\/SCnVNeZrMR<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/nOfiTYuWul<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Wistia (@wistia) November 28, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nPlanning for content marketing success<\/h2>\n
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Where to get content ideas from<\/h2>\n
Keyword research tools<\/h3>\n
![\"keyword](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/keyword-research-tool.png\")
<\/p>\nTrend monitoring tools<\/h3>\n
![\"Google](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Google-Trends.png\")
<\/p>\nCompetitor analysis<\/h3>\n
![\"Competitor](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/competitor-analysis.png\")
<\/p>\nSocial monitoring tools<\/h3>\n
![\"Quora\"](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Quora.png\")
<\/p>\nGoogle Search query predictions<\/h3>\n
![\"Google](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Google-Search-query-predictions.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Seobility\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Seobilitys-keyword-research-tool.png\")
<\/p>\n\u201cPeople also ask\u201d section<\/h3>\n
![\"People](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/People-also-ask.jpg\")
<\/p>\nRelated searches<\/h3>\n
![\"Related](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Related-searches.jpg\")
<\/p>\nContent marketing strategies for small businesses<\/h2>\n
Prove your quality with E-E-A-T content<\/h3>\n
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Create topic clusters to maximise keyword coverage<\/h3>\n
![\"topic](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/topic-clusters.jpg\")
\nSource<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n![\"descriptive](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/descriptive-anchor-text-with-the-relevant-keyword.png\")
\nImage author: Seobility, License: CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n![\"Seobility\u2019s-website-audit-tool\"](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Seobilitys-website-audit-tool.jpg\")
<\/p>\nContent ideas for local SEO<\/h3>\n
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![\"customers](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/customers-and-barbershops.jpg\")
<\/p>\nCreating video content on a small business budget<\/h3>\n
![\"personal](\"https:\/\/www.seobility.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/personal-video-content.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\n
Repurpose content to maximise ROI<\/h3>\n
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