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5 Ways to Build a Content Strategy with a Small Budget
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Content strategy is one of the most talked-about aspects of marketing yet often one of the most misunderstood. If you have a small or medium-sized business you may think that you can’t accomplish anything unless you have a large budget. Fortunately, that isn’t true. You can actually create a very robust content strategy, even with a small budget. Here are 5 things you can do to build a content strategy on a shoestring.
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Photograph by Gearstd via Unsplash
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Use Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a great way to reach a large number of people with very little effort. Influencers are those who are watched or followed by thousands or millions of people, mainly through different types of social media. According to MediaPost, people between the ages of 18 and 34 prefer to make purchases based on recommendations of influencers.
Influencers are typically paid for their use or review of products and services. Some influencers are paid quite a bit; however, you can choose an influencer that is best suited to your audience. Some companies have had skyrocketing sales simply because an influencer mentioned them in a video or online post. Choose an influencer based on your target market. For example, Oprah Winfrey is a media megastar and is a major influencer for women over age 40.
Tell a Story
Storytelling is one of the best ways to grab an audience’s attention. You can easily create a story with your content so that it creates an emotional bond with your potential customers. Customers can relate to stories with situations that are similar to their own.
It is important to get a viewer’s attention very quickly. Most people spend just a few seconds scanning a website, article or blog to see whether it is of interest. If not, they simply move on, usually in under ten seconds. That means that your story should be powerful and relatable so that people want to keep reading.
Build an Audience
You can develop interest in your website with continuous blog posts and other content. It is important to keep in mind that building an audience can take time. You can’t expect to gain a huge audience overnight. Consistency is the key to blogging on your website. You should keep posting regardless of how many or how few followers you have. You will soon find that the number of interested people may continue to go up.
Utilize digital marketing tools to gather information about your potential customers. Develop a buyer persona to assist in targeted marketing efforts. Rather than put your marketing out to a range of people who are not interested in your product it is best to try to limit your approach. Build buyer personas that are replicas of your customers. Then you can use these personas to create a content strategy that works.
Keep Your Current Customers in Mind
When you are thinking about creating a content strategy you can’t forget about your current customers. You need to make sure that your content development is focused at least partially on retention. It is important to keep the customers that you have and your marketing should be geared towards them in addition to new customers so you don’t drive them away.
Use digital marketing techniques to gather information about your current customers and those who visit your website. Automated programs such as email marketing will help you reach your customers quickly and efficiently. Develop special loyalty programs and offer discounts or secret sales to returning customers. This gives them an incentive to continue to keep coming back when they need more of your type of products or services.
Use Social Media to Your Advantage
Social media is one of the best ways to market to your potential customer audience. Social media sites are used by millions of people every day. Best of all, they are often free to use so you only incur the costs of production when you utilize them. This means that you can get quite a large ROI.
Social media has been known to catapult small companies into stardom with a single post that goes viral. When this occurs you will find that you could far exceed your planned sales goals. You can’t force a post to go viral but there are some things you can do to make sure it gets noticed by the most people.
It is important to strategically select the social media sites that will work best for your particular target audience. Your target market should give you an idea of the best social media sites that will be most effective for your business. Frequent posts can improve your results. Make sure that the posts you make are relatable, informative and high quality.
Content Strategy Tips
Utilizing these strategies can certainly improve your ability to market to customers, especially when you have a low or non-existent budget. There are a few tips you should remember when creating a content strategy. Always use high quality articles and blogs. Posting anything else could have a negative impact.
Update your posts and website materials frequently. This will help you maintain good search engine rankings. The same holds true for the quality of your articles. Low quality materials that are poorly written or that don’t utilize SEO properly could hurt your rankings rather than help.
Don’t try to go it alone. A content specialist will help you create a content strategy that is customized to your specific needs and budget. You can get the guidance you need so you don’t have to try to learn everything there is to know about content development on your own. Count on the experience of a professional team to help you build a content strategy, even with a small budget.
[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” custom_padding=”50px|||” padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_divider color=”#7e8f7c” show_divider=”on” divider_style=”solid” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”off” /][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” custom_padding=”17px|||” padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”on” gutter_width=”2″ padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on” custom_padding=”50px|||” custom_padding_tablet=”30px|||” custom_padding_last_edited=”on|tablet” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” custom_padding=”17px|||” padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Blog post main Section” fullwidth=”off” specialty=”off” transparent_background=”off” background_color=”FDF3E7″ allow_player_pause=”off” inner_shadow=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” padding_mobile=”off” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” make_equal=”off” use_custom_gutter=”off” prev_background_color=”#000000″ next_background_color=”#c97824″ custom_padding_tablet=”50px|0|50px|0″ custom_padding_last_edited=”on|desktop”][et_pb_row make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” padding_mobile=”off” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][et_pb_image src=”https://iriscontent.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/AIIIA.jpg” show_in_lightbox=”off” url_new_window=”off” use_overlay=”off” animation=”left” sticky=”off” align=”right” force_fullwidth=”off” always_center_on_mobile=”on” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” _builder_version=”3.0.101″ show_bottom_space=”on” /][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_team_member name=”Annie Ianko” position=”Chief Content Officer” background_layout=”light” facebook_url=”https://www.facebook.com/IrisWebContent/” twitter_url=”https://twitter.com/Iris_Content” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” custom_css_main_element=”box-shadow: 0 0 20px rgba(0,0,0,.1);||” _builder_version=”3.0.101″]
Annie has over 20 years of experience as an editor and content creator and manager. With work in television and written media, she has dedicated her past 10 years to learning the ropes of online content creation, from writing to editing, from SEO to content management.
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