Content Marketing is Smart Business
There’s no use beating around the bush: creating content is hard. As the editors from Buffer discovered, just one well thought out blog post can take up to four hours to produce! It’s no wonder that content is one of the biggest sources of marketing frustration we hear about from our members.
Small business owners and solopreneurs, who already feel pressed for time and wear many hats, often feel they don’t have the time to create one piece of content, let alone develop an entire content strategy. Content Marketing Institute conducted a survey of more than 3,000 B2B companies and asked what their top five marketing challenges were. 60% said producing engaging content and 57% said producing content consistently.
But, creating a solid plan is one of the best time investments a business owner can make. Smart content can drive traffic, increase brand awareness, increase engagement across social channels and drive sales. Plus, having a plan actually saves time in the long run. Whether you decide to go old school pen and paper or digital, here are a few ideas to get your editorial calendar started.
10 Content Marketing Ideas
- Holidays: look for local, national and world-wide events relevant to your product or business.
- Company news: milestones, anniversaries
- Product launches
- Events: either ones you are participating in, sponsoring or hosting
- Customer feedback: Q & A’s are one of the easiest pieces of content to generate. If one person is asking, chances are others have the same question.
- Product demos
- How To’s
- Guest Posts
- Digital products: share your courses, eBooks, white papers and webinars
- Consumable content: podcasts, live streams and video channels
Now that you’re ready to get started on your content plan, research tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, CoSchedule and Trello to find which will work best for you. If you still have questions about content planning, let us know in the comments!
Other reading on content marketing ideas:
- 105 Types of Content to Fill Your Content Calendar from Convince and Convert
- Content Marketing Template roundup from Curata
- The Canva blog for image design (images can be pieces of content, too!)
StockSnap photo credit: Wilfred Iven
I find that when I create images in Canva, they look low quality (not clear) when I save and post them. Anything that can be done about that? Thanks for any tips!
Hi Sarah – The problem may be with the quality of the images you’re using. If you’re using free stock photos, they may not have high enough resolution. When you save your Canva creation, try saving as the .png file and see if that helps.