Online business strategies seem to have changed in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic. Although the focus is still primarily on improving the user experience, the lingering persistence of the global pandemic has ensured that businesses take up some of the more productive and tested strategies for improving productivity across online channels.
While social media presence is expected to play a major role, going forward in 2021, the focus will continue to be on the content market, which is a reliable and cost-effective tactic that businesses can take up to market their products and services while being in line with the user expectations.
Content, in its entirety, needs to reach a wider audience base for creating a substantial impact. But then, content marketing, despite being a ubiquitous domain, does come with its share of misinformation. Businesses often fail to identify the state-of-art content marketing solutions and end up focusing more on content creation when they should spend their resources in creating actionable copies that stimulate interest.
This is the main reason why a reliable content writing agency needs to be hired at the earliest. But then, as a startup or a small business owner, you often lack the commercial backbone to launch a full-fledged content marketing campaign. Therefore, it is advisable to analyze your business’s best possible content marketing strategies before starting out with a campaign.
You need to realize a simple fact that content marketing strategies vary depending on the nature and size of the business. In the subsequent sections, we shall only talk about the startups and the potentially beneficial content marketing tactics that they can follow for maximizing productivity:
Extensive Blogging
Putting content out via blogs is probably the oldest and most reliable form of content marketing. As a startup, you should focus on creating a blog that adheres to the tone of your website and the featured products.
In addition to generating brand authority, a blog will also allow you to focus more on SEO while automatically driving traffic right towards the website.
However, you shouldn’t simply create a blog page and start posting. That way, you will always remain distant from the content marketing perks. Instead, it would be best if you discovered the needs and preferences of the audience and draft pieces of interest.
Besides, it would help if you were consistent with the content creation and must look to connect with influential websites and bloggers for posting blogs elsewhere, specifically from a link-building perspective.
Generate Resources
While blogs are effective interest-stimulating resources, you cannot go wrong with e-books, whitepapers, and other informative resources. The most important aspect here is to release the actionable guides consistently to offer value to the customers.
Even though blogs can offer interesting content, corporate houses releasing eBooks are better poised when it comes to reaching a more knowledgeable and interested user base. However, it is important to invest in an experienced content firm that understands the intricacies of an eBook or whitepaper.
Plus, as a business owner, you should supervise and connect with the content creators on every step for making the insightful resources visually appealing and statistical in nature.
The target here is to incentivize viewership for the customers by offering them something personalized and insanely resourceful.
Rely on Infographics
While you cannot deny the conceivable benefits of standard content, Infographics have started making their presence felt in 2021, owing to the compactness and transparency they provide. Unfortunately, readers pressed for time end up skipping the vocabulary when it comes to skimming through the content.
Therefore, having pieces loaded with images, statistics, and numbers make more sense and must be paired with the content as and when deemed fit. However, creating stirring Infographics requires experience, and you should be able to pair up with content creators who can weave stories around facts and figures.
Also, every fact needs to be cross-referenced for authenticity. Needless to say, a good set of Infographics can readily evolve into the best marketing strategy as people can consume them even on social media.
Create Videos
Sounds counterintuitive, right! Not exactly, as video is one form of content that drives a lot of traction. As suggested by Forrester, creating a minute-long video is akin to drafting close to 2 billion words. But then, why doesn’t every firm shift from written content to videos!
Despite being extremely easy to comprehend and digest, the video-specific user base is pretty small and restricted. Also, as a startup, you would want to rely on content creation agencies that can draft scripts for the smaller videos.
However, as a startup owner, you should finalize the nature of the videos and touch upon the user’s pain points for making the videos insightful and useful.
Post on Social Media
Every piece of content need not be on your website or any other web page, for that matter. As a startup owner, you need to understand that a majority of your user base is active on social media, which then calls for the inclusion of relevant content into the mix.
If you are planning to post actively on social media, crisp, short, and actionable snippets should lead the charge. Plus, forum discussions paired with Infographics and customized posts are necessary to make social content even more responsive.
A good approach in this regard is to create discussions while showcasing the true organizational personality over social media.
Presentations
Despite being a different breed of content, presentations are extremely necessary to consider, especially for startups. In addition, with the content marketing stage expanding with each passing day, mobile content or the content that doesn’t require readers to be attentive for long is in demand.
In case the agency you hire is good at creating presentations and relevant content, ensure that you end up sharing the same over Slideshare for maximizing the outreach.
Email Marketing is the Key
As a small business owner, it is your responsibility to create a brand image by reaching out to prospective clients. While connecting over social media platforms is an effective strategy, to date, email marketing happens to be the most impactful option to reach several users at once.
Also, email marketing isn’t only about improving business prospects. Instead, you can deploy the same for sending newsletters and other resources in bulk. But then, sending over the right email is important as you must focus on content that drives sales and increases open rates.
Once you create a verified contact list, draft content that talks about the product or service. Most importantly, none of the action words should focus on hard selling.
Draft PRs
Brand awareness becomes extremely important for startups, especially with several businesses coming off the ages in the post-Covid era. But then, not every piece of content reaches the desired audience base and tells them about your recent induction into the entrepreneurial space.
This is where press releases can make quite an impression. These resources attract users and readers in a different way by talking about the recent company developments, charity events, partnerships, and more.
However, it would be best if you had experienced creators for managing press releases. Thinking outside the box is what matters the most when it comes to drafting something as actionable and targeted as a PR.
Testimonials are important
Firstly, testimonials are something that is organically provided by a client, attached alongside a review. Therefore, adding them inorganically isn’t the best way forward for established businesses. However, startups might have to rely on these pieces of content for strengthening the brand identity right at the beginning.
But then, not everything needs to be falsified. As a startup owner, you can always reach out to clients, ask them about the feedback, and draft their exact words with a hint of creativity. Once drafted, you can seek their validation and proceeding posting the same on your page.
Webinars and Podcasts
Envisioning new content marketing strategies is good enough if your team has the mettle to create webinars. However, the efficacy of this approach depends on the nature of the businesses. Provided your company leads the market in a particular service or product, you can create informative podcasts, webinars, and other resources for the clients to read and learn from.
Plus, unlike a standard video, webinars and podcasts are more like interactions that don’t overwhelm the listener. However, your content team needs to stand up to the occasion by drafting the questions, important points, and the flow accordingly.
For startups, it is necessary to focus on these ten important content marketing strategies, especially in 2021. Also, with the pandemic expected to linger around longer than usual, press releases, webinars, eBooks, and Videos are expected to be the standout performers in the near future, especially if you into trust-building.