What is Content Marketing?

What is content marketing? Content marketing is where a business owner creates and publishes articles, blogs, forum posts/responses, videos, social media posts as not to have to pay for ads. As daunting and a lot of manual work as it sounds through coming up with ideas and making content yet let your competitors pay for ad space. In addition, it is our belief that small business owners are the best advocates for their business since they know their business inside-and-out, value the quality of work they provide.

So, how does content marketing work and how do small business owners implement it?

Start by determining where do you want users to end up. A website, landing page, a contact form, a social media post, and/or a newsletter sign up.

I funnel content back to the team’s website to get people to search for homes, register for property alerts, and contact us to show homes. Since a real estate website site has a longer shopping experience, this will be a bit different for business owners who have commerce based business. However, the goal is the same and that’s to have people to purchase product or contact for services.

A few months ago we built a website that for a asphalt sealcoating and striping business – http://www.marysvillesealcoating.com/. Their website uses onsite SEO to get landing pages to rank in search queries on Google, Bing, Yahoo … etc. This site does well for “asphalt sealcoating in marysville wa” on Google. More than just SEO, the site uses Project Pages where the site owners can publish content via an app – WordPress – while on the job or later and those Project Pages have the ability to rank.

But how do people buy or contact the site owner?

Throughout the site, there are Get a Quote buttons that link to the quote page – http://www.marysvillesealcoating.com/get-quote/– with the goal of getting people to call or fill out the contact form. Then the business owner can follow up.

•  https://get.responsibid.com/is a software system that can be integrated into a site for lead capture.

Website users have to be guided where the business owner’s phone number and email address can be found or that has a messaging service like Facebook Messenger for Facebook pages.

Now onto the content marketing strategy with specific focus on content recycling.

1. Create a Website if you don’t have one already.
2. Create a Facebook Page for the business.
   • Fill out the ENTIRE About & Contact info sections as it really helps with Facebook search (edge rank)
3. Create a YouTube channel for the business.
   • Fill out the About section.
4. Create a LinkedIn page for the business.
   • Fill out the About section and post 1 job opening.
5. Create a Twitter account for the business
   • Fill out the About section.
6. Create a Google MyBusiness page.
   • Fill out all the business contact info, hours of operation, link to website, and add logo.

Now that the company’s website is live and has business pages on the main social media platforms; how does a business owner implement the content marketing & content recycling strategy?

*Not all these have to be done for every project yet if they are then the speed at which consumers are reached is greatly increased.

1. Take Pictures & Video of Projects
2. Make a video at the project site that answers at least 2 questions:
   • What the problem is? (ex. the front deck of this home is unsafe and is rotten or improperly built)
   • How the problem is being solved? (ex. Putting down new supports and deck boards …etc)
   • Keep video less than 3 minutes.
3. Post video to social media:
   • Upload directly to the business pages: Facebook, YouTube, Linkedin, and Twitter if possible.
   • Add a descriptive title and description to the video using keywords in the title and description along with a geomodifier (ex. Arlington, Wa) to each one of the video uploads.
4. Post the pictures on social media:
   • Website: Add pictures to the project pages of the website using descriptive titles and descriptions with geomodifier.
   • Instagram: Post pictures and add a link to the Get a Quote page.
   • Facebook: Post pictures on the normal feed or create a photo album. For quick things I always post to the feed but for full projects I create an album and in the album have a link to the Get a Quote page.
   • Twitter: Share up to 4 pictures with a little blurb. No need for a link as there isn’t many characters typically left after the blurb.
   • LinkedIn: Add a few pictures and a blurb and a link to the get a quote page.

Now that the content made and recycled (shared on the website and major social platforms) how do we keep using that content?

Newsletter.

Use http://www.mailchimp.com, a free newsletter tool that allow to easily upload a client database and is simple to design a email from templates or create customs.

MailChimp is free until a email list reaches 1,000 subscribers. In a monthly newsletter a business owner can share tips or articles that have been published on the website, embed a YouTube video, and even link to “Get a Quote” page to order services. Just remember to change the content up throughout the year with directly asking for business, sharing trusted contacts for other services, asking if people need a specific service, asking directly for referrals, asking if people need items taken care of for home inspections, sharing current and past projects, and local info at times. Don’t try and sell every newsletter, create value.

For frequency, Try and do 1 newsletter a month and 2 with months that have a major holiday since the holiday newsletter is simple and just wishing people a Merry Christmas, Happy Halloween, or New Year and to be safe during that time.

Using this content marketing and content recycling strategy people will see your content in good mix (text, pictures, and video) from different channels while you’re gaining exposure at a large scale. This is how I’ve been able to get nearly 5,000 people a month using my website and buying /selling homes from me.

Here are reference for a continuing business:

• Website: http://www.barnettassociates.net/blog/
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/barnettassociates
• YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/c/BarnettAssociatesNet
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/barnett-associates-team/
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/snocoliving

 Start implementing this strategy as soon as possible because this is not about get more business when you’re busy but staying busy all the time as never have slow times.

As slow times suck!