How can content creation help sme’s in business?
Content Creation for sme’s, When it comes to content creation, people often relate it to Social Media influencers creating videos to entertain and educate people. Businesses often see content creation as an expensive and complex task. However, content creation is the first step of marketing digitally. You can start with almost zero cost to attract your customers and grow your business.
How can content creation help?
90% of marketers using content marketing plan to continue investing the same amount in the content marketing channel in 2022. (via Hubspot)
In the modern world, everyone has an online presence. The power of content creation for sme’s in 2022 is huge. As the saying goes, ‘content is the king’ is completely true for businesses to get traction and engagement. You can reach out to your existing and potential consumers via social media, newsletters, and personalized messages. Today creative content and a good marketing strategy can allow you to compete with larger companies and build your Brand.
Why content creation in the first place?
Besides your main marketing goals, content creation is beneficial for a brand in many different ways. First of all, it is very easy to start content creation. You just have to start writing about your product and brand. It is economical and can be started with zero investment initially. Content educates the audience and registers your brand in their memory. It also helps to build your brand authority over the subject.
If you are new to content creation, don’t make it complex. And, don’t try to be perfect. Just start. Start with creating blog posts about your product on your website. Also, create social media accounts for your business. Share your insights, reviews, testimonials and product description if you think you have nothing to start from.
Objectives of Content Creation
Content creation can help a business in the following different ways:
- Brand Awareness
The first and foremost goal of content creation for a business is to increase brand awareness among people. You can increase your brand visibility via search engine results and organic social media marketing. High-quality value-adding and creative content force people to ask “Who created it?”. It increases the number of eyeballs on your brand account. And when you keep creating content regularly, more people end up knowing your brand.
- Customer education
Once the customer is aware of your name, now he wants to hear more from you. He will follow your content if he gets regular value from you. It can be in the form of education or humour. Educate them about the brand and related subjects. Set your brand tone and personalize the content. Content helps you build your authority over the subject.
- Engagement
The next step after brand awareness and customer education is engagement. Be active on social media and engage with your audience regularly. It helps to build a community around the topic. Reply to them and try to solve their queries in a fun and engaging manner. Once the community is made, it is simple for the brand to communicate its idea to the audience. Content creation among a community within your audience is easy.
- Lead generation & sales
Getting leads is the next step of the funnel. It is the Action step. Engagement and consumer education make the audience believe in your brand and make their first order from you. The quality and frequency of your content depend on making this time duration minimum and as smooth as possible.
- Brand Loyalty
Consumers show loyalty towards the brand when they repeatedly purchase from you even if they have competing alternatives. And, customer loyalty comes from providing added value, credibility, appreciation, and continuous communication. Moreover, sending personalized emails and newsletters can do the job. It can be about replying to their queries, thanking them, and rewarding them for reaching a milestone. Also, social media content plays a big role in building credibility and communication.
Keys to quality content
- Readable
Make the content as simple as possible. Short sentences and easy words make increase the readability of the content. Complex and hard to read content pulls off the customer interest in your content. The more the readability, the more time the audience will spend time engaging with your content.
- Informative
The main quality of content is that it should educate the people. It should provide added value and information about the subject. Generalized stuff attracts more audience, but does not help to achieve the differentiating factor of the brand. Your content should talk about the niche you operate in. Start with posting basic concepts about the product and then start moving deeper to make it more informative.
- Creative
A creative element is a must to make your content stand out from the hefty crowd. Creativity allows your content to reach more audiences. It complements other qualities of the content to make it complete. Some examples of creative elements include humour, wordplay, facts, creative art and design, customer relatability, and efficient copywriting.
- Consistent
Being consistent is the top requirement of an effective content creation strategy. Your content need not be creative or informative every day. It can be as small as a short story update. But, it should be posted regularly. Consistency brings credibility and brand recall. Posting once a month or week will not make your social brand grow. You need to be regular. When you come with content regularly, your brand gets registered in the mid of people.
- Types of content:
- Social media posts
Your target audience is hanging out on social media. Having a social media account is a must. You must have an Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook brand account. Keep posting different forms of content on social media. It can be a tweet, a short story, a static post or a video reel.
- Articles & Blog posts
These will be generally posted on the blog section of your website. Blog posts and articles build your company’s knowledge and expertise in your niche. It helps to build your brand authority, credibility and reputation. You can also repost your articles on LinkedIn and Facebook for better reach. But, there’s a lot of competition in this category today. You need to look for trendy topics and creative ideas to make your content relatable. SEO plays an important role in this step. Optimizing the content as per search engine format can help you increase your search ranking and bring on more traffics to the articles.
- Videos
Video is trending in 2022. Nowadays people prefer to have an audio-visual interaction rather than just reading a simple text. So, video content increases engagement and retention time. In 2022, short-form videos are promoted by social media platforms to more reach. You must leverage the video marketing trends to increase your chances of virality.
- Newsletters & emails:
Email marketing ROI is 4200% ($42 for every $1 spent).
(via Hubspot)
Emails are the most economical and personalized form of communication. Even in 2022, a well-written email with a clicky subject line, catchy hook, and engaging content performs far better than costly marketing techniques.
Newsletter and emails efficiently establish trust between you and your audience. It also achieves brand identity and recalls in the minds of consumers.
- 3 content creation tips for small businesses:
- Videos are trending. Increase the frequency of your short-format video content to gain more organic reach on social media.
- Use infographics in your visuals to make them more impactful. Infographics get easily received by people and add to their reading experience.
- SEO is your evergreen friend. Keep optimizing your content as per SEO guidelines. It provides consistent and fruitful results in the long term.
