6 Content Marketing Tips For Small Businesses

Thoughtful content marketing establishes your business as an industry expert among consumers and competitors. Blog posts, resource articles, guides, and videos that answer common questions, provide solutions to pain points, and present forward-thinking ideas contribute to an informed and trusted digital persona.

Large corporations have dedicated content marketers to propose topics, organize publishing schedules, and allocate production.

Small businesses with smaller, multifaceted marketing teams require a more strategic time and resource-sensitive approach. By leveraging a content marketing strategy your small business can build authority and trust, positioning it as a leader in its field. Explore how to maximize your content marketing efforts, regardless of the size of your team or budget constraints.

1. Align Your Content Strategy With Business Goals

For small businesses, it’s important to take stock of existing content, and ask, “Will this help me reach my goals?”

Let’s say you own a flower shop. Your quarterly goal is to sell 100 packages of iris bulbs, but your most recent blog posts offer tips for planting roses. Your content strategy is not aligned with your business goals and would benefit from a well-developed blog about irises.

Workshop Digital suggests focusing content production on pieces that meet users’ needs while leading them to the products and services that will help you reach your goals.

2. Focus Content Around E-E-A-T Principles

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. Google uses these factors to determine which content is most relevant, and while E-E-A-T itself may not be a specific ranking factor it ensures your website content is aligned with searchers.

Google recommends evaluating your content in terms of “Who, How, and Why” as a way to align with E-E-A-T principles. Think about who is creating content for your flower shop. Do your readers know who is writing the content? Can readers learn more about the author? Next, consider how the content was created. Was it developed by a team of individuals who brainstormed topics? Did you use artificial intelligence to help write parts of your post? Providing details about the processes involved can help build trust with readers. Lastly, focus on why the content was created. Are you creating content to help people and answer their questions? If you said yes then you’re aligning with the E-E-A-T principles!

3. Create Content for Your Audience

It is important to keep your audience at the center of your content. When creating content, put yourself in your consumers’ shoes and consider, “If I were looking for this product or service, how would I search for it?”

Choose a query relevant to your business such as “How to grow irises.” Then, refine your query selection with tools like Google Search Console (GSC), Ahrefs, and Semrush.

In GSC, set the date range to one year. Use the “query” filter to plug in your target term and see what pages get clicks and/or impressions. You can sort by clicks to see how often someone clicked a link from Google to your site and sort by impressions to find out how often someone saw a link to your site on Google. Identify what content is performing well and what content could use a refresh.

Many Workshop Digital analysts use Ahrefs for keyword research to assess the search landscape. The toolbar is a quick way to see all the keywords your competitors rank for. Ahrefs’ “Questions” feature produces a list of search query ideas phrased as a question - a common search format.

After narrowing down high-ranking content and queries, you can write your content to target keywords and users who are likely to take an interest in your business.

4. Optimize and Repurpose Your Content

A common misconception is that a successful content strategy constantly churns out new pieces. This pedal-to-the-metal mentality can be counterproductive – not to mention exhausting.

If a new idea closely aligns with previous blogs or other resources, consider how they can be updated, rather than wasting time and energy on an entirely new project.

Not only is a refresh a time saver, but it may also help the content perform better. Like-kind Similar content competes with itself in SERPs, emphasizing the importance of quality over quantity.

Your flower shop publishing multiple resources about tips for growing irises, rather than sticking to one solid blog post, can confuse search engines and users, ultimately hurting performance and rankings.

5. Create Evergreen Content

Evergreen content is content that is optimized to stay relevant and drive traffic for months or even years at a time. Evergreen content answers a frequently asked question, will not become quickly outdated, and creates a natural stream of steady organic traffic. It shouldn’t have an expiration date and should be versatile and self-sustaining.

Let’s say you wanted to create evergreen content for the flower shop. You want to think about general questions that your customers ask often. For example, people may ask “When should I plant flowers?” It doesn’t matter whether it is winter or spring, if someone just bought flowers they may need the answer to that question.

The topic you select for your evergreen content should be shareable. Research to confirm that the topic you are writing about has a high search volume using a tool like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or Semrush. Once you’ve determined there is an audience for your topic, start writing! At the end of your post, include a call to action for readers to share your post. Once you publish your post, share it. Send your content to your audience and encourage them to share it.

6. Create a Content Calendar

A content calendar is a written schedule of when and where you plan to publish upcoming content. A content calendar will ensure your content production stays on schedule. You can create a content calendar using a simple spreadsheet or download a free resource. Include fields such as publish date, channel (website, social, etc.), target persona, funnel stage, and relevant keywords.

It can be difficult to flush out a month’s worth of content without hitting the wall. SEO Analyst Manager Charlotte Rule uses the digital tool AnswerThePublic for content ideation.

AnswerThePublic recommends plugging in one or two keywords for the best results, keep in mind it offers three free searches per day. A general search for “iris” generates topics like “Will iris grow in clay soil?” and “Will iris grow in water?” – both signs that ideal planting environments would be a useful addition to your iris-centric content.

Once you have decided on your topics for the upcoming month start filling out that spreadsheet! Use the content calendar to stay on top of publishing content. This simple tool can help small businesses regularly publish high-quality content aligned with their target audiences' interests and search intent.

Elevate Your SMBs Content Marketing Strategy

Intentional content marketing strategies serve both time-starved marketers in small businesses and their customers by focusing on meaningful content that ranks on search engine results pages, drives target users to a site, and boosts conversions.

This blog post was originally published on September 28, 2021, and was updated and republished on May 21, 2024.