Many startups are unsure of how to begin content marketing, even though it is crucial for establishing themselves and demonstrating their credibility to search engines, audiences, and potential partners. In this post, we will explore the most effective methods for incorporating content into your strategies.
1. Establish Your Goals
To begin writing and posting content, it is crucial to establish your end goals. Without clear objectives, your content becomes purposeless and lacks a benchmark for determining its success.
Begin by having a broad perspective on the goals you aim to achieve with your content.
Do you want to bring awareness to your brand? Or do you want to educate readers about a specific aspect of your services? By having a clear goal for your piece of content, you can concentrate on its creation and determine the desired outcome.
2. Define Your Persona
Your personas are ideal customer representations that have been fictionalized.
Personas aid in developing a distinct visualization of the individuals you aim to target in your marketing efforts, as well as understanding their motives for being interested in the products or services you provide.
To narrow down your audiences and create content that directly addresses their needs and desires, it is important to define your personas. Information that should be included when defining personas is:
- Demographic information (age, gender, location, etc.)
- Topics of interest
- Personal and professional goals
- Pain points
- Buying patterns
- Level of interest in your brand
- Needs and wants
3. Research Your Competitors
When starting content marketing for startups, it can be advantageous to understand the content that your competition has succeeded with. Instead of attempting to ascertain this information on your own, you can rely on others in your industry to gain insights into what works and what doesn’t work for your target audience.
Researching your competitors is beneficial in terms of time and cost savings, as it prevents wastage of resources on ineffective endeavors. Additionally, it enables you to establish benchmarks for your startup’s position in relation to more established brands.
4. Complete Topic and Keyword Research
When you start your content marketing, it can feel overwhelming to choose which topics to focus on for your content creation, considering there are numerous subjects to discuss in your industry.
Instead of becoming frustrated, it is helpful to take a pause and reflect. Start by thinking about the overarching subjects that will capture your readers’ attention, and then focus on developing more precise concepts. Additionally, conducting keyword research is advisable as it allows you to identify the search terms used to explore topics connected to your industry, brand, products, or services.
By thinking systematically, you can rephrase the given text without adding or removing any information, while keeping the same meaning. This process can additionally assist in narrowing down the specific search terms that should be the focus of your content creation in order to maximize the number of hits.
5. Review Your Existing Content
Even startups that are completely new still have some content already in place. This can include sales materials, product descriptions, and website pages. Examining this existing content can be beneficial in terms of generating ideas and identifying the topics that have already been addressed.
Examining your current content can also assist you in identifying any content quality concerns that require your attention, as well as supporting you in maintaining a consistent brand voice and style for future content pieces.
6. Devise Your Strategy
After completing the initial groundwork and planning for your content marketing, you can proceed with formulating and developing your strategy. Begin by reviewing your content topics and selecting the ones you wish to prioritize initially.
By thinking through each step, you can develop a plan that aligns your content marketing goals with the personas you aim to attract to your startup.
7. Submit Guest Posts to Reputable Sites
New entrepreneurs and startups face difficulties in cultivating an audience through their content marketing efforts. Even if you possess expertise in your field, the absence of an audience makes it difficult to promote yourself and implement a successful content marketing plan for startups.
In order to reach an established target audience, you will need to select an alternative channel. Your optimal content strategy would involve engaging with respected, high-authority websites that already possess a devoted readership.
By supplying fresh content to their blog, you will be helping these sites as you submit guest posts. This will provide you with valuable backlinks, drive traffic to your site, and enhance your content marketing.
The use of guest blogging has been shown to enhance growth in various ways. A few examples include case studies highlighted by Ahrefs, where entrepreneurs have successfully utilized guest bloggers to enhance their performance. One example resulted in a 20% increase in search traffic, while another achieved first-page ranking on Google.
To incorporate guest posting opportunities into your content strategy, simply utilize Google search by combining various search terms.
- Keyword + “contribute”
- Keyword + “write for us”
- Keyword + “become a contributor”
- Keyword + “guest blogging”
Assuming you work in the finance sector and specifically target startups, in order to devise a successful content marketing plan for these startups, you will have to locate websites that offer chances for guest posting and specifically cater to startup entrepreneurs.
To find potential host websites where you can contribute on startup financing, search terms such as “write for us startup financing,” “contribute to startup websites,” or similar phrases on search engines. Utilize the Domain Authority metric to evaluate and shortlist the best websites for contribution.
The reputation and quality of a website are determined by its Domain Authority rating. If a website has a high DA, your guest post will have better visibility. The Domain Authority Checker provided by Small SEO Tools is user-friendly and suitable for both beginners and experts.
8. Create More Visual Content
When you are scanning through your Facebook newsfeed, which one of these is more likely to grab your attention: a long text post about a topic you are interested in or a visually striking infographic presenting the same information?
If you select the infographic, you are not in the minority. Many people are drawn to pictures, making them more likely to be appealing to a large number of individuals. Additionally, visuals are easier for people to comprehend compared to text, a phenomenon referred to as the Picture Superiority Effect.
To ensure effective content marketing for startups, it is recommended to create and share various visual content such as infographics, memes, graphics, and videos in addition to regular blog posts. These forms of content can be easily distributed through social media platforms and email marketing.
However, in contrast, if you solely share article links, you may discover that certain individuals are not inclined to click on the link, thereby potentially compromising your content strategy.
The screenshot below demonstrates the significant growth in the number of searches for the term “infographic” over the past five years, as shown by Google Trends. This serves as a good example of the importance of visual content.
Infographics are extremely effective content marketing tools, so much so that the Sumo team achieved a 400% increase in revenue by incorporating an infographic strategy.
9. Produce Content Regularly
For startups, maintaining consistency is crucial for the success of any content marketing. It is necessary to produce content regularly in order to establish trust with readers. However, creating high-quality content every day may not be feasible.
However, it is advisable to have a content schedule for your content marketing strategy, ensuring a regular release of blog posts, approximately once a week. You may even aim to publish a minimum of two new blog posts per week. Additionally, sending out a weekly digest, similar to Inbound’s approach, can help keep your subscribers informed about your latest posts.
This type of email marketing has the potential to appeal to individuals who do not regularly visit your website but are subscribed to your weekly newsletter.
10. Involve Influencers in Content Creation
Influencers are individuals who have established a credible image in a specific field or sector. They are recognized as authorities in their subject matter and are perceived as reliable providers of information. Individuals pay attention to their opinions, which can significantly impact decision-making processes.
As part of your startups’ content marketing strategy, maximize their influence and engage them in content creation by utilizing various options available.
Mention Influencers in Your Content
Mentioning influencers in your content is one of the most effective strategies to catch their attention.
If you come across a blog post by a notable industry expert, you can use their post as inspiration to write something related. In your post, you can include a link to their blog and mention how their post motivated you. Alternatively, you can recommend their post as additional reading material for your intended audience.
You can follow these steps to distribute the content on social media: first, share it on your social media profile and tag the influencer. Additionally, you can send an outreach email to the influencer, sharing the link and expressing gratitude for the inspiration they provided.
Here are some suggestions on how to attract the attention of influencers to your content, with the aim of having them share it with their followers. Additionally, including links to influencers can enhance your link profile, which is crucial for any startup’s content marketing strategy.
11. Promote Your Content on Social Media
The collaboration of social media marketing and content marketing is crucial for startups. Due to the infrequent checking of your blog by readers, new blog posts often go unnoticed.
To effectively execute content marketing strategy for startups, it is undeniable that social media channels such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., are necessary to reach those readers.
Typically, social media posts include a preview image while sharing a link. However, merely having this image may not be sufficient in persuading individuals to click on the link and access the complete blog post.
To rephrase the text while maintaining the same meaning step by step: 1. Instead of adding new information or removing any existing information, 2. you can choose to emulate Buffer’s approach by utilizing an image to illustrate and clarify certain points mentioned in the post. 3. Additionally, you can include a link to the complete blog post within the image’s caption or description. 4. Essentially, this technique would provide individuals with a tangible preview of the content covered in the blog.
Is Content Marketing for Startups Important
Yes, the answer is short.
The longer explanation delves into the importance of content as a means to generate leads.
Many startups have the belief that content creation can be put off until later stages when other aspects of their business, such as product creation, service perfection, employee hiring, and customer interaction, have been developed.
On the contrary, the opposite is not true.
Having a content strategy in place from the start of your startup and consistently developing it as your business expands can enable you to utilize content as an effective lead-generation tool, which ultimately helps in acquiring new customers and establishing a customer base, resulting in increased leads and sales.
There are additional advantages for startups with regards to content marketing that are noteworthy.
- Boosting your brand’s online presence
- Establishing your brand as an authoritative and trustworthy industry expert
- Increasing brand loyalty from customers
- Growing your startup’s pages
- Bringing in new leads and prospects who can be converted into customers
