Like many small business owners, I struggled with creating content. I often felt overwhelmed, stressed out and like creating content had turned into a whole other job next to my actual job. I lacked focus, clarity and purpose. The content I shared often felt haphazard, even though it took me a long time to create. In this post I’ll share how I changed that. I’ll show you how I created a content marketing strategy that is (and feels!) focused and purposeful.
I struggled a lot with the feeling that I was often creating content for the sake of content: to feed the algorithm or to show up on social media like I thought I had to. And, like many small business owners, I struggled with feeling a lack of control around my content. I spent what felt like a lot of time carefully crafting social media posts, only to see them not perform as well as I wanted to. It made me feel a sense of scarcity. I started feeling that if my posts weren’t doing well, neither would my business.
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Step 1: deciding on the hub of your content marketing strategy
The first step towards this new content marketing strategy was getting clear on what the hub of my marketing strategy is. My website is the hub to which all of my content directs. Whenever I create a pin on Pinterest, it links back to a blog, product or service on my website. Every Instagram post ties in with a blog post, service, or product on my website, or with my newsletter (through which people sign up on my website).
Getting clear on my hub made creating content suddenly a whole lot easy–not to say a lot more purposeful and focused too.
Step 2: diversifying your marketing without creating more work
I also started working more on diversifying my marketing channels to create this new content marketing strategy. I realised that while there are times when I enjoy social media (particularly the connection with other small business owners), I also easily get burnt-out by it.
Once I thought about what did give me energy, I landed on a few things: outreach, in the form of podcast interviews and workshops, and writing. I’ve also begun to use Pinterest a lot more. I like experimenting with it, and even though it uses an algorithm as much as social media like Instagram do, it is easier to see an impact. Most importantly, I get to link directly to my website, my hub.
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Diversifying your marketing is a great idea for many reasons. But you might wonder if adding more marketing channels does not lead to more work too.
Because all the content I share leads to my website, it’s become much easier to create content. Essentially I’m creating content once, and then take bits and pieces from it to use and repurpose it on Pinterest and Instagram.
Because I’ve diversified my marketing channels, potential clients can find me in more than one place. That means I no longer feel pressured to spend a lot of time on one individual channel. Specifically, I’m no longer posting 3 or 4 times a week on Instagram, but once. I use the left-over time to create pins for Pinterest–or to read a book with a cup of tea 😉
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