How to Produce 50 Articles Your Prospects Want Badly – Part 1

Many business owners grossly underestimate the value of content marketing.  Sharing content via your blog and social media showcasing your expertise could be the most valuable and inexpensive strategy to grow your business.  You are promoting your expertise, establishing credibility and that leads to your showing up in search results run by potential customers looking for solutions you can solve for them.

But how does a small business create enough good content to reach these marketing goals? That’s the question.

The answer, as it turns out, is easy. All you need is a primer with ideas that you can use in multiple ways to create content. Let me break down some simple content ideas that you can use (and reuse) to grow your business.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Let’s start with content that comes from a section you may already make available website: Your Frequently Asked Questions.

If you’re like most companies, you have FAQs with short, snappy answers. Many companies start these to keep their sales team and customer service people from having to answer these questions over and over again.  These are answers to questions you get asked all the time.   I’m willing to bet you could flesh those questions out with additional information and suggestions.  You could talk about examples that easily come to mind that illustrate the answer more thoroughly.  These would be detailed and actionable content for your prospects and clients.

I suggest reviewing your FAQ and picking out questions where there’s room to elaborate. Then, think about the best way to expand on the question. It might be a blog post, a short video, or an infographic. Whatever it is, you can share it to provide your customers with the kind of valuable content they crave.

Behind the Scenes

How do your products get made? You might think that people aren’t interested, but there’s a reason that shows like “How It’s Made” are popular.

Think about your process and what makes it unique. Is there an element of your product that’s handmade? Do you have a shortcut that you created? Once you’ve identified a behind the scenes story, you can break it down into a slideshow, video, or photo array to share on your website and social media  Alternatively, you could do behind the scenes videos introducing your staff!

Product Demonstrations

You won’t be shocked to hear that product demonstrations are a kind of content you can create cheaply, but you might not realize the possibilities for content creation that are locked inside the products you sell.

Beyond the simple introductory product demo, you can show your customers the potential for other uses of your product. Even a product that doesn’t require a demo can be highlighted in a demonstration video.

For example, a clothing boutique that sells scarves could put together a demonstration video showing 10 different ways to wear a scarf. A kitchen supply company could show multiple uses for a utensil or condiment.

Content Curation

A big part of social media marketing is content curation, where you find content that’s relevant to your audience and share it with them. Not every piece of content needs to be your own.  You provide value to your audience by pointing out information they don’t know exists and you show off your expertise by commenting on it as an expert.  People looking for help from your business would be looking for articles like this.

The key here is not to simply share the content as is. Instead, you should find a way to add some authority or a unique twist to it.

For example, you might find an article in your local paper or an industry publication with a list of… whatever. Instead of simply posting the list, share it and point out which item is your favorite and why. Alternatively, you could mention something that wasn’t included in the list that you think should have been.

In part 2 of this article, I list out some other ideas you can use to get valuable content out there consistently to your waiting audience.