One of the challenges small business owners have when beginning a content marketing campaign, is that they try to separate it out from their normal business activities.
Strategy #1 Recruit Customer Service
Your customer service is your greatest asset when developing content. Take a day and answer the phone and by the end you will have heard the same questions asked over and over again. If you surveyed your customer service reps what the top ten questions are that they hear you will find that there is a tremendous amount of crossover. Nobody wants more work, and your under appreciated, over worked customer service staff is one of them. To get your customer service staff on board try these simple tweaks.
- Change their title from customer service to Client Care Specialist or Director of Excellence, or Director of Client Relations. Make a big deal out of the title change. Change the title on the door. Throw a party.
- Begin a monthly contest to see which Client Care Specialist can keep track of the most questions from customers. We are not talking about questions specific to a customer, but questions that could be formatted into blog posts. Give a gift certificate to everyone that turns in one question the first month, the top 10 people the next, the top 5 the next, and then the top 3 from then on. If you have a small staff adjust your numbers.
- Take the questions the Client Care Specialists provided and have a monthly meeting. Have the questions written out and room for three main points to answer each question. Brainstorm with the staff and develop the outlines of the content that will be written.
- Send the writing off to either your in house blogging staff or your outsourced copywriters.
- Have the articles written or shoot short videos to answer the questions and then upload them to your FAQ area of your site or use as blog posts.
Strategy #2 Recruit Your Customers
Pictures are worth a thousand words. With SEO and online marketing, pictures and videos are essential. User generated content is a fast way to not only get new content for your site, but to help that content go viral. To get your customers to start submitting new content to you try these simple tips.
- Create a monthly contest. The funniest picture, video with the most views, or the picture that got the most pins gets the reward.
- Ask for picture submissions or create unique photos yourself. Have a contest with Pinterest. Ask everyone to pin the pictures to Pinterest.
Strategy #3 Create a Content Marketing Calendar
Content marketing calendars are essential to a successful content marketing campaign. The easy way to start is to map out all of the holidays over the year. The next step is to think about a special promotion you could have for each of the holidays. If you can create weekly promotions even better.
After you have your promotions mapped out, see if the promotions can line up with specific product or market segments. For example if your promotion is a camping tent at 40% off, then your content marketing for that week could be all about camping tents.
To learn about how to plan your 2013 Content Marketing Calendar, join me this February on a live webinar. Sign up now at webinars.nicolemunoz.com!