If you’re the creative type, you probably like the idea of coming up with a content strategy and creating content to promote your business. Maybe the strategy part appeals to you or you just love to come up with new ideas and you enjoy writing, creating videos and other content in general. It’s also quite possible that those things sound taxing and are things you would move to the bottom of your to-do list, and leave them there forever if possible. Either way, if you're a marketing manager or business owner who understands the value of content marketing, you know you only have so much time, ability and energy. That being the case, you may be considering hiring an agency to do the content marketing services for your business. The following are some common parts of content marketing to consider when deciding what your life will be like with and without content marketing services:
Planning Marketing Content
Planning out your marketing content includes the big picture stuff – like what to talk about, all the way down to the details of when you want it scheduled.
- Topic – this will be based on the business market you're in, and what your target audience finds interesting and helpful. This step should be very strategic, because what you talk about and the keywords you use will have a huge effect on whether you show up to the right people as search engines crawl your site, and whether people will even want to interact with your content.
- Type of Content – Once you choose a topic, there are several types of content you can create. Blogging is very common, but don’t forget emails (if you have an email list), videos (people love videos), eBooks, and podcasts.
- Scheduling – This is also an important part of planning out your content marketing. It’s good to have a regular flow of new content being put on your site, so your audience has a reason to return and the search engines know your site isn’t irrelevant. It’s also important because in order to consistently create good content, you have to have an idea of what needs to be created and by when to keep the content flowing.
What this looks like for you:
You can see that there are a lot of steps here, but don’t let that overwhelm you. The whole point of planning and breaking down the necessary steps is that it makes the process easier. There can still be a lot of work involved even at the planning stage, so if you are limited on time or ideas it may be better to hire it all out to an agency that does content marketing services.
Creating Marketing Content
Actually creating the content is the most time-consuming part of the whole process. This can be really exciting if you’re into it, or seem like a huge workload if not. Either way, be realistic about the time involved to write blog posts, set up emails, and especially to shoot and edit a video.
What this looks like for you:
- Do It Yourself – if your business or marketing department is small, you can always give DIY a try. This will require some time and ability that will vary depending on the type of content you're creating. It can’t hurt to try though, and you’ll have a much better idea of what is involved after doing it yourself.
- In House – if your business or marketing department is big enough, you can hire a staff. In this case they still need to be managed, but then you don’t have to do the content creation yourself.
- Outsourcing – this can be a good option if you want to pay as you go and use freelance writers from a site such as zerys.com. You'll still need to be involved in the process and manage and approve the content that is created. This can be a good option for blog articles if your budget is limited, yet you don’t want to write the blogs yourself.
- Hiring an Agency – this is going to be the pricier option for your business, but can make a lot of sense (especially if your returns are so great that the cost is easily justified). When you hire out content marketing services to an agency, they can basically handle the whole process from scheduling to publishing and sharing.
Sharing Marketing Content
Once your impressive content is created, of course you’ll want to share it. There are a lot of options here, but a few of the most common are:
- Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and others can be great ways to get your content noticed.
- Email Marketing – sending out an email to showcase and link to your new content is another great way to share it, especially if you have a loyal following that you have built up that is waiting on your content.
- Search Engines – this is a little more of a roundabout method of sharing, with less direct control, but if you publish something with the right technical SEO factors your article will start to rank for queries on Google and other engines. One major benefit of this is that your content can get more and more views over time, giving you an increasing stream of traffic that is interested in your content.
- Website – your content is likely going to be on your website, and creating graphics pointing the way to this new content can be effective – especially if you have a lot of traffic to your site.
What this looks like for you:
These content sharing recommendations assume that you have a social media presence, website, an email marketing platform, and good search engine optimization in place. If not, check out our blog about Social Media “3 Methods for Successful Social Media Management”.
Once you have a social media presence, sharing content becomes regular and can even be automated with software like HubSpot (which helps manage everything from social media to emails) or HootSuite (a more social media focused platform). For email marketing you can also check out MailChimp.
Search Engine Marketing is also a topic too big to discuss here, but you can always get started by checking out our blog post “The Best SEO Tips and Tricks from Across the Web”. Don’t be afraid to go to school and learn by looking these terms up online if you’re not familiar. A lot of website and blogging platforms make SEO and modifying site pages easy, so if you’re doing both the SEO aspects and updating your site with banners, etc. a lot will depend on the platform you are using.
Hiring an Agency
Of course, if all of this looks too difficult and time consuming, you may want to hire it out to an agency that does content marketing services and let them take care of everything from planning your content to sharing it. A full service agency can do everything in-between as well, such as website creation and social media management.
We do all of that and more here at Half a Bubble Out, if you're looking for help with your marketing contact us or download the free eBook below to learn more about our marketing philosophy.
Since 2002, Half a Bubble Out has been dedicated to providing marketing, advertising, and small business consulting that meet the needs of our clients. We specialize in powerfully telling stories through Inbound Marketing to grow your business filled with more passion and provision. Based in Chico California, we serve clients throughout Northern California and across the country to New York.