One of the biggest challenges with small business owners when developing a content strategy is they tell me they can’t create enough original content to share with their audience.  Content is important because it builds your credibility, shows your authority, expertise and drives leads. 

Content can be created via a blog, video, audio and podcasting and shared to your email list and your social media sites.  So how do you think of ideas for creating content, how often should you post and what are other ways of finding relevant content to share?  let me share some ideas for you to consider that have worked for me.

Ideas for creating your own content

  • Listen to your target markets biggest challenges, those pain points that they are looking for answers on and create content that answers those challenges.
  • Monitor your social sites and watch for people asking questions that you have answers to and create topics for your blog posts
  • Join LinkedIn groups that your target audience is also in and pay attention to the discussion questions – again an opportunity for you to respond and engage with solutions both int he group and creating an article, video or podcast around that question.
  • Poll your email list and ask what their top challenge is and then answer those challenges via your content
  • Do you network in person?  Great place to ask people for what challenges they might have which would again give you content for your next blog post!

How often should you create content?

Depends on a number of factors such as how much time you can make to create blogs, videos, audios or podcasts.  With that said, consistency is key so if you are willing to write a blog post weekly, stick to that and train your audience to expect it from you each week. Creating content often is overwhelming for small business owners who don’t have staff to take over this task so commit to what you think you will follow through on!  Another option is to outsource your article writing for example to companies that specialize in content creation.

Creating a marketing calendar for the year will help you focus for the year on one specific topic per month.  This actually will save you time and again keep you focused each month if you stick to the topic of the month.  Then everything you produce or share should be about your central topic of the month.

Share other people’s content

So often if we don’t have the staff to produce our own original content we can supplement by sharing other people’s content that is relevant to your audience based on what you already know they want to learn from you.  There are many tools to help make the process of content curation easy and efficient.  Here is a list of my favorites:

How to make curated content work for you!

Curated content should be more than just republishing other people’s stuff!  If you want to demonstrate your expertise than I recommend you add your comment along with the content to show WHY you think the article for example is worth their time to read, or highlight a tip you found most valuable or write a brief statement on why you would recommend some take the time to listen to a specific podcast. 

Want a copy of the curation tools resource list?
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Hope you found this useful, please share any of your own curation tips in the comments below!