Content with Your Content?

Relevant, compelling, shareable content is the key to Digital Marketing success. But where is all that great content going to come from, you ask?

As a business owner, you naturally know a lot about your industry. You are a subject matter expert in your area of expertise. Information that is obvious to you, things you deal with every day are new, and even interesting, to your target audience.

To get things started, here are11 Content Marketing ideas that you can implement right away. Each one is suitable for repurposing, on multiple platforms, in numerous ways, so they’ll go a long way.

1. Create a Top 10 List—People love lists, and there relatively easy to create—if you can’t come up with one great idea, you can at least offer up 5, 7, or 10 good ones. Possible topics related to your business: upcoming trends, your insights, tips, tricks, things-to-do, things to avoid, things to buy, and so on.

2. Share “Behind The Scenes” Moments—Regardless of the size of your business, whether you are employing a “cast of thousands” or just your cat, people find a look “behind the curtain” fascinating. With most of business taking place via emails and texts, clients/customers might like to see the people with whom they’re working. Use Snapchat to show us these slices of life. It’s always been a promotional staple for celebrities and musicians.

3. The Post-Event Summary—You and/or your staff attend conferences, workshops, seminars, or other training events, summarize your notes and impressions and post a “post” event summary. You’ll be performing a service for those who did not attend the event by allowing them to benefit from your experience — and you position yourself as an information resource. As a plus, you’ll also be scoring points with the Event Coordinators and speakers.

4. Conduct a Survey & Post The Results—Take the temperature of your customers, clients, and/or vendors on issues related to your industry. The poll question can be a simple agree or disagree question about something trivial or profound, just as long as it’s relevant in some way. Once complete, compile the results and then write an article. Many online tools simplify the process from Constant Contact to Survey Monkey.

5. Prepare A Tip Of The Day—A great way to repurpose that Top 10 List, especially for Twitter, and SnapChat with images. Start with your existing list and keep it going by adding a long list of quick tips, then automate the process by scheduling the posts with tools such as Hootsuite or Buffer to post throughout the month.

6. Show A Step-By-Step Demonstration—Whatever your business, there are aspects of what you do, or what your staff does, that can be the subject of a short educational video. For example exercise demos if you own a gym, IT support if you own a Tech company, Recipes if you’re in the food industry, and so on.

 7. Write A Product Review—You use a wide variety of goods and services in the course of running your business, share your experiences, and make recommendations. If you run an IT company, people are always looking for information on hardware, software, and apps. If you’re a Physical Therapist, you can rate exercise equipment or workout clothes. You also don’t have to be limited to your products directly related to your business. Food, travel, consumer goods, management tools are all possible areas.

8. Follow Up On Future Trend Prediction—Have you written, or at least read, a post on upcoming trends in your industry? Write a follow-up post, a Future Trend Report Card, six months or a year later. How did things work out? Which trends had an impact, and which turned out to be duds?

9. Get Guest Bloggers—Give your self a break and further your reputation as a thought leader by inviting other experts in related businesses or industries to write posts to your blog. They’ll appreciate the exposure to your audience, and you’ll get publicity when they promote their post to their audience.

10. Interview Industry Experts—This one has the added benefit of also being a great way to network and meet leaders in your field. Ask them specific questions, or treat it like a profile, and ask them about their career highlights. Interviews can be done in person, over the phone, or by email. You can also send out a list of questions to several experts and compile all of their answers in one post.

11. Turn Your Blog Posts Into a Podcast—Record a reading of some of your best posts, post them to iTunes as a podcast or post the audio files on your blog for readers to listen to or download.

Or Turn Your Podcast Into Blog Posts or a Book. Transcribe your podcast episodes and turn them into blog posts. Publish the exact transcript or embellish it and write a post based on the transcript, or use them as a basis for a book.