Social Media Marketing for Busy Small Business Owners

A casual browse through the social media pages of many small businesses will quickly reveal outdated posts and abandoned social platforms. One of the main reasons for this is, many small business owners just do not believe they have the time to keep up with a content posting schedule. While small business owners understand the importance of publishing content about their business on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Youtube, the work it seems to involve to post content daily, weekly or even monthly just does not seem realistic. I mean, they have a business to run after all.  Include the fact that for many, content creation just is not one of their strong points. For this reason, many small business owners just give up all together and don’t bother with it.

In this COVID-19 stage, for the small business owners electing to ignore their social media content strategy, this could mean the demise of their business. There are more people online today than ever before because of the Coronavirus pandemic. In many cities, not only nationwide, but worldwide, offices and buildings have shut down and employers are allowing their employees to work from home. Schools have closed and transitioned to an online teaching environment. Restaurants and grocery stores are heavily investing in home delivery services and curbside pickup. People are staying at home more and practicing social distancing. The online market is experiencing an explosion of web traffic not seen before.

“Online sales in the U.S. have increased 25% on average for daily sales March 13-15 compared with average daily sales March 1-11, according to Adobe Analytics. The growth is largely due to a boost in online grocery sales, which have increased 100% in daily online sales March 13-15 compared with average daily sales March 1-11”, https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2020/04/01/us-ecommerce-sales-rise-25-since-beginning-of-march/

Small businesses that want a fighting chance at staying relevant and alive are forced to reconsider their stance on social media marketing and online marketing in general.

How to get More Traffic, Leads, and Sales

A lot of businesses that actually create and distribute content to their audience are trapped on a “content treadmill”. They create a piece of content, hit publish, promote it for a few days, move on to the next one, then rinse and repeat. Because they are fixated on “content creation” over “content promotion”, those businesses can’t even make the most of their huge output. Their content marketing ROI stays low, their analytics show barely any growth, and they can’t even afford to stop, re-evaluate, and pivot. They have to keep going just to stay where they are. There is however, a way to break this cycle.

Why You Need a Content Strategy

To understand why you need a content strategy, you first need to realize an uncomfortable truth. Only a fraction of your audience sees your content. It’s sad, but it’s true. The majority of your target audience will never see or engage with your content. Now I know it’s sad, but it’s actually good news. It means that you as an entrepreneur don’t have to scramble to create as much content as possible, as quickly as possible. Instead, you can focus your efforts on exposing as much of your audience as you can to the pieces you’ve already created. That’s what “Content Amplification” is all about.

What is Content Amplification

Basically, content amplification is taking a piece of content, whether it be a video, a blog post, or an audio file, and repurposing it for different platforms and marketing channels usually more than once. This approach has many advantages. It allows you to fill several different marketing channels with just one piece of content. It helps you create content in less time because you are mostly repurposing and re-imaging existing pieces rather than trying to create something new. It maximises the ROI from each piece of content you produce exposing your audience to it multiple times. Sounds great doesn’t it? Let’s explore how you can create and implement a content amplification strategy in your business in 3 simple steps.

3 Steps To Create Your Content Amplification Strategy

Step 1 - Identify your main Marketing Channels and Formats

You need to determine which content marketing channels matter the most to your business. We recommend focusing on 3 to 4 at most. If you try to be everywhere at once your content quality will suffer.

A way of doing this would be to pick 2 long form channels like your business blog and your Youtube channel. Then also pick two short form ones like your Twitter and Instagram. If you’re not sure which channels are going to be winners, consider where your target market hangs out. For example, if your customers are b2b, chances are they use Linkedin a lot, and if your blog has a vibrant readership it would be silly to ignore it.

Once you know your primary channels you want to identify the content formats that will work best for them. Articles, podcast episodes, videos, short posts, you name it. Writing these out will give you a clear picture of what types of content you will need to create and distribute to your audience. Now, with all the elements in place, it is now time to arrange them into a single coherent system.

Step 2 - Build your Content Amplification Pipeline

Think of your content amplification strategy as kind of a web. You’ll have one piece of content at the center. Something you will create from scratch and use as a base for everything else you produce. From that foundational piece you will create many more pieces of repurposed content that branch out in all directions. Video is a good foundational format. Why? Because it typically contains text, images, and audio which you can use to make tons more content down the line. For example, it’s much easier to turn a video into a blog article than visa versa. Make sense?

After you have identified your primary format, you can then map out your content amplification process. It can go something like this:

1. You produce a video to go on your company Youtube channel;
2. You transcribe and edit the video into a blog article;
3. You create a 30 second version of the video and use it as material for an Instagram post or ads;
4. You pull interesting quotes from the transcripts and turn them into tweets or insta captions.
5. You use screenshots from the video for a slide deck.
6. You extract the audio and make it into a podcast episode if the format allows… and so on.

If the video does especially well, you can repurpose it into a lead magnet or create a followup piece on the same topic. You could also update it with new information on the same subject. The options are as unlimited as your imagination and creativity.

Step 3 - Promote, Optimize, and Synergize

You want to make sure your marketing channels work in sync to enhance one another and expose your content to as many potential customers as possible. The best way to optimize your content amplification will depend on your specific marketing channels, your marketing funnel, and your business goals. As an example, here is just one way you can make it happen. If you can, direct all traffic from your main channels to a single point in your marketing funnel. For instance, your blog articles, Youtube videos, and social media posts can link back to the same landing page on your website. This will allow you to get a lot more traffic for the same piece of content repurposed multiple times.

Alternatively, you can cross promote your channels by directing your social media followers to your Youtube or your blog and visa versa. This will help you expose as many of your target customers as possible to your content. Even if they follow you only on one marketing channel to begin with. Connecting different marketing channels and using different content formats to expand and reinforce your brand message is exactly what makes content amplification so powerful. It allows you to step away from frantic low ROI content creation in favor of the number one thing that really matters. Promoting your best content and making sure it resonates powerfully with your target market.  

One More Thing

What if we could automate this entire process of “Content Amplification” for you and your business? Here at The Expert SEO Group, we are helping our clients by automating this entire process and making it super easy for them to broadcast their message to their target audience like a DJ at a popular radio station. Our automation process will allow you to reach your target audience with the message that you control. This helps you to become the authority in your market and pull your ideal customers into your sales funnel where you have the opportunity to turn them into paying customers.

If this sounds like something you would be interested in having us set up for your business, contact us today and ask about our Social Syndication Network.