Content marketing is the buzz word in marketing right now. It’s seen as a great way of getting your message out and connecting with your customers and potential customers.

There’s lots of complex, technical thinking around content marketing. But if you’re not an SEO expert, and if you don’t have a massive marketing budget, how can you make use of content marketing in a simple, effective and inexpensive way?

Here are a few very practical content marketing projects you can set up and run very easily in just an hour or two a week:

Broadcast news stories

Search on Google or just about any other search engine and the top-listed results, after the paid-for results, are very often news stories. So identify and write up news stories that surround your product or service and publish them to your website and using social media.

The main essentials when using news as content marketing are that your stories must be timely and topical – either try to think ahead and anticipate the news or, if not, move fast and create a story as and when the news happens.

Create how to articles and guides

‘How to’ ranks heavily in online searches. Millions of people are searching for information on ‘how to’ do something every hour of the day.

Think what topics people might be searching for ‘how to’ and identify those which are closely connected to your product or service. For example, how to bake great cakes or train for a marathon. Create some articles and guides on those subjects and post them to your website. The more the merrier.

If you nee help creating articles and guides then take a look at the writing services I can offer.

Run a regular newsletter

Setting up and sending out an email newsletter is well established as a way of building relationships with your existing customers. But it can also be an effective method of content marketing too.

It’s really simple to turn your newsletters into a content marketing opportunity – as well as broadcasting your letter by email create an archive of back issues on your site.

But here’s a tip …. create your newsletters with the intention they will be content not just communication in the first place.

Publish a book

When all those celebs. and politicians publish their autobiographies they’re not doing it for the money. As, often, they don’t make any money from the book sales as they sell very few books. They’re doing it pure and simply for the publicity. Books get returned in search engine searches and especially on highly influential websites like Amazon very often, and even recommended and reviewed on other sites.

It’s relatively easy and inexpensive to publish your own book nowadays using print on demand, or even by publishing an e-book like a Kindle book.

Here’s a useful article looking at why you should publish your own book.

Conduct and publish surveys

The Internet generally loves specifics like facts and figures and surveys are a good way of getting your name and details of your product out in the public domain.

Conduct some surveys that are relevant to your product or service. Ask your customers to help out, or even just do a survey in the street. Write the results up – a series of bullet points summarising the main findings is an easy way to do it – then publish to your site.

Lastly, use reviews …. try this sneaky guerrilla tactic!

Reviews are big on the Internet, VERY big. Again, notice how many Internet searches lead you to a review.

Rather than allowing reviews on your own site (which can open a whole can of worms) make use of existing review sites, or set up your own simple review site or review blog. Post reviews of products and services that compete with, or are similar to yours. People searching for those products and services will also find their way to your products and services.

I hope you find that helpful. Need some help with creating your content marketing? Get in touch for tips and advice …. mark @ markhempshell.com