Finding time to produce marketing content can be challenging for small businesses. But if you’re running any sort of blog or keeping up any sort of legit social media platform you must feed the beast somehow and it can’t all be leftovers (curated content). The reward for that time spent can be worthwhile with a little planning. Here are some content marketing tips and considerations to get you going.

Start by understanding the right content mix
Based on your product/service, your audience and your brand the right content mix could vary and include any or all of the following:

On/from your website:

• Blog posts/articles
• Case Studies
• Videos/tutorials/webinars/demos
• Infographics
• white paper/Ebook
• Presentations
• Newsletters/Email/RSS

Across Social Platforms:

• Articles
• Videos
• Infographics
• Specials
• photos
• memes
• Presentations

See more examples including how each plays into your marketing goals in this awesome matrix from Smart Insights.

The point is, you don’t have to put out 12-page white papers just because some other small businesses do. Would your audience benefit from that? Would they read it and share it even if they knew they would benefit from it? Content is King but sometimes the Jester gets the most attention. If it fits your brand and your audience will connect with it, think about shorter, more entertaining pieces that take less time and may have more Share Value.

Publish your content where your readers are
Maintaining a blog can help pad your website’s SEO but if you’re not getting visitors to read your blog try taking your blog content to them. Promoting your posts in shorter, digestible posts on Facebook or easy to retweet links on Twitter or more visual pieces on Pinterest will get more eyes on the content you produce.

Use the tools available to you
It’s great if you have graphic designers, copywriters and project managers on staff. But if you don’t it doesn’t mean you can’t create solid marketing content.  From outsourcing the efforts to going at it yourself there are a number of paid and free tools on the interwebs to help you out.

• Contently – Build your marketing team and manage the creation and publication of your content.
• Visual.ly – Create or buy data based visuals like infographics.
• Piktochart – Another helpful tool for visualizing data.
• Prezi – Create and share killer presentations quickly.
• InboundWriter – don’t know what to write about? Find a topic and get help optimizing it for the web.

Depending on your team, your time and your goals some of these may prove helpful. Of course, we’re always open for a chat as well.

Have other tools you find helpful for content marketing? Tell us about them in the comments section below.