Content Marketing is a major asset to your sales funnel and as a small business owner, it can never hurt to find ways to save time and effort. Let’s go ahead and call a spade a spade—Content Marketing can be overwhelming. How? It can be extremely difficult to balance social media, email, and other content marketing tactics, like blogging. That’s where content management tools come in.
First comes strategy, then comes content.
Before investing in any tools to manage your content marketing efforts, you first need to have a solid strategy in place that is set up to boost your website traffic, amplify your brand awareness, improve backlinks to your website, build more credibility, and increase your ROI.
Once you have your content strategy in place, it’s time to plug & play using these must-have business tools to manage your content.
Visuals
The human brain processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. Content including high-quality images are among the most-shared in the digital world, and
more shares equals more reach and more reach equals a higher chance to convert a curious consumer into a raving fan.
To achieve the high-quality, editorial-style crisp image look, use Adobe LightRoom. Lightroom helps you import, organize, manage, and find your images.
It’s photo management and photo editing combined into a single tool.
So after capturing great photos of your products or branded content of your services, use Lightroom to adjust the photo to near perfection for any areas that other tools like lighting equipment could have fixed.
On a tight budget?
For creating share-worthy social graphics (high-quality images with text overlay), use Canva—there’s a free version! You don’t have to have any special skills to use Canva—when most people think of graphics, they think of the infamous Photoshop.
Canva is extremely user-friendly and includes hundreds of pre-built templates for every type of content piece (infographics, social media, email headers, presentations, worksheets—you name it!), and the best part? They are all completely customizable and already set to the correct dimensions.
If you have a bit of cash to spare, Canva PRO offers a library full of high-quality images and icons, GIF functionality, design features like “remove background,” and the option to edit a photo (yes, a mini-version of Lightroom) in the middle of designing. Canva will have you feeling like a Graphic Designer and have your associates asking for the contact information of the Graphic Designer they think you hired!
Planning
An Executable Plan Is Your Marketing Backbone.
Remember that strategy we spoke about earlier? It needs to be converted in a comprehensive plan that can be easily digested and followed by any one on your team. In the marketing world, that looks like a content marketing calendar (commonly known as an editorial calendar).
When you have a plan, it’s easier to keep organized, focus on deadlines, and be more productive, which will lead to yielding more prospects and sales.
The purpose of a content calendar is to provide you with a strategy, plan, and schedule for your organized content and any other offline marketing projects, like in-person events.
It’s a comprehensive representation of your digital marketing efforts.
A standard content marketing calendar includes every marketing channel that you plan to leverage for your business, along with correlating campaign initiatives, content types, content KPIs, post dates, and deadlines.
You can use Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets to create one. I personally recommend the calendar design format. I find it easier to digest and follow. This is the format that I use for my clients and I also include a color-coded key.
Scheduling
Once your content is created, it’s time to get it out to the world.
One of the best ways to save on time when managing content is to use scheduling tools to plan out your content for at least a week.
Social Media Marketing
There’s definitely capability to schedule out for months in advance, however I don’t recommend doing so, as your content can seem “too planned” and come off as inauthentic. Social media marketing definitely falls into the Real Time Marketing bucket. Content creation and engagement requires real-time execution.
Tools like Hootsuite and Facebook Creator allow you to put the social media strategies from your content calendar in action by bringing together the visuals and the marketing copy.
Hootsuite allows you to manage multiple social networks (like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn), whereas Facebook Creator provides that same scheduling functionality, however just for Facebook products like Facebook business pages, Instagram profiles, and Facebook & Instagram stories.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways you can share your message, sell your services, and build a relationship with your customers. You need an email marketing tool that will help you effectively manage your lists, connect, campaign. When choosing an email marketing software for your email marketing efforts, make sure to consider these 3 things:
- Integration with your existing CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Having an integration in place is a huge time-saver because you won’t have to manually import your customer lists.
- Mobile-Optimized Functionality. 43% of people now check their emails on their smartphone every single day. If your email is not mobile-optimized, it will appear distorted—or even worse—not appear at all, which will diminish your efforts.
- Response Handling. Choosing email marketing software that will allow you to send automated responses or aggregate customer responses into tickets will be beneficial and creates a manageable workflow for you and your team.
Most Email Marketing softwares, like MailChimp, offer campaign management, email templates, social media posting, and data analytics. MailChimp is great for small to medium-sized businesses managing weekly or monthly newsletters, alongside regular campaigns, with a strong social media focus. MailChimp also integrates with Salesforce, WordPress, and Google Analytics.
Data Management
Track, Measure, & Adjust Accordingly. The only thing constant in Marketing is CHANGE. You have to continue to test, test, and retest, while keeping up with new marketing trends that align with your business.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a great place to start! It’s a content marketing tool that helps you better understand your customers. GA also integrates with many of the content management tools mentioned so far. Use this tool to analyze your customer behavior and make buying predictions. GA reveals the performance for all your marketing efforts—including website performance (down to the landing pages that are converting the most), social media channels, and digital ad campaigns.
If you are interested in taking control of your content marketing engine and getting your time back, please feel free to schedule a free consultation here.