Most of us are stuck at home right now, but that doesn’t mean you can’t work on your business. Whether you’ve been forced to shut the doors of your business until this pandemic is over, or working from home is normal for you (as it is for us), you probably have some extra time on your hands, even if it’s just time you would normally spend networking, going to social activities, or commuting to and from work.
While we aren’t in the habit of telling people they should be working 24/7 (sleeping, eating, exercising, and taking some down time are all good things), if you find yourself with a little too much free time on your hands these days, we have some ideas for how you can use that time to up your content marketing game.
It’s no secret that content marketing requires a considerable investment of time, which is why so many small business owners and solopreneurs struggle to do as much content marketing as they would like. Well, if you’re not sure what else you can do for your business while you’re stuck at home, then you can get to work creating great content that will increase your online visibility and convince readers to become customers.
Last week we talked about the importance of online marketing during a pandemic, so this week we’re going to focus on how to get ahead on your content marketing while you’re stuck at home during a pandemic. Here are the four areas of content marketing you can get to work on right now.
Table of Contents
1) Blogging
Maintaining a consistent blogging schedule is a key ingredient to showing up in online searches and building an audience, and yet when small business owners and solopreneurs get busy, blogging is usually the first thing to fall by the wayside, leaving their posting schedule erratic and unpredictable. When that happens, your audience doesn’t know when they’ll hear from you next, and Google isn’t sure what to make of your website either.
So use this time to write some blog posts. Come up with a schedule, but make sure it’s one you know you can realistically stick to after we get through this and things get busy again. Whether that’s once a week or once a month, consistency matters more than frequency (although frequency does matter).
Once you have a schedule, start researching some topic ideas. Do some keyword research to see what search terms in your industry are generating website traffic. Use a topic generator, like Hubspot, Ahrefs, or Answer the Public to help you come up with blog post topic ideas. Ask your audience, either through polls conducted on social media or just by asking them on a good old-fashioned phone call. Since we’re all stuck at home, you might as well call up your contacts and see how they’re doing, right?
Pick a few topics that seem worth covering, do your research on them, and start writing. Write as many blog posts as you can so you have a backlog of posts ready to publish in the months to come. That way, when this crisis has ended and business picks up again, you’ll be ready to serve your customers without having to worry about falling behind on your blog.
We had an entire blog post not too long ago devoted to blog post ideas you can use right now, and as far as we know, COVID-19 hasn’t made those tips any less relevant.
Pro tip: If you’re scheduling blog posts to be published ahead of time, don’t forget to check the calendar for holidays you can work into your blog posts. Yes, we can still find ways to celebrate all our favorite holidays even if we can only get together online.
2) Guest Blogging
If you struggle to find time to write blog posts for your own website, you probably struggle to find time to write guest posts for other people’s blogs. The bad news is that guest blogging is absolutely necessary for growing your online visibility and giving your own website’s SEO a boost. Not only does guest posting give you a high-quality backlink (as long as they aren’t paid guest posts) but it’s also a great way to get in front of an entirely new (and hopefully much larger) audience.
Once you have a nice backlog of posts ready to go up on your own blog (always prioritize your own blog), start researching some blogs that might make a good fit for you to write guest posts and get writing.
Make sure the blogs are in industries related to yours, but you don’t want them to be direct competitors. You’ll want to thoroughly research each blog to get a feel for the tone and voice they like to use in their content, their audience, and the topics they like to cover. Don’t pitch your blog post idea to them until after you’ve already written it – a completed blog post is much more likely to get accepted than just a headline and a brief paragraph.
Most blogs have a form you can use to submit guest blog post ideas, but you’re better off reaching out directly to the editor of the blog. Build a relationship with them first by following them on social media and engaging with their posts. Only after you’ve been doing that for a while should you reach out to them with a pitch for a guest blog post, and when you do, keep it personal. Talk about the weather. Talk about the fact that we’re all stuck inside right now – the editor is most likely also stuck in their home – and be sure to mention that you hope they’re staying healthy.
Only after you’ve built a relationship with the editor should you send them the pitch for your guest blog post, and as mentioned above, it had better be the entire post rather than just a headline and a brief paragraph.
3) White Papers
The line between white papers and blog posts has blurred to the point where they’re practically indistinguishable from one another. The general rule of thumb used to be that white papers were longer than blog posts and involved more research, but these days the advice from the best bloggers is to write very long posts (2,000-2,500 words each according to Hubspot) that have been thoroughly researched and involve a ton of data and resources you can reference. Not only does doing so provide value to your audience and improve your blog’s SEO, but it also makes your content more credible and improves your authority on the topic.
Whether you have a separate section on your website for white papers, or you want to write the occasional long, in-depth blog post, researching and writing 2,000 words will take you at least a few hours (3-4 hours on average), so set aside a chunk of time you know you’ll be able to devote to researching and writing.
4) Books
What sounds more impressive than the title of author? Especially published author? What better way to position yourself as an authority on a topic than to be able to say you literally wrote the book on it? It is a coveted, yet elusive title, even with all the avenues of self publishing available to us today.
You’re the expert in your industry. You know so much about it you could write a whole book on it, if only you had the time…
As the saying goes, there’s no time like the present, and with most of the world shut down, that’s more true than ever before. So go ahead! Write that book!
As with your blog posts and white papers, you want to be sure to do your research before you start writing anything. First, you need to see what books have already been written for your industry. You don’t need to read every book ever written on your topic, but you should at least read a few of them to get an idea of what topics have already been covered and how they’ve been covered. You don’t want to write about a topic that’s already flooded with content, but if you can put a new spin on an old topic, it might still be worth covering in your book, especially if you can manage to hint at your unique take somewhere in the book description and/or marketing material.
While making sure you don’t cover topics that have already been thoroughly covered by everyone else, you also want to make sure that whatever you do decide to write about has an audience. Do your keyword research to find topics that are getting searches, but don’t already have a ton of content covering them. Every industry has its content gaps, so find the intersection between what you know, what content your target audience is looking for, and what topics have not been covered as much or as well as you can cover them.
5) Revisit Old Blog Posts
If you’ve been blogging for a while, now is the perfect time to revisit some of your older blog posts. Look at which ones are getting the most traffic and see if you can update them with a more modern take. Blog posts with evergreen content consistently perform well in online searches, but if you can optimize them by updating and republishing them, you’ll be able to get even more out of them when it comes to driving leads to your website and converting those leads into customers.
6) Revisit Your Website Content
When was the last time you really looked at the content on your website’s landing pages? Unlike your blog, landing pages don’t need to be updated on a regular basis, but if it’s been a while, it might be a good time to look them over and make sure they’re still accurate and relevant.
Maybe some of your pages mention products or services you no longer offer, or you have new offerings that don’t yet have their own sales pages.
Maybe some of the keywords you initially targeted on your sales pages now have a higher SEO competition score or a lower search volume. A little research might reveal new keywords you should try to rank for that weren’t viable when you first wrote your website content.
Then again, maybe it’s time to rebrand and this is your chance to completely redo your website. We don’t recommend designing your own website unless you’re a professional, but you might want write your own content. If you’d rather leave your content in the hands of a professional, we have you covered. Creating all the content for an entire website requires a serious investment of time (we should know), so if you have some extra time on your hands right now, it just might be the perfect opportunity to get to work on your website.
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If you’re still busy serving clients during this time, or if things are slow, but writing isn’t your strong suit and you want to be sure to position yourself as an expert for when customers do start coming through your doors again, we can help. Whether you need blog posts, white papers, or ebooks, we have a service to get you what you need.
If you’d rather do the writing yourself, but you need help coming up with topics, or you want someone else to do the keyword research for you, we can help in those areas as well. Maybe you just want a professional to look over your work when you’re dong to make sure it’s polished and free of errors – we can help with that, too.
