Six tips for quick, easy and effective content marketing

While we know how important content marketing is when it comes to generating interest and sales and have the best intentions of keeping our blogs and social media updated, the time investment can often cause these tasks to sneak further and further down our list of priorities.

Thankfully though there are ways you can minimise the amount of time you spend while still gaining all of benefits, like these six tips for quick, easy and effective content marketing.

1. Know your purpose

Most businesses get on social media and start blogging because they have heard they should be doing it. While this is true for the most part, when you don’t know why you are doing it, what you want to achieve by it or who you are targeting, you can end up using the wrong platforms, share information that isn’t relevant or engaging to readers and ultimately waste valuable time.

By working out the purpose of your content you uncover what information you should share and write about, provide a level of consistency with your writing and are more likely to increase both your readership and sales through targeted, relevant content and calls to action.

2. Theme your content

If you find you are wasting time wondering what you should write about or share, look at theming your content around a certain topic or area of specialty.

For example you could theme it by the day on social media like I do with “Marketing Monday” where I only share marketing tips that day, or you could have an extended theme over a week, fortnight or month that also carries through on your blog depending on what your readers are interested in.

3. Write status updates and blogs in advance

A lot of time can be wasted in researching, brainstorming and writing daily status updates and last minute blogs. While some days you might know exactly what to write, other days you can hit a creative block and struggle to come up with something informative or entertaining to share, causing undue stress and wasting precious time stuck in writer’s block.

To make your life easier, set aside a day or half day to write up a month’s worth of blogs and social media updates so you are always at least one month ahead. This way you have the ability to be spontaneous if there is a blog or update you want to share that strikes during a moment of inspiration, and have the benefit of high quality information going up on a consistent basis.

4. Take advantage of inspiration

When a moment of inspiration does strike, briefly jot down your idea and an outline of the post and keep thinking of more topics. Often we get stuck writing the post from start to finish, which can lead to missing more content ideas. Instead use your moment of creativity to think of more topics and tips to share.

Should there be a post that comes before the one you just thought of? Should there be one after? Have there been any questions about your industry or area of expertise that would make a good post? Could one tip be turned into several?

Often starting is the hardest part so when your ideas do start flowing give yourself permission to keep brainstorming.

5. Allocate set times for social media monitoring

Social media when left open can be one of our biggest productivity killers. To avoid the temptation and make your social media time more effective and targeted, allocate set times throughout the day to update your status, participate in the conversation and monitor your engagement.

If you find you keep slipping down the rabbit hole of social media memes, updates and information set an alarm so you can keep yourself in check.

6. Schedule updates

With consistency being so important, scheduling your content can be a great way to ensure you have regular content being published regardless of how busy your schedule is, or whether you are in the office or away.

Scheduling can also help you minimise the time you spend on content marketing platforms being able to upload in one hit and avoid the distraction of constant social media checking.

Do you have any tips for effective and efficient content marketing?