Three ways you can make sure your content marketing stands out

Wonder how you can compete with big names and get your small business content out there? Here are three ways you can make sure your content marketing stands out.

There was a time where if you were starting or running a business from home, getting exposure online was relatively straightforward – as long as you knew what you were doing.

Marketing yourself via social media and reaching out to bloggers seemed a simple way to engage with your potential audience.

However, today the landscape is changing as more and more people consume their news and content online. This means that social media and other news portals are oversaturated with content, and it’s becoming harder to be heard as brands.

And, as larger businesses invest in huge marketing budgets, campaigns and agencies, gaining exposure from home as a small business seems more difficult than ever.

Three ways you can make sure your content marketing stands out

That said, there are some techniques and quick tips you can tap into which will help you be heard in the ever-increasing content marketing hype. Here are three ways you can make sure your content marketing stands out.

1) Make the most of data that’s available

Using data sources that are already available is crucial to getting your content marketing plan started quickly and easily. Once you have decided what you are looking into, there are many places to get free data and information that can inform or become an integral part of your campaign.

You can use social media trending information, like hashtag numbers from Instagram and Twitter, for example. How? By looking at insight into something popular within an industry, such as this content marketing campaign that used Instagram data to focus on street food.

In addition to social media information, the Office for National Statistics is perfect for getting your hands on data. They hold vast amounts of information about population, geography and things like purchasing behaviour across the UK. The hardest part is honing in on one specific data set.

Google also has a lot of useful data. Google Trends allows you to access insights on topic interest over time, and where in the world it is the most popular.

This enables you to not only target your campaigns effectively, but also to base your content off the data within this. Couple this with Google Keyword Planner data and you can show where specific interest for topics lies across the UK.

2) Use influencers

You may be an expert in what you do, but your audience won’t necessarily know that as your brand might not currently hold enough weight on it’s own. As a result, your content won’t get the attention it deserves.

What you need is additional authority, and that’s where using influencers come in.

Think about reaching out to other higher profile businesses in relevant industries to see if they would like to provide comment. This may seem difficult, but you’d be surprised. Often business leaders will want their own positive exposure and will be more than happy to provide comment, adding authority to your piece.

Alternatively, it’s easy enough to reach out to high profile experts via platforms such as Twitter. For example, for a piece on The Energy of Dance, the ex-tipped Strictly Come Dancing judge provided his comments and opinions on dances.

Although a very simple idea, this kind of comment not only helps add weight to gain exposure, but also aids in the share potential, as these influencers have a huge audience on social media.

3) Tap into current trends

A great way to ensure that your content marketing piece is picked up, is to make sure that people are already talking about the topic.

So before you start a content marketing campaign that’s relevant to your industry, think whether or not there are any current trends or hot topics that you can leverage to support your idea in some way.

Sometimes this can be something as simple as national days, such as holidays like Christmas or Halloween, or national awareness days like these. But thinking more creatively, popular media such as films and series also gain a lot of exposure during the times they are released and broadcast.

Creating a content marketing piece that is focused around current trends means outreach will also be easier, as you’ll instantly have a list of blogs and news outlets that are speaking about your topic ready to contact with your content marketing piece.

Be creative and keep trying new things

Being an effective content marketer from home should be seen as an opportunity to be creative. Try a combination of all of the above, but don’t be afraid of trying new things.

Part of the beauty of being a content marketer from home is that you don’t have huge agencies and sign off processes, so you can really get stuck in with innovative and targeted ways to get your small business heard.

Three ways you can make sure your content marketing stands out

Three ways you can make sure your content marketing stands out