7 Tools You Should Use To Bring Your Content Marketing To The Next Level

Content marketing has become an essential part of almost every marketing strategy. There are three key reasons why it is so useful:

1. It helps to increase your sales (as it is promotion anyway and attracts new customers)
2. It saves costs (you don’t need to pay to promote, at least less than for ads) and
3. It’ll help you end up with more loyal customers (by providing content you build an emotional connection with your customers, so they want to use your product again and again)

Still, many startups don’t use its full capacity. Let’s have a closer look at 7 tools, which will help distribute your content in many ways and, if done right, will fascinate even more:

#1 Blog

This is the most traditional way to apply your content marketing strategy. Many companies run a blog, but not all of them are successful. You need to pick the general idea of your blog or magazine very carefully. It can be related to the industry your startup is active in, the background / history of your customers, or even explain how your company contributes to making the world a better place. You can fill your blog / magazine with «How to» articles, interviews, and also listicles (for example, «5 ways to save money»), which are very popular nowadays.

Example:

Intel has a blog (or, as they call it, a «tech culture magazine») called IQ with posts mostly created by their employees. The twist? To every post, they add their logo representing the brand’s image.

#2 Podcasts

If you don’t have enough time to create videos, podcasts are a good alternative for you. More and more people prefer to download podcasts and listen to them during their travels, commutes, or just when they are a bit too lazy to read.

Example:

Slack as a software which most people use at work, has created a podcast series about building great teams at work, culture, innovation, and everything in-between.

#3 Webinars

People like to learn online, participating in different webinars, and being enrolled in different online-courses. Creating your own series of webinars can be very interesting and helpful to distribute your content, however, it will take up quite a bit of your time.

Example:

Yandex (a Russian version of Google, which is very popular in post-soviet countries, especially among the adult generation) provides webinars on how to correctly promote your product on Yandex.

#4 YouTube

YouTube has more than 1 billion users, making it a content distribution platform that reaches almost one-third of all people on the internet. However useful the site might be, you have to take into account the challenge of creating a well-mounted video, as there is an incredibly high number of YouTube channels with which you’ll compete.

Example:

A UK-based startup called WorldRemit (an online money transfer service) shares the stories of people all over the world, explaining how the startup helps them in their everyday lives.

#5 Infographics

Infographics so popular at the moment, that you’ll probably be able to find one or more for everything you’re interested in. To produce an infographic that will go viral and, in the end, attract more customers you should put your focus on a narrow audience and serve their needs.

Example:

Personally, one of my favourite infographics is one called «Well Balanced Blog» made by LinkedIn, where they display a blog making strategy as a diet plan.

#6 Guides

Guides are not easy to create as they have to be well researched and provide a lot of information since they are – you know – a guide. However, done the right way they can quickly become very popular among your (potential) clients thus fostering trust in your services and raising the level of credibility.

Example:

StartUs creates Startup City Guides where you can find all information on how to found a startup in different European cities. Now, more than 70 City Guides are available with no end in sight.

#7 Instagram

As well as Instagram can be another place to sell products for larger corporates, it can be a super successful channel of content marketing for startups. Like with all other channels, it’s important to know where you’re going with this. Many accounts give their followers a look behind the scenes, introducing their team, and sharing what’s going on the office on a typical day.

Example:

Yelp has a very creative and stylish Instagram account – with lots of beautiful pictures of food. Who doesn’t like that? And besides generating a bunch of likes, they also raise awareness for their services.

Finally, don’t forget what Jason Miller, LinkedIn’s Global Content Marketing Leader, once said: “If you can take your personality and inject it into the message you share, you’ll be one step ahead in the content marketing game.”

Portraying this personal side of your company on social media will go a long way in attracting new clients, hires, and fans. And while it’s important to always (always!) keep the data in mind, put yourself in the shoes of your target audience when you’re creating your content marketing strategy. Ask yourself What type of content would be interesting for them? Mix this with something your startup cares and is passionate about and you’ll figure that it doesn’t seem like an awful lot of additional work.

Good Luck!

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