Concept To Content: Writing for the Small Business Website
By now, you’ve heard a thousand times that on the web, content is king. Perhaps you’re tired of the repetition. But behind the overused adage is an inescapable truth. Your business can stand out in a crowded marketplace by creating content that interests your prospective customers and establishes your as an expert in your field. But how can you begin? Below I list a step by step process that I use to develop new articles for this blog.
Research
As I mentioned recently, your prospective customers are looking for you. It pays to use the web to investigate questions that your potential customers are asking. If all else fails, you can ask your customers for advice on article topics.
Create Buyer Personas
Buyer persona creation is a complex topic. For the purpose of this article, I’ll keep it simple. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. If possible spend time to create a composite ideal customer and speak directly to this “person” as you write. If time is at a premium, picture one of your current customers, and write as if you were personally addressing that person.
Solve Your Customer’s Problems
What does your persona complain about? What are struggles that are common to most of your customers? For my customers, it is a challenge to create relevant content for their blogs and websites. That, of course, is why I am writing this! Use your customers’ challenges as your opportunity to demonstrate relevance and expertise.
Content Presentation
Do your customers have time to read? Are they technical, unsophisticated, traditional? Present your content authentically to your customers. Try to match your style and vocabulary to your persona.
In addition, your persona may dictate that you choose to use video or audio rather than writing a blog post or article. In his book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR, David Meerman Smith lists the following content presentation choices:
- White Papers - Technical documents that define a business problem and present your company’s solution
- E-Books – An informal downloadable document, often a PDF, that presents a business challenge and solution
- Email Newsletters
- Webinars
- Wikis
- Research and survey reports
- Blogs
- Podcasts
- Video
Since my target client is continually learning and growing through reading, I choose to focus on articles. Who knows? One day I may experiment with audio or video. For now, this works!
Keep Content Simple
Most of us are extremely busy. When we visit a web page for information, we want to find the main point quickly.
Here are some easy ways to keep things simple:
- Use bulleted lists for related ideas
- State your main point in the opening paragraph and use the rest of the post to elaborate
Most importantly, just get started writing!
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Harvey, I agree with you that you must get into your clients shoes and understand what their problems are. Once you know that simply solve the problem or position yourself to be the resource that solves their problems. Great article and good tips. Thanks, Preston Rahn.
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I totally agree, in order to sell a product or a service to a customer or even to get them returning to your site, you really need to get into their shoes, perhaps even start to behave a little like them to truly understand what makes them tick.
You need to know what they want to read, the format that they will be happy reading/consuming, place your content in the correct place, basically just understand everything there is to know about the typical customer for your business.
Really good tips!
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If writing is not your thing, you could use audio or better yet video and submit it to commercial friendly sites like Adwido.
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I checked out Adwido. It looks very interesting, though still new. I would also consider a video marketing strategy built around YouTube.
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Thanks for sharing this interesting information.
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This is great advice. Very well written and informative. Thanks for the great post Harvey.
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Every web browser renders web pages slightly differently; some Flash content isn’t compatible with older versions of Flash (and some versions of Flash aren’t supported on some operating systems at all!), etc. If you make your living creating web content, all of those problems may be amplified several times.
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Another good post. Home based businesses is becoming quite a phenomenon around the USA.
[...] purposes, but if resources are limited, you can begin with a free blog from WordPress.com. Just get started creating content and when you have the extra resources, you can hire a web developer to develop a blog on your own [...]
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I generally spent quite a lot of time with the people I am writing to and ask a lot of questions.
Then I understand what their target interests are.
This makes writing much easier.
As you stated people will not read what they are not interested in
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Thanks Kim.
I agree. It is so much easier to write when you’re sure that you are connecting with someone in a meaningful way.
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People want to know how they can benefit, what is in it for them. We also use video for the human connection.
Marcus´s last blog ..AC Repair St. Pete – Guide to Air Conditioner Repairs
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Marcus,
It looks like you’re doing some thoughtful writing aimed at potential customers. Great job!
I browsed your site a bit and would have liked to see an “About Us” or “Company” page with a description of who you are and why you do what you do.
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Harvey ,
Thanks for the input – you are correct.
Marcus´s last blog ..AC Repair St. Pete – Guide to Air Conditioner Repairs
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Small Business owners are largely forgotten. Thats why I only focus on them. I have experience several members of my family file bankruptcy due to small business failures. I also I suffered through 2 destroyed businesses due to failure however, in my failings I have learned some of the secrets to success.
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Thanks for commenting Alex. It’s good to hear from others who share my fascination with small businesses.
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Article marketing can contribute much success in your online marketing efforts as well as drive traffic to your sites. Very good valid information here.