Your content is unlikely to go viral when you’re starting out, but it would still be nice to get more than a handful of likes. You don’t want to spend hours writing blog content or spend a fortune on fancy videos if nobody is interested.

But you don’t want your content to get seen by just anybody – you want it to get seen by the right people. You want it to get seen by your ideal audience. And that’s the first thing you should concentrate on – getting your stuff in front of the right people.

Don’t focus on likes and comments – focus on conversions. If ten people see your content and one of them becomes a subscriber or customer, that’s better than 100 people seeing it and none of them acting on it.

Before you go out and spend huge amounts of time or money on creating content, you need to consider two important things.

If you don’t have a goal, how will you know if your marketing is working? If you don’t identify your audience, how can you create content to attract them?

Sounds pretty obvious, but it’s surprising how many people create content without thinking about their target audience.

Sure, sharing a video of your team doing the latest TikTok dance craze might get a lot of likes, but is it going to get you meaningful engagement? Probably not.

So, before you rush off to write about whatever the latest industry trend is, take a minute to decide whether your ideal clients will actually be interested.

Use social media to find out which subjects your ideal clients would like to learn more about. Run polls, ask questions, test different content ideas and look at what content your target audience is already engaging with.

Check out your competitors’ content and see which topics get the most interest – can you put an alternative spin on a subject or present it differently?

Find groups or forums your ideal clients are active in. What questions are they asking? What conversations are taking place?

And listen to people. What questions do you get asked over and over again? What advice do you find yourself repeating? What mistakes do you see people making? These could be great subjects for your next piece of content.

Don’t try to appeal to everyone. It’s impossible, and it doesn’t make for good content.

Instead, think about the sort of person you want to do business with – your favourite client – and write (or talk) as though you are writing for them (or speaking directly to them). The more your content resonates with someone, the more likely they are to want to do business with you.

It’s not enough to just stick a blog post or video on your website and hope people will find it. You’ve got to get it out there in front of them.

Social media is the easiest way, and it’s free. But don’t just share a link or video with no context – explain why people should click through to your article or watch your video. What’s in it for them?

If you have an email subscriber list or you send out newsletters, make sure you include links to your latest blog posts or videos.

And you could even include a link to your latest blog in your email signature – it’s far more interesting than just a link to your website homepage.

Not everyone you are connected to will see your content the first time you share it. In fact, you’d be lucky if 20% of your followers see it. And of those that do see it, not all of them will watch, read or listen the first time around.

Don’t be scared of resharing content. Companies don’t make a TV ad and only show it once. People are used to seeing the same things more than once – it’s perfectly normal. So share your content multiple times.

And as well as resharing on social media, link back to older content from new content or add a ‘related content’ section to the bottom of each blog post. 

Repurposing just means reusing your content in different ways. After all, if you’ve spent a lot of time or money on your content, you’ll want it to work as hard as possible for you.

Not everyone likes content in the same format. Some people like video, while others prefer blog posts. Some people want to read a book, while others prefer audiobooks. Some people want short, easy-to-digest content while others want in-depth white papers.

The point is, not everyone wants to view your content in the way you’d like them to view it.

So repurpose it.

Whenever you create a piece of content, think about how to reuse it to get maximum mileage.

There’s no point in doing any marketing activity if you don’t measure the success. You need to know if it’s working to decide whether it is worth the continued investment.

Content marketing is often a longer-term strategy, so you may need to be patient, but you should still keep track of the results.

With social media, you can often see at a glance if your content is being liked, shared or commented on. You can also keep track of how many new followers you are getting and which types of content they engage with most.

Google Analytics is an extremely useful tool for tracking results. It will tell you if you’ve had an increase in traffic, as well as where that traffic has come from and which of your website pages people are visiting. This can be very useful in deciding which platforms work best and which types of content get the most engagement.

And most email service providers provide data on open rates and click-through rates so you can see what works and what doesn’t.

But ultimately, social media followers, email subscribers, and website visitors are only beneficial if some of them eventually convert into customers. So track where your enquiries come from. Maybe someone saw a post on Facebook, perhaps they came across your content in a Google search. If you know how they found you, you’ll know if your content marketing is working.

In an ideal world, you’d write a blog post and get hundreds of new clients off the back of it. In reality, this is very unlikely to happen, so you need to decide what success looks like for you.

If you spend three hours writing a blog post each month and win one new client every six months as a result, is it worth the effort? If you spend £2000 on video content and triple your social media following as a result, is that a good investment? Only you can decide what results you are happy with. 

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