(This is Part 12 in a blog series on understanding – and curing – “Blogophobia: the Fear of Content Marketing”)
In the previous post, Blogophobia Recovery Step #7: Measuring Your Content Marketing Results, I covered ways to measure the effects of your content marketing efforts.
You ask, “How much time will this all take?”
One of the biggest concerns about undertaking a content marketing program is the time investment (which in turn translates into a financial investment) required. Many companies feel that creating fresh content on a consistent basis, however, is no longer an option – the payoff is too valuable — and they delve into content marketing, at whatever level their time and budget constraints allow.
The Social Media Examiner 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report says: “The majority of marketers (59%) are using social media for 6 hours or more each week, and a third (33%) invest 11 or more hours weekly.”
Of course, the time spent depends on how much content you actually produce (the consensus is that you should blog at least once per week – more often if your audience is receptive). To concept, create, optimize and publish a blog, including your information and image research, can easily take 3-6 hours. Add 15-20 minutes per day (or more) promoting your content on various networks as well as answering questions or commenting on other blogs and you’ve easily invested your 6 – 10 hours.
But how much time do you normally invest in marketing your business?
Some small businesses may spend up to half of their time marketing – this includes emailing, calling, networking and creating and executing various forms of promotion. Spending time on content marketing and social media activity may replace some of these actions and potentially yield a bigger yet targeted audience. And as we said in the first post of this series – content marketing allows a conversation with buyers. Businesses now have the opportunity to create relationships with existing and potential clients – versus engaging in scattershot attempts at being in the right place at the right time in front of the right person.
Some companies have also said that they have saved money they used to invest in more expensive forms of advertising but instead focusing on Content Marketing.
Ask yourself: Can you afford not to engage in Content Marketing?
Here are a couple of other stats from Hubspot Inbound Marketing Software:
57% of businesses have acquired a customer through their company blog.
Companies that blog get 55% more web traffic.
Here are some ways to save time creating content:
- Plan ahead – create an editorial calendar for the next 6-12 months – develop categories or themes for multiple posts
- Research several related ideas relevant to your industry and create multiple blogs at one time
- If you frequently write blogs with similar topics (i.e. the law, real estate or finance), build a library of available images
- Create videos
- Write short posts – helpful hints, short news stories or feature an image with a brief description
- Repurpose, reuse, recycle from your content archives (newsletters, collateral, ads, etc.)
When promoting your blogs, use software like Ping.fm or Alternion or a content curation site like Scoop.it to easily post to multiple networks at one time
Use software like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck or Buffer to schedule multiple tweets and more easily monitor your social media activity.
Incorporating content marketing into your marketing strategy will take time and effort but…
No one said, “Success was going to be easy.”
