small business marketing

Small Business Marketing: 5 Mistakes You May Make

…And How to Fix Them

Marketing campaign got you down?

First, breathe. They didn’t build Rome in a day, and your organic traffic won’t build that quickly, either. 

But it never hurts to do a reality check. If you’ve been at it for a while and your campaign isn’t sprouting legs, it’s probably because you’re making one of these small business marketing faux pas (part 1):

You’re Neglecting the “Social” in Social Media

Social media without two-way communication isn’t social. It’s a lecture.

Do you want someone to like, share, and subscribe? So does (almost) everyone else. 

Social media platforms offer incredible opportunities to connect with potential customers, build brand awareness, and strengthen relationships. However, you won’t achieve any of this if you don’t reply to customers and engage with their content. 

How to fix: Take 10-15 minutes every day to engage with your audience on the platforms you use. Reply to their responses, like their content, and share some of their posts with your audience. 

Think of a social media platform like you would in any situation with a crowd of people in a networking environment. The people who engage tend to make the most connections, not those in the corner glued to their phones. Just make sure these are quality engagements—not moments when you’re drunkenly interrupting thoughtful conversations, belching incoherent conspiracy theories, and trampling a brittle Executive Director on the way to the open gin bar. On the web, we call them trolls. 

You’re Overlooking Customer Feedback

Which resource is more valuable, an ounce of printer ink or gold? The ink.

Printer ink is stupid expensive, but it helps with the metaphor. If you’re more interested in panning for gold than reading and addressing what your customers are saying, you’ll be depleting your gold mine in no time. 

How to fix: We all love to see our businesses make money, but customer feedback is often more valuable. Quality feedback provides you with a direct line to understanding your target audience’s needs, preferences, and pain points. When you address these accurately, you’ll make them feel heard, earn a reputation as a continuously improving and innovating business, and may even turn those customers into brand ambassadors. 

Speaking of brand…

Your Branding is Inconsistent

Your brand is more than just a logo; it’s your visual and verbal identity. As one agency puts it, your brand is why your organization exists, what you do, how you do it differently than everyone else, and the way it comes to life. 

If your visuals and messaging aren’t cohesive, people will struggle to figure out who you are. Worse, they’ll think you’re struggling with the same. 

How to fix: Create a brand guide that includes adjectives that best set the tone of your business and the colors that best represent your brand. Use this guide as your north star in everything you create going forward. 

Think of it this way: your brand is like your home’s foundation. If it’s untested and put together without care, you’ll deal with structural issues for years. 

Your Content Calendar Needs Work 

Your content calendar is more than just a list of topics and publishing dates—it’s a delicate dance of strategy, foresight, and savvy organizational management. Without one, you’ll almost certainly struggle to keep up with your content and limit your knowledge of what you have and how it’s performing. 

How to fix: Find the best tool for you and your team. It can be a simple spreadsheet or a more collaborative tool like Trello or Asana. Whatever you use, make sure you include your calendar basics, like content title, type, location, category/bucket, dates, assigned contributor, status, and additional notes. 

You’re Doing Your Small Business Marketing Alone

Small business marketing doesn’t mean that you, the small business owner, are doing the marketing. It’s usually better that you don’t because you’ve got a million other things to do. Should you play an active role in planning and reviewing key pieces of content before they’re published? Absolutely (or whoever’s in a marketing managerial role should anyway)! Should you be spending hours every week creating it? No? 

How to fix: Save time, increase visibility, and get your marketing done by outsourcing it to an expert. 

And stay tuned for part 2 of this article, because there are many more small business marketing mistakes that can be improved upon!

how to create a content calendar feature image

How to Create a Content Calendar

Save time and stay organized. Create a content calendar. 

Your calendar is more than just a list of topics and publishing dates — it’s a delicate dance of strategy, foresight, and savvy organizational management. 

Whether you’re a dedicated Trello or Asana user, have a case of the Mondays, or use a spreadsheet, there’s no best way to create a content calendar. However, there are several elements you should always include, and a bunch more based on your goals and how elaborate you’d like your calendar to be. 

Here’s how to create a content calendar:

Know Your Audience

Content is king, but relevance is queen. You can churn out a thousand posts, but if they lack intent and a target, you might as well be throwing a dart as a dartboard you can’t see. Ten bull’s eyes are worth way more than a thousand holes in the wall and one very angry bar owner.

This all goes back to content creation 101. Ask yourself:

  • Who is my audience?
  • What are my objectives?
  • Will my audience find this useful?

And don’t forget to make your content educational, entertaining, and engaging. 

Select Your Tool

And by tool, I mean platform. Keep your minds out of the gutter. 

There are many platforms to help you stay organized, and most offer way more than you’d ever need. Whether you want a sophisticated project management tool or a simple pen and paper, stick with what works best. 

Create Your List

Do you know what looks excellent in a content calendar? Ideas.

Create a list of topics you want to cover and run them through your relevance filter. Once you’ve got a large list of topics to create content for, organize them in buckets. Are you a design and construction firm specializing in kitchen, bath, and closet remodels? Organize each of your ideas under these categories. 

Do you have twice as many kitchen ideas as you do bath or closet remodels? Consider adding more bath and closet ideas or emphasizing kitchens more frequently (e.g., two monthly blog posts about kitchens, one for baths and one for closets). 

Determine Your Frequency

How often do you want to post? You probably don’t want to overwhelm yourself or your audience, but you must maintain your presence. 

At a minimum, I’d recommend: 

  • Blog posts – once a week
  • Newsletters – once a month
  • Social media posts – three times a week

Elements of a Content Calendar

Here are the basics:

  • Title of Content: This can be the title of a blog post, something like “April Newsletter,” social media for Week 12 of 2024 — as long as you know what it is, you’re golden. 
  • Content Type: Blog post, video post, chart, newsletter, social media, ebook, etc. 
  • Content Location: Include a link to the file where the content lives. 
  • Bucket: Who is the content for? For example, you may include categories like buyers and sellers if you’re a real estate agent.
  • Dates: Include your first draft, final draft, and publishing dates.
  • Assignee: Who is in charge of creating this content? Reviewing? Publishing?
  • Status: Has the content been created? Reviewed? Scheduled? Published?
  • Notes: Leave space for relevant information, like how well this content was received, follow-up ideas, etc.

 

Schedule Your Posts

Yes, this deserves its own section — because people forget! 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve created content for clients only for them not to schedule it and miss out on lead-generating opportunities. Scheduling posts is easy, and every platform, from LinkedIn to Mailchimp, will let you do it. 

Don’t create 15 posts leading up to April’s trade show only to publish them in May. Schedule a time to schedule your posts.

Review and Refine

… While you’re scheduling time to schedule your posts, you should also schedule time to review your content calendar and the metrics you’re using to determine your success. By analyzing this data, you’ll discover what’s working and where you should be making improvements. Keep at it, and you’ll be closer and closer to hitting that proverbial bull’s eye more often. 

How to Create a Content Calendar: Final Thoughts

Do you know what’s great about a content creation package? Your content calendar is created for you! All you’ll have to do is copy and paste (and schedule your damn posts!!!). 

featured image Active vs Passive Voice How to Engage Your Audience blog post

Active vs Passive Voice: How to Engage Your Audience

Which sentence sounds better:

  1. I grabbed the mug.
  2. The mug was grabbed by me.

The odds are that you picked option #1. “I grabbed the mug” is written in an active voice, while “The mug was grabbed by me” conveys the same idea but in a passive voice.

You should usually write web copy, blog posts, and other marketing materials in an active voice. This improves clarity and keeps your readers engaged.

Here’s everything you should know about active vs passive voice, including their benefits and when to use them:

Understanding Active Voice

When the subject of a sentence does the action conveyed by the verb, you’re using active voice. In other words, the order of the sentence is subject-verb-object. I (subject) grabbed (verb) the mug (object).

Here are a few other examples:

  • Ashley went to the store. Subject = Ashley. Verb = went. Object = The Store.
  • Carlos threw the baseball. Subject = Carlos. Verb = threw. Object = The baseball.

However, it’s not always quite that simple. For example:

  • Learn how to engage your audience.

The subject of this sentence is you, even though you aren’t in the sentence. The verb is learn, and the object is how to engage your audience. How to engage your audience is technically a complete object, but that’s a grammar lesson for another day.

Understanding Passive Voice

Passive voice occurs when the subject of a sentence receives the action of the verb, hence the term “passive.” The subject isn’t actively doing something; something’s being done to them. Passive voice focuses on a verb-object relationship. Grabbed is still the verb, and the mug is still the object, but I didn’t actively grab it. It was grabbed by me.

Here’s a visual representation to help you understand the difference:

I grabbed the mug.

In this clip, I’m actively grabbing the mug.

The mug was grabbed by me.

active vs passive voice

I’ve already grabbed the mug in this picture, so the action isn’t taking place. You’ve already missed it. I’m telling you that I’ve already grabbed the mug, rather than showing you the action of me grabbing the mug. Sorry!

Here are a few other examples of passive voice:

  • The store was gone to by Ashley.
  • The baseball was thrown by Carlos.

No actions here! Ashley and Carlos already performed them.

To recap, here’s the difference between active vs. passive voice:

  • If the subject is doing something, you’re using an active voice.
  • If something is being done to your subject, that’s passive voice.

Active vs Passive Voice: The Benefits

To enjoy the benefits of both voice types, here’s when you should use them…

Active Voice

  • Engage Readers: Active voice keeps the focus on the action. It shows you what’s happening rather than telling you it’s happened. It feels more immediate and, therefore, more engaging.
  • Clarity: Active voice tends to be more straightforward because it eliminates ambiguity. If I said the mug was picked up, instead of The mug was picked up by me, you wouldn’t know who picked the mug up. It could’ve been you, me, Ashley, Ryan Gosling, Karen from finance — anyone!
  • Directness: Sentences are shorter in active voice, which is great for conveying important information. I grabbed the mug is four words, and you know exactly what I did. The mug was grabbed by me is six words. You still know what I did, but it took you longer to get there. We live in the age of scrolling. Be concise.

Passive Voice

  • Focus on the Object: If you want to focus more on the object of the sentence rather than the subject, you can use passive voice. Is “the mug” more important than “me?” If it’s 8 a.m. and that mug has coffee in it, probably!
  • Formal Writing: If you’re writing technical manuals, scientific reports, or legal documents, passive voice may make more sense. Passive voice conveys information without attributing actions to specific individuals. The mug was grabbed. By whom? Not important!
  • Avoid Responsibility: What if you spilled the coffee, and now there’s none left for anyone in your office? That would suck! You don’t want to get blamed for that. Instead of writing a message stating You spilled the coffee, you could say, The coffee was spilled. Ashley, get more from the store before coming in. K, thanks!

Active vs Passive Voice: Final Thoughts

Usually, you want to use an active voice in your writing, but passive voice has its benefits, too. Want to learn more about the differences between active vs passive voice? Here’s an awesome academic guide.

And if you don’t give a damn about the differences between them and just want to save time, increase visibility, and get your marketing done, check out the content creation package. All of your primary marketing channels are covered with one simple plan. All you’ll have to do is copy and paste!

Content marketing for small business

Content Marketing for Small Businesses: Is It Still Worth It?

Short answer: Yes. 

Content marketing for small businesses is more important than ever before:

  • 54% of businesses will increase their content marketing budgets in 2024
  • Businesses that make blogging a main priority are 13x more likely to see a positive ROI
  • 75% of us use social media when researching brands

As consumers, we’re overwhelmed. There’s content everywhere we go — and most of it sucks! And because it sucks, you have a unique advantage: the chance to infuse your brand with personality, passion, and purpose. 

Let’s dive into what content marketing for small businesses should look like and the benefits you’ll reap when you do it well:

 

Content Marketing for Small Businesses

 

Believe it or not, content marketing isn’t about persuading someone to buy your product or service. It’s about sharing educational, entertaining, and engaging content that exemplifies you as a thought leader and strengthens the relationship between your brand and your audience. When your connections transcend transactions, you’re on the right track.

It’s also easier said than done, and there’s a lot of competition out there, and a lot of it is bigger and louder than you are. 

Luckily, that doesn’t matter nearly as much as you may think…

 

How to Break Through the Noise

 

How do you make your voice heard when everyone is vying for attention? It’s not about being the loudest; it’s about being consistent.

Be consistent in your message, authenticity, and when and how often you post. When creating something, ask yourself: What do I want my audience to get from this, and is it relevant to them? You should also be consistent in your follow-through. 

Being consistent makes you dependable, and being dependable makes you trustworthy. When you establish trust, you don’t have to worry about making your voice heard. Your audience will be listening for it. 

 

Content Marketing Benefits:

 

When you’re consistent in your content marketing, here are some of the benefits you’ll enjoy:

 

Forge Authentic Relationships

 

When crafting compelling content, you’re also shaping perceptions, sparking conversations, and (hopefully) forging genuine connections with your audience. Blogs, social media, and newsletters shouldn’t be forms of one-way communication. They exist to open a dialogue with your audience and build relationships with them. 

 

Increased Organic Traffic: 

 

Paid ads can give you a boost, but it comes at a price. No, literally. They cost you money. Also, when they’re gone, they’re gone. Organic traffic won’t give you instant gratification, but it’s free and pays in perpetuity. 

Organic traffic is when people find your website through natural search engine results, like Google. It’s free, and when it ranks high on a search engine query, it signals to users that the information is authoritative and relevant. 

 

Scalability

 

Organic traffic generates a higher volume of quality leads, catalyzing scalability. It’s simple math: When you have more people interested in your products or services, you’ll have a greater opportunity to grow and hire more people and/or free up time by outsourcing tasks you don’t need to do.

 

Is Content Marketing Still Worth It?

 

Long answer: Yes. 

Content marketing gives you a competitive advantage, creates and strengthens relationships, cost-effectively increases your visibility, and helps you scale your business. 

So yeah, I’d say it’s worth it. It’s just difficult and time-consuming.

However, it doesn’t have to be difficult and time-consuming for you. Do you want to save time, increase visibility, and get your marketing done? Check out my content creation package page, or send me a message!