Making an impressive splash is important when you’re launching a company. One strategy to get noticed faster is to prioritize content during your business’s startup stages.
Content allows you to connect with consumers, introduce your brand, build a lead generation machine and more. Yet you can’t sit back and hope it happens. You need to put effort, investment and planning behind your content creation and dissemination.
Why focus on content? For one, it helps you showcase your corporate voice right away. Whether you’re in a B2B or B2C market, you can use content to generate a very specific tone that appeals to your target audience.
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Let’s look at the Dollar Shave Club’s initial (and successful) content deployment as a case study.
When the Dollar Shave Club opened for business, the company drew notice with its cheeky content. The content was different and distinctive. It was exactly right for attracting notice and positioning the new company as a must-consider contender in a crowded space. Years later, publications like The New York Times were still heralding the brand’s innovative content and marketing approach.
The point isn’t that you should take on a bold personality or be something your competitors aren’t. While it worked for Dollar Shave Club, it might be wrong for your intentions, purpose and mission. The point is that you need to start thinking about all the benefits that content can bring to your company in its first few years.
Remember: The early phase is when your business is most at risk of losing steam. Only half of all organizations make it to the five-year mark. Anything that can help you maintain a steady growth trajectory should be seen as a welcome addition to your efforts. And content absolutely fits that bill.
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Four Advantages of Content for Startups
Though it can seem overwhelming to add content into your list of to-dos when you’re founding a business, it’s a worthwhile investment. With content, you can gain many advantages, including some you might not have considered.
Below are just a few of the more immediate outcomes of pushing content out the door right away.
1. You’ll highlight your authority and expertise.
There’s little argument that content is a great way to showcase your company’s expertise. That’s essential, particularly when you’re the so-called “new kid on the block.” Since consumers don’t know you yet, they’ll look to your content to find out why they should trust you.
For instance, you’ll want to populate your corporate blog and social media pages with regular content. From articles to videos and images to case studies, your content should tackle topics in an original way that supports your authority. To get the biggest authority boost as well as improve your organic search results, identify and use keywords throughout the written content within your site.
Obviously, you’ll want to organize a content calendar to stay on track. As part of that calendar, consider constructing a framework that includes what MarketMuse calls “content clusters.” As the AI content platform explains, content clusters consist of a series of articles connected around a topic-driven pillar page. Not only do content clusters give you plenty of link juice, but they can drive leads right into your selling pipeline.
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2. You’ll jumpstart your SEO initiatives.
It’s just not possible to organically rank for certain keywords on Google for a while. How long is a while? When Website Magazine drilled down into the subject, their researchers concluded that it took anywhere from three to six months to rank. Some key drivers to build ranking included solid (and recent) content and naturally placed backlinks.
Of course, a backlink only happens when an outside site links to yours. How can you get backlinks? The answer is simple: By producing irresistible content. For example, you might write a compelling case study and post it on your blog. If someone else — like a journalist — discovers your case study and links to it in an article, you’ll get a backlink.
You need to be patient for SEO and backlinks to have an effect, but the wait can be worth it. Plus, the sooner you start sooner you start publishing content, the sooner it will be noticed by both people and search engine bots.
3. You’ll give Google content to “EEAT”.
Google’s algorithms reward creators whose content follows an EEAT pattern. That is, the content must highlight experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. When you write content that fits within an EEAT context, you’ll do your company a huge service.
Again, this will help you with your SEO. But it will do much more. Google’s search engines are becoming more attuned to being able to separate so-so content from spectacular content. Sites that ensure their content is top-notch are getting noticed. And this is only going to continue.
Word of advice: Don’t give in to the temptation to let AI write your content. It’s fine to use AI platforms like ChatGPT and Bard to help you brainstorm or do light research. However, material written solely by AI lacks the human touch.
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4. You’ll make your business look polished from the beginning.
Have you ever seen a young company’s website that looked a bit drab or unsophisticated? Maybe it had typos throughout and was a bit on the “thin” side in terms of number of pages. While you might have given the brand a break, you probably weren’t too impressed.
When you start a business with a site that looks professional and contains tight, valuable content, you’re giving your competitors a reason to shake a little. Most startup sites are woefully lacking in high-quality content. By bucking this trend, you’re showering visitors with tons of information, tips and knowledge. Essentially, you’re giving them a reason to come back.
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Be sure you’re committed to adding more content to your site every week or so to keep this momentum going. Even if you just add a quick video or a recap transcript of your latest free webinar, you’ll be giving your audience something to think about.
(Pro hint: Always have a definitive call-to-action at the end of your content pieces to draw first-party data from viewers!)
As an entrepreneur, you want your company to keep getting more traction every quarter. Giving priority to content creation can be the perfect way to gain market share early by coming out strong.
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