The most frequent complaint I hear is ‘I don’t have time’, when it comes to marketing. Because I write stuff and know a bit about social media, business owners think I spend all day on LinkedIn and Facebook and writing new web content for my website.
I do spend all day writing – but for my clients blogs, newsletters, email campaigns and websites. That means that my own material often takes a back seat. I’m just the same as you – I don’t have lots of spare hours to indulge in marketing – but I know it needs to be done so I have some systems that make life easier.
I call this my Marketing Machine.
There’s a saying ‘ask a lazy person how to do something and they’ll find the most efficient way of getting it done’. When I realised that I needed blogs, social media posts, newsletters and email campaigns to help market my business I knew I wasn’t going to have time to write that amount of content. So I cheat!!
I write one article of 300 words and then leverage it.
- It goes on my blog.
- It goes on my LinkedIn profile as an article.
- Sometimes it forms the basis for an article for a publication my target clients read.
- I take quotes out to create social media posts – all linked back to the blog – and use Hootsuite to schedule these to post on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.
- I use the blog as the lead item in my newsletter with a second promotional item for something I offer as a service.
- I have broken the blog down into three segments and used them as an email campaign.
- I’ve even put three or four blogs together (with a bit of editing) to create a knowledge-sharing free download to help build my list.
Some of these I do with every blog, some more occasionally.
To make the article writing easier I always have a list of a dozen or so subject areas to write about – all the things I offer as services to my clients.
So stop worrying about how much content you need – and not doing anything. Set aside an hour and write 300 words, the rest is easy!
If you want the Marketing Machine graphic it’s a free download out of the Inside News Treasure Chest.
