But, although it’s a great tactic for improving your online visibility, coming up with a steady stream of content marketing ideas can be easier said than done. So, here, I’m going to outline how you can keep the content coming.

Consider what kinds of content your audience will share

No matter what kind of content you want to create, it’s important that you make it shareable. Shareable content is good for raising awareness of your brand, reaching the right audience, and building up your backlink profile.

But what is a backlink profile? When another authoritative and trustworthy website related to your niche provides you with an inbound link, Google takes it as a vote of confidence in your work and will give you a boost on the search engine results pages (SERPs). So, when you’re trying to come up with content marketing ideas, think about what types of content tend to be shareable. Infographics, interactive content, and free tools tend to work well because they are engaging and useful.

Let’s explore some examples to give you an idea of what shareable content can look like.

Take a look at how Code Academy, an online coding learning program, creates sharable content with their programmer sorting quiz. They ask a variety of questions to help sort the viewer into a coding program that’s right for them. This is sharable among coders, educators, and more — it’s a helpful resource for anyone interested in learning to code or attempting to start a new career.

Or, consider how LinkedIn creates shareable content for their blog. For example, they’ve produced an infographic that shows how content marketing was affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. Infographics are colorful, engaging, and break down information in a way that’s easy to understand. Plus, if you choose the right topic, focusing on what people are interested in reading and writing about right now, you can make yours very shareable.

Conduct keyword research for inspiration

Keyword research is a great way to come up with content marketing ideas! If you’re familiar with SEO, you might be familiar with keyword research; let’s break down how it works.

To start, brainstorm a list of phrases and topics related to your niche or business. Once you have your list, plug a few of these words into a keyword research tool like Google Keyword Planner. You will then be provided with a list of related topics and phrases with their average monthly searches and levels of competitiveness. Implementing these keywords into your content or using them as topic inspiration can majorly help you boost your SEO!

Try to focus on finding and using keywords that have a solid number of monthly searches, but aren’t too competitive. The more searches you can target, the more eyes you could get on your content but, if you only focus on keywords that are too competitive, you’re unlikely to rank high enough in the SERPs for it to make a difference.

Once you have these keywords, take a look and see what you can do to incorporate them into your content. You can write an entire blog post or create a video based on one of these topics, for instance, or you can use them as guidance for your titles and headers. Both of these strategies will give you an SEO boost.

Address common questions with your content

If your customers have common questions, you could create content that answers them. This will help your audience feel listened to and build trust with them. Be sure to do your research before creating content based on questions.

Start by checking in with your customer service team to see if there are any common inquiries they get. You can also comb through your customer reviews to see if people have common questions about your products or services. Then, it’s time to do some more keyword research.

Answer the Public is a great online tool you can use to conduct question keyword research. Remember that list of topics and phrases related to your business or niche you came up with? Pull it back out! Plugging those same phrases into Answer the Public will provide you with a series of questions that people are searching for related to your niche. Let’s break down a couple of examples to showcase what I mean.

Take a look at how RMIT Online, an online university, answers a relevant customer question in their post on whether we’re facing an oversupply of data scientists. This is a common question that anyone interested in becoming a data scientist will have. Because RMIT Online offers a program that helps people to pursue this career path, it’s a great question to cover in their content.

To assist in finding the answer, RMIT Online cites relevant LinkedIn data, investigates probabilities and demand for data scientist jobs, and interviews credible sources like Australia Post’s General Manager of Data Science, Silvio Georgio.

Systeme.io, an online digital marketing platform, does something similar with their article on how to create a sales funnel. Systeme.io’s target audience is full of digital marketers and influencers at all levels of expertise. So, this piece of content is going to be very helpful for people who are starting to expand their knowledge; if they enjoy it, they’ll likely enjoy their other posts and be curious about their services, too.

Lastly, let’s investigate how Webscreations Design answers customer questions in their article on good website bounce rates. This article is particularly effective because it answers multiple questions on the same topic — this means that it is able to target multiple search queries in just one article, making it super SEO-friendly! Go back to your list you received from Answer the Public and see if you can compile an article based on a series of related questions for the best results.

Look into repurposing your existing content

Different content marketing topics can be explored in a variety of different formats! So, if you’re struggling to come up with ideas, take a look at what you’ve already created and see what’s been successful. Then, repurpose it into new content! Not everyone will want to consume every type of content, so doing this can help you reach different members of your audience and build more trust.

For instance, not everyone is going to want to read a long blog post about a certain topic. So, if you have a long blog post that was particularly successful, you could break down the same information into a helpful video. Similarly, if you’ve conducted a case study for your website, you could sum up the results into a colorful infographic.

Don’t worry — Google has confirmed that presenting the same content in different formats doesn’t count as duplicate content. It will not hurt your SEO. So, dig through older types of content and figure out what you can repurpose.

Consider what kinds of interactive content will attract your ideal customers

Interactive content can be especially engaging, so it’s worth creating and publishing it on your website where appropriate. Think about how you can incorporate calculators, virtual try-ons, quizzes, games, or interactive maps into your website. Retailers might stick to style quizzes or try-ons, for instance, but service providers like accountants, digital marketers, or service providers might be able to come up with free calculators to help their viewers. Let’s take a look at some examples for inspiration.

For example, the HubSpot website grader helps attract their ideal customers. HubSpot is a digital marketing company that helps businesses boost their SEO, grow their online presence, and more. The website grader is a free tool that tells a viewer how their website can be improved. After seeing the results, a viewer can contact HubSpot for more assistance or browse through their website for tips, making it a piece of content that’s beneficial for both users and the business.

Or, consider how Helix Hearing Care, a hearing aid provider, implements interactive content with their online hearing test. This technology can help website visitors to figure out what, if any, of their products they need. People searching for an online hearing test can stumble upon Helix Hearing Care and find out if they even need hearing aids. This is a great form of content marketing that attracts the appropriate viewers and gets people to buy their products.

Consider whether you could be creating free tools to help your ideal customers, and how you could encourage them to make a purchase with you in the process.

Summary

If you’re stumped for content marketing ideas, there are a number of different ways you can come up with more! Our tips can get you started. Let’s give a quick breakdown of what we covered. You should focus on:

• Creating shareable content
• Conducting keyword research
• Addressing questions in your content
• Repurposing content
• Making interactive content

Take a look at your website and start taking notes. It’s time to get to work!

—

Author bio & headshot:

Alex Ratynski is the founder of Ratynski Digital, an online marketing consultancy that focuses on helping small and medium-sized businesses achieve their goals. He set up his company after working as a local SEO director for a dental marketing agency, where he helped to turn clients’ ventures into thriving multi-million dollar businesses. He spends most hours strategizing SEO for his clients.

SSL Security

Credits to Suma Designs

Starting in January of 2017, Google’s Chrome browser will start flagging some websites that don’t use web encryption as “Not Secure”—the first step in Google’s eventual plan to shame all sites that don’t use encryption.

In the last couple of years, the web has seen a tremendous rise in the number of websites that use encryption, which is displayed by that little green lock next to the site’s address and an extra “s” at the end of HTTP. The increase in the use of HTTPS web encryption has been part of a collective effort to improve security and privacy on the web, often under the banner of the campaign “Encrypt All The Things.”

Read more: This Chrome Bug Makes It Hard to Tell If You’re on the Real Facebook

At the beginning of this year, Google hinted—without announcing it officially—that it was going to flag all unencrypted websites as insecure, as Motherboard reported. At the time, Parisa Tabriz, who manages Google’s security engineering team, said that Google’s intention was to “call out” websites that still were on HTTP as “unsafe.”

On Thursday, Google officially announced its anti-HTTP plan. The company isn’t going to shame all unencrypted websites all at once, but start only with HTTP sites that ask users to input passwords or credit cards. These sites will be flagged as “Not secure” in the Chrome address bar.

How Chrome will flag HTTP pages that ask users for passwords or credit card numbers. (Image: Google)

Then, in the future—Google is not saying exactly when yet—Chrome will flag all sites that don’t use TLS encryption as “Not secure” and also display a red triangle indicator, which Chrome already uses when users go to a dangerous website.

How Chrome will flag all HTTP pages in the future.

“We definitely do plan to label all HTTP pages as non-secure eventually,” Emily Schechter, the Chrome Security product manager, told Motherboard, explaining that the company didn’t want to all of a sudden flood users with warnings. “We really wanted to be careful about it and we wanted to get it right.”

Schechter explained that Google’s main worry is that displaying alerts for all HTTP sites right away would lead users to see too many warnings and, eventually, ignore them. In other words, Google wants to educate users about the risks of unencrypted websites striking the right balance and without leading them to what’s called as “warning fatigue,” a term that indicates when users get so used to warnings that they stop paying attention.

“We definitely do plan to label all HTTP pages as non-secure eventually.”

Google also wanted to announce the change before it was implemented to give webmasters time to migrate to HTTPS and not get caught by surprise, Schechter said.

While it seems like a small change, HTTPS provides multiple protections for users. Not only does it ensure that hackers and spies can’t easily intercept passwords and other sensitive data travelling on the internet, it also ensures that the site you’re looking at really is the site you want, and not an imposter. Without HTTPS, it’s trivial for a hacker sitting in the same public WiFi you’re using, or government spies, to spy on you and interfere with the sites you go to trick you into giving up sensitive information.

With this move, Google is pushing for even more HTTPS adoption. And at this point, an HTTPS-only future seems inevitable. Google reported that nowadays, more than half of the sites visited by Chrome users are encrypted already.

This year was very rich in new fonts and the choice is very large, since the topic of typography has been rapidly developing this year and free fonts have become an integral part of every website or even offline project. All font sets are very professionally pressed.

It should be noted that the progress of the fonts has become clear after responsive design entering more and more into our browsers. Experts estimate that 95% of a site created in responsive design should be the text, and 5% – everything else. Of course, in this case fonts are just a vital part of every site.

Many free fonts can be used as web fonts or @font-face, which means that the content can be given a beautiful and readable typographic look.

Download the fonts for free, do not forget to use them in design and write beautiful texts using these fonts.

100 Free Fonts

Venera

Joe Prince skillfully manipulates with smooth lines and shapes. As a result, Venera has got a marvelous futuristic vibe and a splendid gentle look. It comes in five weights from thin to bold and boasts of a full language support because of a provided extended set of characters.

Mission Script

Edmondsans

Edmondsans is another display font in our collection which roots you can trace in traditional Sans-Serif type family.  It looks soft, sleek and formal. It ships with

• an extensive set of characters;
• carefully crafted numerals;
• a bulk of glyphs;
• support of Central European languages.

Dude

Dude by Dan Gneiding easily lightens up the atmosphere with its cheerful mood and Cowboy spirit. Although there is only one weight, yet, in fact, the artist has done a grand job by crafting a dozen of various styles that differ in stylistic alternates. Inspired by country music legends, each option has its temperament.

Brother

Brother Tattoo by Mans Grebak is a super curly script typeface with beautiful nuances and gothic flavor that is available in TTF format. It features

• letters in uppercase and lowercase;
• digits;
• an extensive selection of punctuation marks and some extra decorative icons.

Note it is free only for personal usage.

Facunda

Facundo by Bybu stands in sharp contrast to the previous example. This cool font is centered around the techno appeal that is obtained through skillful manipulations with geometric shapes and straight lines. It is quite versatile thanks to five different styles (Regular, Italic, Alternate, Alternate Italic and original Shadow.

Sail Away

Sail Away by Oscar Rubio is a casual type that is revamped by tiny hand-written details. These tiny finishing touches in tandem with doubled lines create the entire buzz, giving the font a top notch look. It speaks only Roman languages; nevertheless, it is quite sufficient for lots of projects. It is equipped with

• uppercase and lowercase letters;
• basic numerals;
• the glyphs for syntax;
• and an extra set of symbols such as asterisk or copyright mark.

Acme

Acme by Huerta Tipografica is a humanist sans-serif type family. The team took care of the smallest factors and constituents so that you will find here smart and vigilantly crafted symbols with tidy visual forms.

Cambo

Cambo by Huerta Tipografica is a delicate type reinforced by some subtle serifs. It will delight you with an extensive language support. Thanks to a ton of accented glyphs, it lets you use numerous written systems, except for Cyrillic. There are also

• basic character set;
• classic numerals;
• currency signs;
• math operations;
• ligatures;
• punctuation and other symbols.

Cinzel

Cinzel by nDiscovered was inspired by authentic Roman inscriptions. It impresses with the ultra-narrow elegant shapes and subtle look. It is spiced up with some lovely finishing strokes that help it break away from the monotony of typical and plain geometric fonts.

Bira

Bira by Mans Greback draws users’ attention right away. It pulls its identity from brush strokes and smooth forms. It has a strong human nature and retro appeal. With the font, you are able to write in uppercase and lowercase, use digits and basic punctuation marks. It is free only for personal projects and available only in one weight and one style.

Exo

Exo by nDiscovered is a representative of common sans serif typefaces that possesses a strong geometric feel and retains an air of high technology. It is an evolving typeface, so that with each version it will become even better.  There are two versions: Exo 1 and Exo 2. The latter is ready to be used in the Web. Both of them comprise Roman alphabet presented in uppercase and lowercase, numerals and six symbols.

Bitter

Bitter by Huerta Tipogrfica is a first-rate slab-serif font that was created for displaying texts of websites, online apps, and eBooks in a pleasant yet casual way. The high resolution and legibility allow it to perfectly interact with screens. It comes in

• three weights ( Regular, Bold, and Black);
• Latin and Cyrillic alphabet;
• a ton of accented symbols;
• numerals;
• punctuation marks.

Daiichi

Daiichi by Michael Muranaka plays heavily on ultra-thin lines and smooth geometric shapes. This elegant techno font is supplied with uppercase and lowercase Latin alphabet, numerals and a ton of symbols including punctuation marks, math operations and some others.

Equal Sans

Equal Sans by Mans Greback owes its sheer beauty to sleek distinct forms. It supports a lot of languages thereby allowing you to communicate messages to any resident of the European Union and English-speaking countries. As befits, it has standard ligatures, basic set of symbols, digits and syntax glyphs.

Razor

Razor by Jeff Schreiber combines techno vibe and futuristic atmosphere competently and naturally. It is also inspired by dynamic and energetic 80s so that it reflects that period as well. It is delivered in

• one style;
• three weights (Regular, Bold, and Italic);
• uppercase letters;
• numbers;
• four formats such as TTF, OTF, SVG, and WOFF.

It looks exceptionally good in a big size and shiny neon coloring.

CROISSANT

Croissant by Eduardo Tunni is a Google Web Font that is reinforced by wonderful finishing nuances and curls. As a result, you can grab a font with an exquisite French handwritten feel. Due to long out-strokes, lowercase letters are beautifully connected while uppercase letters magnetize with soft terminals. It works well with the West and Central European languages.

Metropolis

Metropolis by Josip Kelava owes its matchless look to posters made in Art Deco and double line technique.  Artist is managed to embrace the 20s and correctly express that time. The font looks urban, artistic and sophisticated. It is suitable for writing in both Latin alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet. It also includes digits and several essential punctuation marks.

Barkentina

Barkentina

Kiril Zlatkov strongly relies on a space between characters, so that the font is defined by legibility and clarity regardless of size. He gently used serifs to preserve the balance between artistic and casual look. The typeface has

• OpenType features;
• Latin alphabet;
• Cyrillic alphabet;
• numerals;
• accented symbols;
• syntax signs and much more.

Futuracha

Futuracha by Holy leaves a lasting impression. It has an original and pioneering appearance that is concentrated on the era of Art Deco style. It is destined to prettify headlines and titles giving them an impeccable delicate artistic flavor. It is equipped with Greek and Latin characters, numerals and a dozen of punctuation signs.

Manteka

Unlike the previous lavish example, is a functional, multipurpose and formal typeface that is created to show texts of different length, including headings. It is available in one style and one weight. There are common characters, numerals, and symbols.

Frontage

Frontage by Juri Zaech gets its eye-catching, bold and original appearance from multi-layered technique and some decorative traits. The author encourages users to leverage various colors and styles to achieve the stunning result. Thanks to manually edited kernings, six outstanding styles, and more than two hundred characters you are blessed with a powerful instrument.

Shelton Slab

Shelton Slab by Hannes Von Dohren sets itself apart from the others with its unbalanced cowboy-themed look. Letters differ one from each other, so the typeface has a playful note as well as goes perfectly well with natural textures like wood. It supports Central and Eastern European languages, comprises contextual alternates features, arrows, and some other basic glyphs.

CODE Pro

Code Pro takes after two popular Sans-Serif typefaces Avant Garde and Futura. The author has added some twists that give the typeface an elegant and clean appearance. It consists of more than five hundred symbols that allow covering various languages. It is fully compatible with PC and Mac.

Moby

Moby is an original display typeface that easily establishes a techno atmosphere. The artist skillfully avoids sharp edges and corners to make it smooth and serene. It comes in two traditional formats (TTF and OTF) and a ton of glyphs to compose multilingual texts.

Polaris

Much like the previous example oozes high-tech charm though it looks less soft and divine. However, it is more generic: it is applicable for various kinds of artworks, posters, t-shirt prints and website designs. It includes characters from the Latin alphabet, numerals and some other standard glyphs such as backslash or hyphen.

Multicolore

Multicolore was created with vibrant color palettes in mind. The typeface is certainly one of a kind: it easily brings titles into focus and charges UI with energy. However, it is not a classic font that can be used like that. To derive benefits from it, you need to use vector editing program like Illustrator or Photoshop since it is available in EPS format. You are welcome to experiment with layer styles, coloring and add some extra details to maximize an effect.

Dooodleista

Dooodleista by Filiz Sahin is a carefully handcrafted doodle-like font with a splash of sparkling personality. It meets the cheerful mood and radiates of fun. Each letter is composed of ultra-thin and a bit quirky lines. There is a basic set of glyphs to generate content in English.

COCO

Coco by Henrick Lorandez is an excellent solution for strengthening looks of stylish magazine covers, fashion posters or just web UIs with refined and chic designs. Although it is a traditional sans-serif typeface, yet it is provided with intricate and a bit ornate letterforms. There are

• eight weights ranging from Regular to Bold Italic;
• more than two hundred glyphs, including capitals, numerals, and special symbols.

New theory

New Theory is an authentic, rustic and extremely original type. It lets recreate rock paintings or just artworks that require an old-timey feeling. It can be used for showcasing titles and short copy. Comes with a pretty limited support of languages it works great only with English alphabet.

Bariol

Bariol is a small typeface family that is available with and without serifs. The free version stays away from sharp edges and prefers more flowing and rounded letterforms. It has a techno vibe that can be used to enrich various projects. There are four weights (Thin, Light, Regular, and Bold) and a standard set of glyphs.

Johanna

Adria Gomez has created an outstanding grotesque type that brings a creative touch to any title. It has intricate visual forms that can be adapted to various needs, except for a long copy. It is also modular. You will find here six options and a general collection of Roman characters and numerals.

Silverfake

Silverfake designed by Alexey Frolov is a modern slab serif font with piquancy. It benefits both contemporary and retro style projects thanks to its dual nature. What’s more, it has a comprehensive glyph coverage including capital letters of Latin and Cyrillic alphabet, some common symbols, and alternate letters.

Prime

Prime is a tech-themed font with soft corners and edges. It was carefully crafted by Max Pirsky. Due to geometric origin it looks a bit formal and neutral so that you can easily leverage it as a primary option to display copy. Although it has some interesting finishing touches, yet it always looks legible.

Nexa

Next is a huge type family that can easily meet various requirements. Regardless of size it clearly conveys the message to the readers. It counts sixteen fonts, covering eight uprights and eight italics, and has almost five hundred glyphs to support numerous languages. It is suitable for websites and app UIs.

Sreda

Comes with an optimized kerning and straight lines, Sreda is a generic slab serif typeface with a warm contemporary feel designed by Elena Kowalski. The key feature of this type is that it speaks Western and Central European languages, Turkish, Baltic and Cyrillic-based languages. Moreover, there are also symbols for syntax and numerals.

Casper Typeface

Casper Typeface is a holistic and modern font that is based on harmonious combinations of geometric forms. Ships with almost six hundred glyphs it lets you use the Latin alphabet, Cyrillic alphabet, digits, alternate characters, signs and even arrows.

Tikal Sans

Tikal Sans is created for text and display size. This ambitious sans serif font is marked by a large X-height. It is also surrounded by Mayan aura, yet it looks friendly and even a bit formal. It consists of twenty weights and 415 glyphs, in which you can find contextual alternate letters, basic symbols, punctuation and traditional numerals. Two versions are available free of charge: Medium and Medium Italic.

Sofia Pro Condensed

Sofia Pro Condensed is designed to accompany the original typeface Sofia. However, it looks more rounded, modern and elegant. With more than five hundred symbols in the set, it gives you an opportunity to manipulate with

• case-sensitive forms;
• small caps;
• contextual alternatives;
• stylistic alternates;
• fractions;
• tabular figures and much more.

Che’s Bone

Che’s Bone breaks the monotony of subtle and delicate typefaces. It boasts of skinny forms, bone-themed decorative elements, and rounded corners. Vigilantly crafted by hands, it will add a human feel and playfulness to any artwork. It works great with wood and paper textures.

MOCHA

Mocha Script by Thomas Ramey naturally stands out from any background with its exquisite and polished appearance. If you want to create a continuous streamflow of characters that mimic human script, then this calligraphy font is right for you. It offers uppercase and lowercase letters as well as digits and some punctuation marks.

NOUGAT

Although Nougat overwhelms with a powerful sense of beauty, yet, unfortunately, it is quite limited in utilization. Comes with just 89 characters, covering only English alphabet, it is able to create a friendly aesthetics through adorning headlines.

Nougatine

Driven by a smell of freshly baked cookies, Fabien Laborie has designed Nougatine, font with unexpected touches, universal forms and chic French soul. It is equipped with 380 glyphs, alternative letters, ligatures, accented symbols, uppercase, and lowercase. It is available under Creative Commons.

Cuprum

Cuprum is a representative of a small sans serif type family that is delivered in four styles (two uprights – Regular and Bold, and two cursives – Italic and Italic Bold). The glyph coverage allows using it for composing content in Baltic, Turkish, Central and Western European, Cyrillic and Roman languages. It is compatible with PCs and Macs.

Ledger Regular

Ledger Regular is a flexible and multi-purposeful Google Web font that focuses on quality and readability. Denis Masharov strikes an optimal contrast and maintains harmony between all the constituents. As a result, letterforms give off elegance and subtlety. There is an extended set of Latin and Cyrillic letters.

Forum

Forum by Denis Masharov radiates of sophistication and is marked by distinctive traits inherent to the Victorian era. It is based on classic proportions and solid architecture that skillfully balance semicircular arches, horizontal cornices and climbing pilasters. The typeface writes in Latin and Cyrillic as well as includes numerals and standard symbols for formatting.

Prosto

Prosto is intended to strengthen readability of the content, making the text quickly and easily scannable. It is simple, plain and neutral. As for the main characteristics,

• it has TTF format;
• it collaborates with PC and Mac;
• it supports numerous languages;
• it has more than four hundred glyphs embracing all the common syntax symbols, West European diacritics and even Baltic Latin.

Jura

Delivered with four traditional styles such as Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic, 241 glyphs and a full character set, this splendid serif typeface enriches titles with narrow well-balanced proportions, eye-catching details, rounded shapes and wedge-like finishing strokes. Ed Meritt has crafted a Latin alphabet and an extended set of diacritics.

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With the advent of so many social media platforms, business owners are often confused into deciding which one is right for them, let alone which ones are the keepers.

You usually only need a few that you can manage, in the beginning. Later on, when your business grows, you can eventually take over other social media channels as well and mark your presence everywhere.

But what exactly do you need to do to boost your business via these social media channels? Here are seven highly effective social media tricks that will not only promise traffic but higher conversion rates as well. Read on to boost your business for good:

Keep an eye on the trends

Posting updated and current information that is in relevance with your niche is a great way to sneak into your audience’s mind. In order to successfully do so, there are online tools that can help you out in the matter. BuzzSumo is great for analyzing what topics are taking over by storm and who are the key influencers. Another great tool is social-searcher.com. It helps the users to see how the chosen keywords are treated by various social media networks.

Customized post descriptions

Whether you are sending a Tweet, or posting something on Facebook, custom formatting is important. It is to ensure that you are speaking the language of your customers (which you are obviously familiar with). Also add in emoji or a symbol to spice things up in your post. Even if you are reposting or retweeting, don’t just share away. Customize it, add in symbols and twist the gist of the post in a language that your audience is familiar with.

Add social media buttons on your website

Adding social media buttons on your website can also do the trick. Usually, social media pages are filled with all kinds of posts which makes them interesting to browse, comparatively. A smartweb design agency would have already done that for you in a very convenient way – on each page and with each blog post on your blog as well. This will trigger an increase in social shares for your blog posts directly from your website.

Plan and schedule in advance

Not keeping an eye on the events that matter to your targeted audience can turn them away. In order to stay on top of the game, use scheduling tools to schedules posts in advance. Buffer is a good scheduling tool to begin with as its super easy to use, and free. By using this, you will not have to post content while you are at a Christmas dinner – be at peace.

Write longer and well researched posts

Twitter may give you a hard time here but you can use Google Plus for writing longer posts. If you write posts that are detailed and well researched, including statistics, chances are they will ignite conversations from the audience. Given the short attention spans, it is also imperative to make use of visual cues, graphs and other supportive visuals to keep the reader from going anywhere else.

Insert subtle call to actions (CTAs)

CTAs are important as they trigger a sense of action into the customer. To play this fairly, use power words that are also able to emotionally connect with the customers. Say if you are a photographer, and your specialty is wedding photography, as you share an advertising post about yourself on Facebook you may want to use one of these in the end: “Make your weddings perfect with wedding photography!” or… “Don’t let your special moments slip by, have them captured.” You can easily tell that the latter is playing an emotional game with the minds of the customers.

Go with the flow

Social media platforms often change their guidelines, leaving you with either of the two choices to take into account: either embrace the change, or simply don’t. If you choose the former option, you have done well for you have chosen to take on the battlefield that was left abandoned by those who gave up the fight. Stay on the lookout for the changes and adapt to them, instantly, to make the most out of them and become an opportunist.

Small business owners are often occupied with so many other marketing maneuvers that they almost forget about extracting the most benefits out of the social media platforms. The tricks mentioned above take the least possible time and consume very little, or none, from your marketing budget. Give these some forethought before you begin and continue to reap the benefits of social media marketing as a result.