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Boost your business during lockdown by focusing on your content strategy

David McPhee, is a digital marketer and runs his own marketing agency called Digital Minded in Boomtown (Dunbeg) just outside of Oban.

Before venturing into the world of digital marketing, he worked at The Oban Times as a reporter for almost five years, but here he shares some insights to how digital can help you at the current time.

Business Boost

What can you do just now to help boost your business?

Essentially, my goal is to help businesses get more out of the internet.

We are living in unprecedented times and it’s no secret that the future is uncertain, but that is out of our control. What we can control is how we can use this time to help our business in the long run.

You can boost your business’s online presence, enhance your reach, engagement, as well as your relationship with your customers, and eventually sales, by producing valuable content.

With the vast majority of Oban stuck indoors, except for the heroes who are keeping the wheels in motion, it’s a great time to connect and engage with your customers in the comments and build your brand’s reach.

However, to get their attention, you’re not just competing against your competitors, it’s everyone and everything. The news feed is inundated with videos, photographs, quizzes, and everything in between, all battling for your attention.

And to up the difficulty, people scroll through social media at a frightening speed.

But by being consistent and providing value to your customers, you can vastly increase your chances. When you publish a piece of content, do you have a plan in place?

Or do you rely on a spark of inspiration and post when you feel like you have to?

If it’s the latter, you’re not doing yourself any favours.

Tips For Creating Content

Content comes in all different shapes and sizes. For some, video is their go to, others write blog posts, or post photographs directly to their social media profiles.

Do whatever you’re most comfortable with, as this will make it easier to be consistent. However, it is worth noting that by creating blog posts on your website (like this one), you get the added benefit of enhancing your search engine optimisation (SEO) - and you can also re-purpose the same post and use it on your social media accounts. Two birds with one stone.

Better yet, pull out a quote or valuable section from that post and create an image for social media with it. If you’re going all in, you can go one better by creating a video and transcribing the audio from that to create a blog post.

Regardless of your medium, your content should do at least one of three things: Educate, in-form, or entertain.

A great place to start when you’re coming up with a content plan is to write down the questions you’re most commonly asked. If people are asking you these questions, the chances are, other people are thinking it too - and it’s probably what they are typing in on Google.

So not only can you provide value to your customers by answering their questions before they have to ask, but you will also save yourself a bit of time in the long-run - and you can increase your search engine rankings.

For example, let’s take a local restaurant.

Here are 10 topics to blog or post on social media:

  • Are there stories behind any of the dishes on the menu?
  • Profile the farmers or food manufacturers you use and are proud to work with
  • Have local or special artwork on the walls? Tell us about it.
  • Share recipes from your menu that you don’t mind giving away or share some of the recipes from older menus
  • Every one of your menu items could be paired with an alcoholic and non-alcoholic drink or two. Talk up the flavours of each and why a particular wine, beer, cocktail, or mocktail would go hand-in-hand.
  • Answer common questions people encounter, such as how to properly eat crab? How to cook a scallop?
  • Do you have photographs of the view from your restaurant? Why not write a blog post showing off the view from all four seasons – this will give visitors all year round the chance to see what they could experience.
  • Local events (One for when lockdown lifts…unless there are any virtual events)
  • Showcase your specials in a weekly blog
  • Staff picks of the month: Do they have a favourite meal, cocktail, or dinner and drink combo?
  • Create a hashtag on social media #yourrestaurant and encourage people to upload photographs of their food and compile a blog post of the best photos

To summarise: Create valuable content and build a relationship with your customers by engaging with them in the comments. I jump at the chance to discuss digital marketing, so if anyone has any questions or would like to get in touch, just drop me an email at: david@digitalminded.co.uk

Also, I regularly post informative blogs on my website: www.digitalminded.co.uk

About the author

Daniel MacIntyre

Daniel MacIntyre

Director

Daniel is an experienced business development consultant, digital marketing manager and director of The View, Oban’s live music venue and bar.

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