To make the most of both traditional and social media marketing, and the benefits of a digitally-savvy audience, you now need to be blogging, Tweeting, Facebooking, emailing, Linking-in, posting discussions, running competitions, commenting on the latest events, web casting, running online events, and so much more. We’re also told that regular new content on our websites with plenty of SEO phrases, and hanging out on Google+, will help our sites to rank in search results.

The argument for content marketing is compelling – but what do you say?

To feed this need for frequent, fresh, and interesting content – and to help you start the process without a blank sheet of paper, we’ve collated over 140 ideas to get your own thoughts going. They won’t all apply, and we don’t suggest that you shoe-horn your thinking into these ideas if they’re not appropriate to your business – just want to get the grey cells going and help you spark a few things off. I am sharing one letter from the list every day in December. Today it’s the letter E…

Content marketing ideas beginning with the letter E

Economy

Relating your offering to aspects of the economy can work. Working out how any new budget announcement, or economic policy affects your target market can certainly be useful. It’s a tried and tested technique for getting press coverage, so you’ll either need to be really quick off the mark, or controversial, to cut through the plethora of others who will be doing the same.

Education

Whatever industry you’re in, many of the people you deal with have families. So, being aware of key terms dates, big results days, and childcare issues can give you an opportunity to show understanding and offer helpful advice. If your business is more directly related to people with families back-to-school planning, etc. can make excellent content.

Environment

If what you do can help people to be cleaner and greener, tell them about it. We’d caution against appearing to shoe horn your offer into this topic, but it is one that a great number of people are passionately interested in, so if you have a genuine green story to tell, go for it.

Events

Every industry has its own events – conferences, awards, trade-shows, etc. You need to be aware of them even if you’re not attending. Asking questions via their online presence can gain you some coverage even if you’re not there. If you do go along, why not post a review, or response to one of the talks. And, of course remember to find out if there’s the Twitter hashtag you can use for related tweets.

Examples

Are there people or businesses out there that stand as shining examples of what you’re encouraging people to do. Compiling lists and reviews of exemplars can be really useful in bringing what you do to life. A web agency might list five great examples of site navigation, or homepage layout, or whatever. This is all the more genuine if the examples you pick aren’t from your own portfolio.

Experiments

Have you tried something that your clients or customers might be thinking about? Why not share your experiences. We once did a ‘pay what you think it’s worth’ event and shared a write-up of how it went – it was one of most popular posts of the year. What could your business trial, and then talk about?

© Bryony Thomas – The Watertight Marketer.