Established businesses have one obvious advantage over their younger counterparts: Deep pockets.
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Fortunately, what today’s small business lacks in budget can be made up for with strategy and a few carefully chosen tools. Here are six smart marketing ideas gleaned from my experience running a company that teaches small firms how to compete with big ones.
Keep an Editorial Calendar for Your Company Blog
Most small businesses can’t afford to bring an entire editorial staff on board, but they can still reap the benefits of a regularly updated company blog by using a good editorial calendar tool. WordPress’ plugin directory offers several free solutions. Editorial calendar software aids collaboration between editors and writers and allows site managers to schedule and automate weeks or months’ worth of posts.
By planning post topics in advance, business owners can source the best writers for the job and choose the optimum time for new content to go out. Strategically timing a post release to coincide with a related industry event can give it that extra dose of relevance it needs to go viral.
Automate Social Media Management
Building a presence on major social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook can be an effective and low-cost way for startups to get a lot of exposure relatively quickly. On the other hand, keeping social media accounts updated is a time-killer. It’s not just the time spent finding content to share: Time wasted logging in and out of different accounts multiple times a day adds up quickly.
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Robert Sofia is a best-selling author, award-winning public speaker, and financial industry thought leader. He has developed marketing strategies for Fortune 500® companies, consulted with over 1,000 companies nationwide, and is the cofounder of Platinum Advisor Strategies — ranked #362 on the INC 5,000 list of America’s fastest growing privately owned companies in 2013, and #10 on the Agency 100 list of the nation’s fastest growing agencies.
BusinessCollective, launched in partnership with Citi, is a virtual mentorship program powered by North America’s most ambitious young thought leaders, entrepreneurs, executives and small business owners.