How long does small business marketing take?
Last week we went through some powerful marketing ideas and activities that any small business can put into practice, investing time rather than money. But, time is a precious resource – so, how much time? Without talking of pieces of string and how long they are, I thought I’d have a go at some practical time-blocked suggestions that anyone could try.
So, let’s run through seven marketing activities that you can do from your desk, with a run-down of what’s involved and roughly how long this would take you.
- Writing a blog post or article: 2.5 hours approx
To create something that people want to read, and will act as a stepping stone into finding out more about your company you will need to: Come up with an idea, draft the copy, review and edit your copy, check your SEO phrases are included, come up with a catchy headline, write the meta tag and meta description, find an accompanying image, upload this to your site, tag it and categorise it, publish it, let people know it’s there. In talking to other bloggers, I’ve had estimates from 30 minutes to 10 hours. Once you get into the swing of blogging I believe that anyone can write a good piece in under 2.5 hours. And, it doesn’t need to be done in one sitting. I find this a perfect activity to do if I’m out at meetings with 30 minutes or so in between, or on a train.
Take a look at: What makes a good business blog
- Social media marketing: 10-20 minutes per day
You can squeeze your social media into those gaps in your diary. With a smart phone there’s no reason that 5 minutes waiting for a client to arrive, or between appointments can’t be put to good use. The things I build into each day are: updating my Linkedin status, replying to any @mentions on Twitter, saying good morning on Twitter, asking a question on Twitter at some point in the day, re-tweeting an article or two I’ve found interesting. And each week I will supplement this with: posting details of our latest blog, any published articles, and some comment on a article I’ve read.
Take a look at: How social media supports every step of the sale (video)
- Directory listings: 3 hours quarterly
There’s a little bit of upfront work to do here in researching the directories in your industry. Take a look at membership organisations, Google industry terms, see if you can find a helpful list of lists out there somewhere. Then it’s a case of adding yourself, and popping back at least quarterly to check that your details are up to date.
- Search engine optimisation: 1 day then 10 minutes per week
Again, after some initial legwork in researching your keywords, which you will probably want to repeat quarterly or six-monthly, you should then simply be weaving these terms into any new content on your website as it is added – then running off a report monthly to see how you’re performing.
Take a look at: Get on the front of search listings
- Creating a short video: 1 day
YouTube has helpfully reduced the expectations on production values, and many people will appreciate a video that has been produced with care in-house. To create a short video we’d suggest picking one of your best blogs and expanding on it with a few more stories or analogies. With a decent camera and basic editing software you can produce something worth sharing. You’ll need to jot down your talking points, set-up your camera in good light, shoot your footage a few times, run it into an editing package (like iMovie for Mac), edit it to flow nicely, add some captions and an end-frame, export as an MPEG, upload to YouTube, embed in your website. And there you have it. For a 3-minute piece I’ve probably over-egged this – but once you’ve got to grips with the editing you’ll definitely be able to do one of these in a day.
- Hosting a web or telephone seminar: About a day spread over 6 weeks
A telephone or web seminar is a live event that people attend remotely having pre-registerd. They are typically an hour in length, with 30 minutes of content, 10 minutes of intro and wrap-up, 10 minutes of interaction like Q&A or live polls and a little contingency. To run one of these you’ll need to promote the event in good time so people register, prepare your content, practice presenting the content, send people joining instructions, familairise yourself with the technology, run the event, and send people a follow-up to the event. The first time you do this it’s about a day’s work spread out into chunks of an hour or two, but once you’ve done it once you can re-run it with far less time investment.
- Creating a web or podcast: 1 hour approx
A webcast is simply a pre-recorded presentation that plays on demand (like our 10 Minute Tips). For these you can re-use some of your video or webinar material from above, or just do a voiceover some presentation slides. PowerPoint and Keynotes both allow to record and export in various formats in the latest versions, so with pre-existing content this is unlikely to take you more than an hour to produce.
The great thing about all of the items listed above is that once you have them, you can eek miles of value from them, by re-purposing and re-using them in various different contexts. With a little thought, we came up with 20 ways to use one piece of content – so it really will be worth the investment. And if you can’t think what to write, take a look at our A-Z of Content Ideas.
By Bryony Thomas | Chief Clear Thinker | Clear Thought Consulting Ltd | @bryonythomas | www.clear-thought.co.uk
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like:
- Blog: Are you too busy for marketing?
- Blog: Why keep marketing when you’re already busy?
- Blog: Reduce, Re-use, recycle – a small business marketing philosophy
- Blog: Content marketing – tips and definitions
Clear Thought Consulting works with small businesses, equipping them with the marketing strategies, suppliers, skills and set-up that they need to become bigger businesses. We do this by planning and delivering 12-month marketing transformation programmes – supporting a small business through a step-by-step process to making marketing pay. We firmly believe that when you can’t out-spend your competition, you have to out-think them.
Published on 17 May 2011
