You may think that content marketing needs to be some big, time-consuming process that keeps you up at night wondering how you’ll ever compete…but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Like any new skill; learning to write and promote your content efficiently is a simple matter of understanding the big-picture of what you’re trying to accomplish, and then learning the tools & tactics used by the people already having success with it. It’s not necessarily easy, but it certainly can be relatively simple.

1. Target Your Content to an Audience Likely to Share it

You need to make sure that your content is interesting for the people most likely to help you promote it. Look for people in your niche that have a strong social following, and a reputation for sharing great content with their followers.

One of the best ways to focus your content on topics that are interesting to influential social media personalities is to quote one or more of those people from within your content; citing the person by name, and then linking back to the original piece where you found the quote.

This practice is useful for all sorts of different reason. If your content is actually good, people love sharing content that mentions them, especially if it shows them in a good light. There’s also the possibility that the person will even quote and/or link back to your site in a future piece of content they produce.

Most site owners of that caliber will likely have analytics reports, and alerts set up to let them know when someone has mentioned and/or linked to their site, so generally it’s good enough to just publish your content and assume that they’ll notice it at some point. This will help keep you from trying to “keep score”, which is likely a waste of time because your time would be better spend creating more content than it would be worrying about who linked back to you and such.

Alternately you could also just send out a quick tweet with a link to your new content and include an @mention to the people you quoted in the post. That only takes a second and you’re likely going to be doing that anyway, so there’s no point not including a mention. In my experience people check their @mention feed more than any other section on Twitter, so that’s almost a guarantee they’ll see it.

2. It’s Not About You

…the right way to energize social media isn’t to try to find people to tout your products.  It’s to find people who care about the same things you do, and to tell a story that amplifies their voice. ~ Tim O’Reilly via linkedin.com

People don’t care about you, they don’t care about your business, they don’t care about your blog, and they certainly don’t care about your product or service. The ONLY thing that people care about, is how any of those things can help them.

What’s in it for them? That’s all people think about, and if you want your content marketing to keep them interested then that’s all you need to be thinking about too. Don’t write about the stuff that is fun for you to write about; write about the stuff that answers potential customer questions.

People don’t care about how fun your company picnic was, or how crazy things got at your office Christmas party. If anywhere; those things only belong in the “about us” page, or a “company news” section. Your main customer-focused content though, has to be 100% about how you can help them. Answer their questions; help them to understand what they need help with.

And if you really want to get their attention; tell them how great they are; not how great you are.

Tell them why you appreciate them, how you can empathize with them, and why you’re helping them specifically (ie, “we love helping depressed people because we used to be depressed and know how isolating that can be”).

3. Have a Real Opinion

Your readers want you to be authentic and genuine even if that sometimes means being controversial. Nobody wants to read puff pieces from a corporate weasel who’s terrified to offend somebody. ~ Geoffrey James via inc.com

You’re not a politician, so stop trying to write like one. People tend to hate politicians—have you noticed the approval ratings of Congress?

Take a look around the world at some of the entities with the most loyal & rabid fans. If you look closely you’ll notice that people tend to get aggressively loyal for what their idol is “against” more than for what the idol is “for”.

Rush Limbaugh is against Liberals. Occupy Wall Street is against corporate greed. The NRA is against gun control. Green Peace is against planetary exploitation. NYC Mayor Bloomberg is against large sodas (apparently). Redsox fans are against the Yankees. 7UP is the UN-cola.

Those are just a few random examples off the top of my head and likely not the best ones, but the point is that people LOVE people that take a stand.

When writing your content, don’t be wishy-washy, don’t waffle, and don’t pander. Your readers will love you for it, and will start talking about how honest and direct you are. When other people catch wind of that they won’t be able to control themselves; they’ll “just have to” see the outspoken small business blogger that speaks his mind and stands up for the little guy.

4. Make it Smaller: You’re More Likely to Succeed

What I’m starting to notice more and more, is that great things almost always start small. Most of us know that Branson started the Virgin brand with a student magazine, but Virgin is just one of many examples which shows that the reality is counterintuitive: actually, the best things we know and love started as tiny things. ~ Joel Gascoigne via http://joel.is

There seems to be this strange human brain defect that leads people to believe that everyone that is successful at something did it practically overnight.

The reality though is that absolutely NONE of them did it over night.

This defect seems to be even more prevalent when it comes to content marketing, blogging, or anything else internet related. The simple fact is; you’re not going to become a master content marketer overnight. You’re blog is not going to get popular overnight. And people sure as hell are not going to start trusting you, and taking your word for it overnight.

You have to pay your dues. You have to illustrate stability. People don’t want to get themselves all excited and committed to a blog or company that may very well be gone tomorrow. Boatloads of blogs and small businesses go down the drain every day. People like to see that you’re going to be around for awhile before they’ll be willing to put too much effort into paying attention to you (or helping to promote you).

It’s still a hell of a lot faster than trying to do it without content marketing though, so the sooner you get started, the better.

You don’t have to worry about getting big yet. Staying small keeps you on target and keeps you organized. Work your way into it, taking on more and more as your skills grow.

Example #1: Let’s say you have difficulty writing long detailed blog posts. Just cut the project down intosmaller segments. Take one of your sub-headings and treat it as if it were its own post; write each section individually, and then join them all together at the end.

Example #2: Let’s say you don’t add new posts to your blog as often as you should because you dread writing long blog posts. Everyone says that long blog posts convert better, get more links, and get more social shares right? Okay, maybe that’s true, but let me ask you this. Would it be better to have lots and lots of short blog post, or no blog posts at all? There’s no law against small blog posts, especially if you can answer the customers’ questions just as easily (if not better) being direct & concise.

5. Blogging Isn’t The Science So Many Make it Out to Be

You’ll quickly find out blogging isn’t the science so many make it out to be. When it comes down to it, consumers have questions and a great blog answers them. It really is that simple. ~ Marcus Sheridan via thesaleslion.com

Take the top 50 questions you get every single day from prospects and clients (via phone, email, face to face, etc.) and write those questions down. Now turn those 50 questions into 50 blog posts and answer them exactly as if you were talking to a customer face to face. ~ Marcus Sheridan via contentverve.com

The big secret is that being a good small business blogger isn’t all that difficult if you truly do understand your business and your customers.

If you’re honest, trustworthy, and can communicate clear direct answers to customer questions, then your readers and potential customers are going to love you.

Think about it; when you go online looking for answers to specific questions, do you really care all that much about how well-written the piece is, or do you care about whether it actually answers your questions or not?

You probably won’t get it perfect right out of the box, but if people see that you are genuinely trying to be helpful, they’ll be more receptive, and more likely to cut you some slack. Keep plugging away at it; it doesn’t take as long to get significantly better at it as you might think.

People don’t expect blog posts to be written perfectly; they expect them to be useful (and possibly even a bit entertaining). Instead of trying to talk-down to your potential customers like you stuffy old suit, it’s likely better to speak to them in their own language. People like & trust people that are like them. Be yourself and write the way that you speak…within reason 🙂.

Content Marketing Take away…

Content marketing can be as time-consuming & complicated as you choose to make it. This is your business; do what you can manage to do, when you can manage to do it.

Trying to emulate the most successful content marketers on the web is admirable, but can often set you up for failure (they didn’t build their empires overnight, and neither will you replicate them overnight).

Instead of trying to measure yourself against them, study their tactics and focus on what you can learn from them to make the whole process more efficient for you. Better to have a small, focused content presence, than to have no presence at all.