8 tips: How to do content marketing on a zero budget

No dollars to spend? Don’t worry, here’s how you can create content on thin resources.

Doing content marketing when you have a huge budget is easy as pie. Doing it without any resources is far more difficult. For startups and small businesses, knowing where to start and how to start, without spending any euros or dollars, is often a big challenge.

But it’s definitely possible to get into content marketing even if you have a low budget. Here are 8 tips on how you can make the most out of what you have.

Tip #1: Focus on quality not quantity

Due to tough algorithms, it’s all about quality on social media. Your followers won’t engage in your posts if they are not well-made. So if you’re thinking of content for your Facebook page, don’t focus too much on how often you post, but rather on what you post.

Spend some extra time on crafting content that is unique, well-made and conveys an interesting message, and don’t feel bad if you can’t publish something every day.

If you’re on a tight budget and can’t afford hiring a freelancer or external video producer, try to do it yourself. Do it well, and publish when you are ready, no matter how long it takes.

Tip #2: Focus on fewer channels

If you’re unable to distribute content across all social media platforms, then don’t. Focus on one or two social media channels that are truly relevant for your target audience.

• If you’re a B2B business, you might want to for example skip Instagram and focus on your blog, Twitter and Linkedin.
• If you’re a B2C business, you might want to have a Linkedin page but spend most of your time and resources on creating content for social networks like Instagram and Facebook.

Tip #3: Create video with your smartphone

If you’re producing content, you must also produce video. It’s no longer a choice, it’s a necessity if you want to survive the competition. Video often requires a lot of resources and equipment, and the post-production can be very time-consuming.

However, there are ways you can get into video making without spending a lot of money. Here are some basic tips:

• Invest in good audio. You can shoot with your smartphone, but make sure you use an external microphone. Nothing ruins a video like bad audio. This will require some sort of budget, so it’s not for free, but it’s definitely worth the small investment.
• Record in daylight. If you don’t have professional video lighting equipment, shooting outside is probably your best choice.
• Facebook Live is free to use and it’s actually one of the best ways to extend your reach organically on Facebook. Live videos are supposed to be, yes you guess it, live, authentic and unedited. And no one expects flawless quality on a live video.

Tip #4: Promote the content you already have

Creating content is only the first step. The next step is to actually promote your content. Because if no one reads or views your content, what is the purpose then?

Of course, a big budget will take you far, but it’s not a prerequisite. In fact, if you promote all of your blog posts for example on Facebook through paid ads, it could actually be counterproductive and push away your followers. There are many different ways you can promote your content without having to pay for it:

• Distribute in monthly newsletters or use in marketing automation
• Post on Facebook
• Post on Linkedin from your page
• Post on Linkedin from your personal profile
• Encourage your team members to post it on their personal social media profiles
• Mention it when commenting on others posts on Linkedin
• Share it as an image on Instagram
• Create an Instagram Story
• Tweet it (several times for different time zones)
• Mention it on forums

Tip #5: Extend the lifecycle of your content

Re-use your content. With so much content out there already and the pressure of constantly pushing out new blog posts and videos, it’s easy to feel stressed. But you don’t always have to create new pieces. Here are some things you can do to extend the lifecycle of your content.

• Turn blog posts into whitepapers or eBooks. Re-write them and make a few changes so that it seems fresh and doesn’t look like you just copied and pasted. Make sure you add a unique meta description too, to drive relevant traffic to your pages and content.
• Write roundup posts based on your best performing articles. Choose different sections of your most popular blog posts, make slight changes and turn them into a new blog post. Add a new post title and new, fresh images.
• Create guides out of old blog posts. Look at your previous blog posts and categorize them in different topics or categories. When you have collected a certain amount of posts in a specific topic, try repackaging them into a guide and use it for lead generation.
• Make a podcast based on your blog posts. But don’t just read your blog posts aloud into a microphone and publish (we don’t think you would), you need to adapt them and make the tone slightly more conversational. It should sound natural, not as if you’re just reading from a piece of paper.

Tip #6: Free tools when you have no designer

If you can’t afford to hire a designer, there are several tools that can help you create visually appealing content. In fact, there are so many free tools out there that we can’t list each and every one, but here’s a few of them:

Canva
Every social media manager’s favorite tool. Canva is a free design program that makes it quick and easy to create visual content for social channels but also for flyers, postcards or banners. You can choose from a large amount of templates, upload your own photos and use their featured elements, graphics, shapes and icons.

MockUPhone
This is a free tool for anyone who wants to wrap app screenshots in different mobile devices. So if you want to showcase a mockup or UI design for example, or just see how your design looks on an iPhone, iPad or a TV screen, this is a really quick and easy-to-use solution.

Piktochart
If you want to create infographics, presentations or reports but have no design experience, Piktochart is a great tool. You can choose from several templates and upgrade for pro templates if you want.

Tip #7: Curate content

Not every content piece must be self-made. If you find something great, don’t be afraid of sharing it (and of course, credit the original source). It shows that your brand is keeping tabs on what is trending in your industry. If your audience finds your curated content valuable and interesting, they will come back to your brand even though the content wasn’t created by you, simple because they know that your brand is a great source of knowledge.

Tip #8: Tap into user-generated content

Mix your own content and blog posts with content produced by your customers. Integrating user-generated content (UGC) in your content marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to increase engagement and get measurable results without a huge budget.

UGC is not the same thing as influencer marketing, although they are closely related, so you don’t need to spend a lot of money to pay mega-influencers. That’s influencer marketing, not UGC. And even with influencer marketing, it’s not always necessary to have a big budget, because using micro-influencers can sometimes be a better choice.

UGC is when you make use of the content already created by your customers and re-post it in your own channels.

Some ways you can use UGC in your marketing:

• Start a hashtag contest where users for example can post videos or images in their own social media channels to get a chance of winning something. The prize doesn’t need to be very expensive so this shouldn’t require a big budget.
• Find images already created by your customers on Instagram by searching different hashtags and integrate them on your website. If you have a webshop, embed their images on the product pages as a complement to your styled product images.
• Ask your customers to record a quick video with their smartphone where they share their stories around your products; when they bought it, how and why. Publish all stories on your Instagram as Instagram Stories or combine them into a video which you can post on Youtube.

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