Contractors are busy people. You’re always on the go, working hard to finish a project and win your next job. You don’t have time to waste coming up with content ideas for social media or your blog. This is where content buckets come in handy!
Learn how to create content buckets, plus ideas for what types of content should be included in each one. This will save you time creating social media posts and blog articles that attract and engage customers.
What Are Content Buckets?
Contractors are often busy with their hands, but not as creative when it comes to marketing.
Content marketing is all about creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract new customers via channels like social media, email newsletters, blogs posts or video.
Whatever form it takes, your goal should be to educate potential customers on why they need your product or service.
An average small business owner could spend over 2 hours a day on content creation, and that number only increases as the company grows. Content buckets are a way to organize your marketing efforts so that you can work on the right pieces of content at the right time. They’re a simple, but effective way to group your content into helpful categories.
Why Use Content Categories?
Content buckets help you categorize your content topics and ideas. Your company may be experiencing different stages of business. For example, at the beginning of your business it could be all about promoting services and getting attention for your brand.
As you grow, there might be more focus on customer service ]or business improvements. This change in focus means new content needs to be created too!
That’s where categories come into play. They’re a great way to separate different types of content, so you’ll always have something fresh to work with.
The best thing about content buckets is that you can come back to them later when you need a quick idea to post or create content around. This organizational system is the best way to develop a focused content marketing strategy.
Benefits of Using Content Buckets
In your industry, you probably use a variety of tools to get the job done. Your tools are kept in a toolbox or on your service trucks, organized by type, size or purpose.
With all your tools of the trade separated correctly, they’re easier to find and projects can be completed more quickly. You’ll always have the best tool for the job when you need it.
The same goes for content. Buckets are a great way to save time by staying organized. Once every topic is sorted for future use, you can easily find a good topic and build content to share with your audience.
How To Create Content Buckets
Creating your buckets is easy as long as you know who your audience is and what they hope to get out of your content. Ask yourself:
Who is my ideal customer?
What information are they interested in?
How did they find my content?
What problem are they hoping it will solve?
What other value can I offer to potential customers that they don’t even know they need?
Answering these questions will help you decide what types of buckets you need.
Broad bucket ideas for contractors and home service providers could be:
Bucket #1 - content to inform or educate
Bucket #2 - content to motivate or inspire
Bucket #3 - content to create engagement or a personal connection
Bucket #4 - content to promote your business
Each of these categories have various purposes and will help you accomplish different goals.
You could also separate your buckets based on the types of content you plan to share, for example:
Bucket #1 - blog posts
Bucket #2- videos
Bucket #3- infographics
Bucket #4- reviews
No matter how you divvy up your bucket categories, the best part about this system is that you can use these four types of content in any order, or combination, as long as it’s relevant to your audience and you’re able to keep up with the flow.
A rotational system is an effective way to cycle through each bucket; delivering a variety of great content to your audience without duplicating the same type of content too soon.
You’ll be able to keep track of what you’ve never used, what’s already been published, and what needs more work.
If you have other people handling your marketing and content creation, it’s a great for keeping everyone on the same page.
Your Content Marketing System
It’s time for you to create a content bucket system to make marketing your business easier! These are the actionable steps you can take to get your ideas in order:
Identify your target audience
Decide how you want to organize your content
Create 3-5 buckets and name them
Come up with as many possible content topics you can think of that relate to your business, industry or services
Find the right bucket for each topic idea to go into
Share content from your buckets throughout the year on social media, email, or other channels
If I run a home improvement and remodeling business, my content bucket system might look like this:
In this example, you’ll notice each bucket has a theme, and the content within each bucket is also themed based on the services I would offer my hypothetical customers. Everything directly relates to my business and the needs or interests of my customers.
I recommend theming each category based on your top services. Then, as you rotate your content throughout the year, potential customers are getting to know what services you offer and what you can do for them, even if the content isn’t directly promotional.
And each of the topic ideas in the buckets above could be modified and adapted for any content type or platform. You could turn them into memes, videos, blogs, tutorials, etc. Or you could repurpose them in different ways to use multiple times as new pieces of content!
Once you have your buckets all sorted, it might also be helpful to organize your whole year of content in advance.
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Content marketing is one of the most powerful tools available to small business owners. But if you don’t have the time or energy to come up with lots of great ideas on the spot, content buckets are your answer!
Now tell me about your content buckets — which bucket will be easiest for you to add topic ideas into? Which will be harder for you to fill? Comment below!