We are consuming content by the minute, in our daily lives.

 Every read, every view and every task is content that we absorb and catch. It was hard to avoid in the non-digital age and impossible to neglect in the digital era. It keeps us informed, answers our queries, provides us entertainment, and guides us in attaining knowledge and many more things.

In the age of digital content marketing, content helps to engage, attract and communicate with our prospects and customers.

It enables to bring new visitors to your website, increase the traffic and retention of customers and eventually generate revenue. In simple words, content creation is so essential that if you are not keeping up to it then you are behind the curve.

What is content creation?

Content creation is the process of generating topic ideas that appeal to your buyer’s character, creating written or visual content around those ideas, and making that information accessible to your audience. This can be in the form as a blog, video, infographic, or other format.

How to create good content?

Personally I don’t think there is any such thing as a good content or bad content. However, what does matter is that the content should be able to convey the message intended, to the audience addressed and produce the results desired accordingly. Here are a few tip of how to produce such content:

1. Calibrate

Before you start putting content out into the world, you’ve got to think hard about the objectives you hope to accomplish. In other words, you’ve got to calibrate and have your key points ready when you get started so that your strategy is always dictating your content rather than the other way around.

And when it comes to the content that’s being projected, remember that you’re not just calibrating what you write but also the tone in which it’s written.

In some cases your findings may tell you that you don’t need to do much content marketing and that is also acceptable. Content marketing isn’t for everyone. But if you do decide to carry on with it; don’t assume you need another agency. No one knows your product or ideas better than you.

2. Create

Now you’ve calibrated and decided to move ahead with your content marketing, the next step is the time to create. Don’t be intimidated or reluctant in projecting your thoughts and ideas out there.

Content is everywhere – from social media, to games, videos, books, white papers, articles and on and on. You don’t need a two-year plan or an extensive video team to make a short documentary. When you’re getting started, what you need is to be quick, to first see what your audience finds engaging, and then to keep going on and on.

Remember that once you start these conversations, you can’t always control where they will go. Your role is to be a part of a conversation, and, as long as you’re an interesting communicator, your audience will enjoy your presence wherever things go. This is a good way to proceed and how it should be.

Bear in mind that what might work at one stage may not work at another. So it is important to mold each stage as per requirement.

3. Curate

Curating is a big part of most content campaigns, and often what you share from other sources is as important as the content you create yourself. Researching, find and then using information or content is a very challenging task. Don’t assume you can just grab and share the first interesting link you see.

Often the most powerful forms of content are the ones that capture the news, that is, to take the content which already exists out there and show how it’s relevant to your product and story. Similarly when you come up with great content, don’t just mention it once and move on.

There are a lot of publishers out there who will be interested in a well-told story, whether it comes from a brand employee or an independent writer. If you came up with something good and catchy, you can often rework the same basic concept again and again and get as much weight as possible out of the material.

4. Circulate

Once you’ve created your content, it’s time to circulate. All too often brands are happy to gather views without thinking about who is actually seeing the content. That’s a recipe for a failed strategy. You’ve got to make sure that the right people are seeing your content, and that means that you’ll have to think hard about which distribution channels make the most sense.

The age demographic and which mode of social media they most use can play an integral part for you to decide where to circulate what information.

Is your audience on Pinterest? Instagram? Facebook? Do your fans watch videos? Or do they read articles?

Therefore, until you have a clear understanding of how your audience consumes content, it will be hard to get circulation right. But wherever your audience is consuming content, you’ll want to make it as easy as possible for them to share it. Also, while digital marketing mechanization can get your content out there into the world, don’t dismiss direct mail. Like mentioned earlier email newsletters are still the most effective part of promotion.

5. Change

Don’t forget why you’re creating all this content in the first place: to push prospects through the sales funnel.

If you’re mapping your content out carefully, each stage of the process will have a different requirement. It’s often hard to measure its impact because click-through doesn’t tell the full story. Therefore, it’s important to look at your audience’s actions across all avenues and don’t underestimate the power of feedback from clients and prospects.

Those stories can’t tell you everything, but they’re important data points when traditional metrics, such as ROI, can’t give you the full picture.

Read: The Ultimate Guide On Content Strategy In 2021

Type of Content created:

Creating great content is the first step, but if you don’t promote your content properly, no one will see it. There are various types of content created. Too name a few are as follows:

1. Blogs: For many brands, blog posts make up the central part of their content marketing strategy. There’s a good reason for this: blog posts typically don’t take too long to write, they’re easily found by Google, users are happy to read and share them, and it’s a quick way to offer value at a relatively low cost. Check out our FREE templates that can help you structure your blogs.
2. Infographics: Infographics allow you to pack a ton of information into one image in a way that is visually interesting and easily digestible. Infographics are great for getting more shares. And, because the backlink to your infographic is embedded within it, anyone who shares it properly will give you the valuable backlinks we all need for our content marketing. Read more on this here Infographic: a guide to online advertising for small business
3. Video: Video isn’t always associated with “content marketing,” but it should be. It’s is dynamic, it’s engaging, and more users are watching video than reading text so we need to include it in our content marketing strategy. This is particularly true for both tutorials and product content.
4. Long form content: This content won’t just be 1,000 words; it might be 5,000-15,000 words. There will be several chapters, each on their own URL page. Because of this, they offer immense value. Users don’t have to go anywhere else for information on a subject, because you have literally covered it all.
5. White papers: White papers are information-dense content that can offer solutions and data on a particular subject. The focus here is all on the details. They’re exceptional when you want to build thought leadership and respect within the industry, and can make great lead magnets. They’re extremely valuable when it comes to selling your business’s products or services.
6. E books: E-books seem a little daunting the first time you write them, but they’re great lead magnets and if timeless it can stay great lead magnets forever. While they do take more time and money to make, you can outsource the process to a freelance writer who has experience with writing them

SEO and Key word density in you content:

Make sure that you utilize all the tools at your disposal. Researching keywords, integrating them into your copy, and ensuring all of your SEO boxes are ticked (alt tags, image tags, heading tags, etc). This will help your content spread across the internet and bring leads back to your website.

Additionally, creating backlinks to your content is a key way to increase organic conversions. Well-researched, educated, and well-designed content is an easy way to create backlinks. Promoting your content across all channels will also help visibility and engagement.

What makes some content marketing succeed, while other efforts fail?

Like any framework, this one can be stated simply. Actually executing it is going to be more complicated. But if you use it, you’ll avoid the downsides that bring down most content marketing.

Telling people not to publish content that sucks tends to need a little more explanation, if it’s going to be helpful.

What would give content marketing newbies the right foundation? Is there a framework they can use that would start them off on the right foot?

1. Educate:

Content that succeeds has both education and personality. Over the years, you’ve heard us say: Don’t sell, teach. Content that sells, whether you’re in the premium content business or you use content to sell another product or service, is content that makes itself useful. Nothing retains better then teaching and affecting the mind.

Effective content teaches your audience something they want to know more about. It might be fitness tips, parenting skills, or career advice. But it answers persistent questions and makes your readers’ lives better in some way or another.

2. Personality:

Likewise, aim to create a content-driven website that has personality, that is reader-friendly, and that’s written to both educate and entertain.

Thus, bringing a consistent voice and personality to your content is a lot of work but it’s also highly rewarding in the end, both personally and professionally.

3. Highlight and headline:

It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to highlight with a catchy headline. If you’re going to put in the work to create strong content that educates in a reader-friendly way, please don’t bury it with a lousy headline.

Great headlines make it easy for readers to share your content. They attract more links, social media sharing, readers, and customers. Take the time to learn how to write better headlines. It really does pay off.

4. Effective content keeps SEO in mind:

Like mentioned above, creating content that’s both educational and reader-friendly has SEO benefits. It’s exactly the content search engines wants to serve.

Just remember, effective content works for human readers first and search engines second.

5. Put the reader first:

All of the “rules” of great content marketing come from one rule: put your audience first. It’s not about how much money you need to make with this launch, or where you want to rank in search engines. It’s about your audience, the readers, prospects, and customers and not you.

Read: The Ultimate Guide On Content Marketing In 2021

Conclusion

However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t have goals for your business and your content. But when you create content that both benefits your readers and makes them feel good, you’ll find that your marketing goals become a lot more achievable.

Let us help you learn more on related topics and plan your goals. Get professional help at Startup.pk

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