In the past decade, content marketing has become an exciting new frontier in marketing. Online articles, videos, graphics, and other kinds of content can live forever, and have now become powerful tools that brands use to engage both prospective and existing customers.
However, this also means that more and more businesses are doing the same thing. Therefore, creating effective content has never been more important for businesses seeking to improve their online positioning and growing their brands. Successful content marketing now depends on having effective content creation strategies.
Here’s a 4-step guide that can help you create effective content. But first, here’s a quick rundown of what content marketing is all about.
Do You Need a Content Marketing Strategy?
While “content marketing” may seem something of a buzzword, it’s remarkably effective. Many successful digital marketers attribute their success to their content creation strategies.
Content marketing not only costs significantly less than traditional marketing, but reports show your consumers’ ultimate buying decisions are significantly influenced by your content.
Content creation strategies are, of course, specific to a brand or an organization. However, developing a content strategy generally takes the following process:
- Define goals
- Research industry and competitions
- Create buyer personas
- Decide on format
- Map out your content
Once you have a well-thought-out content strategy, the next step is to start the actual digital content creation.
To learn more about how to create comprehensive content, check out our blog post here.
The Content Creation Process Flow
Once you understand why you are creating the content, who your target audience is, and how the content you create aligns with your company’s marketing goals, it’s time to get down to the essentials.
Here’s a simple 4-step process for creating effective content:
- Ideation
- SEO Research and applying to headlines and within the body
- Writing and Editing
- Publishing
Step 1: Ideation
The first step is to explore content ideas based on desired outcomes. You can collect all your ideas (through brainstorming, research studies, competitor’s websites, industry reports) and organize them around a schedule.
The buyers persona you created during the content strategy stage will also reveal the topics your audience is likely to be interested in. It will reveal your audience’s language and the type of content they primarily like to consume.
Prospect would ideally consume different content at each stage of the buyer’s journey. To learn more on how to create a buyer persona, please check out our blog post here.
At the awareness stage, the prospect is just entering the market and they aren’t yet highly qualified leads. A light read such as an informative blog post would work well.
At the assessment stage, you have to establish whether the prospect fits into your true target audience. The prospect needs to be convinced that you are resourceful and genuinely helpful. Content such as case studies, white papers, and explainer videos would do well.
The decision stage is where the prospect finally gets around to making a decision on how to solve their problems. This is still a delicate stage as they will likely have other options or may try to tackle the issues themselves. More personalized and interactive content would do well. This would include demos, free trials, testimonials, and click-through sales pages.
Download our FREE guidebook, “The Ultimate Digital Marketing Playbook” to learn more about the Buyer’s Journey. If you would like to learn more about how to map out your buyer persona’s journey, you may check out our blog post here.
Step 2: SEO Research and applying to headlines and within the body
The next step is to determine the actual, specific content (what they are looking for, specific queries, etc.) by conducting a keyword research. Tools like Moz and SEMRush can effectively help you determine the search volumes of specific keywords and whether you should create a piece of content around them.
Organize your selected search terms, enter them into a search engine, look at the first few results and ask yourself, “can I write something better or provide more value?” If you have great answers then you should go right ahead and write the article.
Check out our blog post on how you may set up a SEO content marketing strategy.
Step 3: Writing and Editing
Blog posts live on a website and they can generate lots of search traffic, which increases the chances of scoring more leads and consequently, actual customers. The most effective blog posts are usually topic-specific and contain rich, actionable content.
Of course, you have to get the writing and editing basics right. Don’t put out articles with typos and grammatical errors. Your writing style must resonate with your audience’s persona and appeal to their usual language, including the lingo, euphemism, and brand of humor.
Clarity and conciseness are key and you’d do well not to try too hard to impress your target audience with eloquent prose, confusing metaphors, thick jargon, or overly expansive vocabulary.
Avoid going off on tangents and focus on the audience’s needs and the main ideas. Alternatively, if you don’t have the requisite writing skills, you can hire a content writer or an agency who understands your industry.
To learn about how blogging can help with growing your business. Check out our article here.
Step 4: Publishing
The last step is, of course, making your content available to your audience and search engines. Publishing your blog post is, in most cases, as easy as hitting the ‘publish’ button and making it instantly accessible to your audience.
However, you can also schedule your content to be published in certain (optimal) times, such as, a specific day of the week.
Content management systems (CMS) can help centralize all of your content and make it easier to manage the distribution. For instance, a CMS application can make your blogpost instantly available on your website as well as your social media pages.
Remember, your content will require regular revision. You may need to make adjustments, update information (statistics, facts, etc.), or repurpose the content to make it more effective.
Is a Content Distribution Strategy Necessary?
Having a solid content distribution plan is just as important as the content itself. Remember, millions of blog posts are pushed out every day so you will constantly be facing enormous competition for your audience’s attention.
It may seem as simple as sharing a link to the blog post on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter. However, to get great results, you will have to think beyond your usual social media platforms. A content distribution strategy will ensure you distribution of your content in a way that maximizes traffic, encourages social shares, and builds a high number of backlinks.
Check out our blog post on how to drive targeted traffic to your website here. You may also want to take a look at our blog post on how to use your content distribution channels to amplify your digital marketing efforts.
For information on how to build links and increase the authority of your website, please take a look at our blog post here.
Measuring Results
Marketers must establish whether content creation strategies are working and more so, how their content marketing efforts impact the overarching organizational goals.
It’s more prudent to track actionable metrics such as email engagement/sign-up rates, email subscribers, event registrations, or time on site, rather than vanity metrics such as number of social media followers or overall website traffic. Some great metrics to focus on include:
- Number of Inbound links
- Engagement (Shares, comments)
- Unique visits
- Page views
- Bounce rates
- Conversions (new subscribers, sales, sign-ups, downloads, etc.)
- Organic traffic (traffic from search engines)
Conclusion
The key to creating effective content is to consistently create content about what your audience wants to learn and to provide the answers and the information they are looking for. It takes time, investment, and planning.
Although that might be the case, by putting in your efforts into creating effective and engaging content will produce real results and help your organization to achieve its marketing objectives.
Was the information on this blog post useful? What is your number one challenge when creating content? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section below.
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Other Related Blog Posts:
- How To Create A Buyer Persona In 4 Simple Steps
- Creating Effective Customer Journey Maps: A 4 Step Guide
- 13 Steps To Creating A Comprehensive Content Marketing Strategy
- 7 Simple Steps to Setting Up a SEO Content Marketing Strategy
- Why Blog? 4 Reasons Why Blogging Can Help To Grow Your Business
- 10 Proven Ways to Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Website
- How to Use Content Distribution Channels to Amplify Your Digital Marketing Efforts
- 9 Easy Ways to Build Links to Your Website and Establish Authority
Alan Lo, Managing Partner of Stratwell Strategic Solutions, brings a decade of entrepreneurial and business development experience. Early in his career he was instrumental in building out the distribution channels of a real estate investment firm with over $2 billion in AUM. He has then founded an investment company in 2014 which he successfully exited in 2019.
72 Comments
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https://www.stratwell.ca/content-mapping-5-step-guide/
https://www.stratwell.ca/7-steps-seo-content-marketing-strategy/
https://www.stratwell.ca/13-steps-creating-comprehensive-content-marketing-strategy/
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Thanks for the feedback. We created the posts in specific length so that they will tailor to different type of readers. If you are interested in reading other related blog posts, I would suggest the following:
7 Simple Steps to Setting Up a SEO Content Marketing Strategy
https://www.stratwell.ca/7-steps-seo-content-marketing-strategy/
13 Steps To Creating A Comprehensive Content Marketing Strategy
https://www.stratwell.ca/13-steps-creating-comprehensive-content-marketing-strategy/
10 Proven Ways to Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Website
https://www.stratwell.ca/drive-targeted-traffic-to-website/
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https://www.stratwell.ca/7-steps-seo-content-marketing-strategy/
https://www.stratwell.ca/13-steps-creating-comprehensive-content-marketing-strategy/
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