Marketing without content creation cannot exist but you sure get lots of content that is boring and uninspiring. To have great success at marketing, you need to create killer content. That’s the secret to great marketing, especially now that most marketing is done digitally.
In this guide, we will share with you some great ideas on how to be great at creative content creation. If you’ve been looking for inspiration, stick around.
The First Step Of Great Content Creation – Defining Goals
We can’t stress enough how important it is to define your goals. No matter what you’re doing, you need to have something to work towards. With content creation, you need to clearly define the goals you want to achieve.
Also have defined the ways that you will be measuring how successful your content strategy is. Are you meeting your goals? Will you determine this through the number of new subscribers you gain? The clicks on your websites or your social media account growth?
Without knowing your end goals, you’ll likely lose your way. Your goals will be unique to your company and brand.
Step Two: Determine And Understand Your Audience
When you know what your goals are, you can move to the next step – identifying who you’re creating content for. You have to do serious research into your audience and get an understanding of who they are. The people who will see (and hear) your content and react to it are your audience.
You need to be aware of who these people are and how you can approach your content creation for the best reaction from them. For the best results, you should try to speak directly to your audience. See them as more than eyes on the other side of your content – see them as real people. This way, you’ll come across as more personal and likeable.
The Third Step In Your Content Creation – Create Personas
If you’ve studied our other content marketing guide, you’ll know that the next step in your strategy should be building personas.
Personas are created with information learnt while researching your audience, but it goes beyond that. You will focus more on the finer details of your audience – their age, their financial and social status etc.
With personas in place, you will have a better idea of your audience and the things they are passionate about. You can get a more in-depth representation of the kind of people who will want to see your content and support your company.
We suggest that you take a look at the information you’ve gathered about your audience and the personas you created. Then, write a story around this data so you can have a more humanised perception of your personas. This will help you be better at content creation for your strategy.
Step Four Of Your Content Creation – Focus On What You Have
If you’ve already started creating content, go back and look at it again. Is it the kind of content that your audience would appreciate? This content can be anything – blogs, social media posts or visuals.
Adjust your content so it will suit the goals you have determined by now. Will your audience find any value in what you’ve created so far? If not, make changes and add what you think is missing.
There are three things to focus on when you want to be sure your content creation is at its best. Your content should be engaging, evergreen and be focused on specific events.
The engagement will be created when you’ve sparked a conversation with your audience with your content. For content to be evergreen, it should not fade in value but always remain relevant. This will be influenced by your industry and products or service provided. Content that is built around specific events will get lots of attention during the time of the event. Consider using holidays and special occasions for this kind of content.
Content Creation Step Five – Keyword Research
By now, you know your audience and you know why you want to create content. Now you have to focus on what you’ll start to create. The whole point of content creation is to come up with content that will reach your audience. You can find out what to create by researching what it is your audience is looking for. That’s where keyword research comes in.
You will now brainstorm ideas and build interesting content that is central to the keywords that your audience searches. We suggest you make use of keyword search tools to help you with this step.
If you have a team, sit down and brainstorm topics that are related to and important to your audience. Use these ideas you come up with and combine them with your keyword research. This way, you’ll be able to nail content creation that will actually see results.
Step Six In Your Strategy – Determine Your Content Format
Right, now you have a good idea of how you’ll go about creating your content. It’s time to decide what form this content creation will take. Of course, this will depend on your audience and industry. But you should never forget that your content must be engaging, entertaining and valuable.
You can use podcasts, videos, blog posts, user-generated content, social media posts and even infographics. In fact, you can use all of these if you so wish. Just make sure that you always keep your audience and your content creation goals in mind.
Tips On Content Creation
When you create content, there are some tips that we’d like to share with you. These are just guidelines to get you started in your content creation mission. Use these and build on them, adding your own value.
Blogs
Starting off with blogs is a good idea as they are relatively easy. You can simply start to write and you’re on your way to creating content like a boss. You’ll start with an outline so you know what you want to say. Then, you have to start with an intro and the outline of your main points.
Determine your subheadings, remembering your keywords. Then read through what you’ve written. Does it create the feeling you hoped for? If not, add whatever you feel will give the blog more value. If you’re happy, you can continue to add images, quotes and statistics.
Last, but not least, create your blog headline. This is one of the most important steps in creating good blogs. Give it a lot of thought. You have five seconds or less to impress and reel in readers with your heading, make it count.
Videos
Making use of videos is always a good idea. In fact, it is such a good marketing tool that 87% of online marketers use video in content creation. People love to watch videos and if you can entertain them with it, why not? However, this can be more difficult and take a lot more time to get right. You may also have to get in the help of a professional so your videos don’t seem sloppy and low-quality. For best results, make your videos 60 seconds or less.
Podcasts
These are great for content creation but not always appreciated. It is much easier to create than videos and more effective than written content. Getting started with podcasts is not as tricky as you might think.
You start off by deciding on your topic and doing the related research. Since you already know your keywords and your audience, you’ll not find it difficult to decide on a topic. There are hundreds of thousands of podcasts, so make sure that you choose something that your audience will be interested in.
To record your podcast, you can use basic tools such as a microphone or laptop and software that can record your voice. However, we suggest you invest in a good microphone rather than using a built-in one. The quality of a built-in microphone is often not good enough. If you want to, you can even invite guests to join your podcast. This will make it more interesting and entertaining. Use your social networks to reach out to people who are experts in your topic. Edit your podcast with software such as Adobe Audition.
Images
You can use any images that are related to your topics and there are many sources to find what you need.
Human communication is more than 90% visual – much of the stimuli that reach your brain is visual. The brain is able to process images much faster than text, so it only makes sense that marketers need to focus on images.
People’s attention spans are growing ever shorter, it seems It is believed that people have less than nine seconds of attention to spare these days, making images the best way to keep them interested. The brain can recognise familiar objects in about 100 milliseconds, so images really are the best way to communicate with the world.
As social media marketers, it’s very important to have the right pictures accompanying your content to make an impact. For a more in-depth discussion of how to use images in your content creation, check out this guide.
The Seventh Step Of Content Creation – Social Media Promotion
You’ve created awesome content but you’re not getting enough attention for it…here’s what you can do – use your social media accounts. If you’re not yet making the most of social media advertising in your content creation strategy, we suggest you start as soon as possible.
There are many reasons to invest in social media advertising. One thing that stands out is that there is no limit to this marketing strategy. You can grow your fanbase, brand loyalty and sales. You can save a lot of money because new and established customers are constantly targeted.
Also, you can use tools such as schedulers to improve your chances of success even more. SocialPlanner is a great example. With this tool, you can find rich content and schedule it to be shared at peak times. It also helps you manage your strategies effortlessly. We highly recommend that you check out this tool, SocialPlanner gives you all the tools you need to run successful social media campaigns. All their plans come with a free 7-day trial, so you’re free to try it out before making any long-term commitments.
Whether you decide to use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or another social media platform to promote your content, you’ll find it very effective.
Bonus Content Creation Tip: Use Paid Ads
Although there are many ways to promote your content without paying a fortune, you may want to consider using paid ads. Most social media platforms give you the opportunity to use them to attract attention to your content.
It can seem scary to start paying for ads, but it is estimated that about $113 billion is spent on these ads by now. It’s definitely worth your consideration. Fortunately, you won’t have to spend that much. You can get away with as little as $5 to start with.
Facebook is a great place to start experimenting with paid ads – the platform’s users are high-income earners. It surpasses LinkedIn, which reaches only about 49% of users who earn more than $75, 000 while more than 74% of Facebook users fall into this category. Why don’t you check out our guide on Facebook Ads to get you on your way? You’ll learn a lot more than you think as we share examples of the kind of ads that were successful. We also explore why these ads worked so well, giving you fuel for your own ads.
Conclusion
Now you know a lot more about content creation than you did before reading our guide. We hope that by using what you’ve learnt here, you’ll feel more confident in your approach to marketing and content creation in general. If you do your homework, read more of our helpful and insightful guides and remember to always be creative, you’ll create content that will show results. And don’t forget that your audience is human, just like you. They want to feel appreciated and valued. Good luck!