Content marketing is a long-term marketing strategy focused on creating valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract, engage, and retain an audience.
In marketing, the ‘content’ could be a blog post, video, podcast, email post, Infographic, eBook, social media post, or advertisement.
The content marketing process is not always as simple as it might seem, especially for beginners. But doing it well can truly impact your online business.
Great content is what attracts, engages, and delights prospects and customers. It attracts new visitors (potential customers) and ultimately generates revenue for your online business.
As most people often do some preliminary research before buying products or services, they will likely find your content before making a purchase decision.
If your content is useful, those potential customers are more likely to trust your online business and buy your products when they are ready to make a purchase.
Recent research proves that creating high-quality content makes customers 131% more likely to buy from your business.
Generating great content starts with a well-established process, but how do you get started with content marketing?
In this beginner’s guide, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about producing high-quality content that attracts, engages, and converts your audience from readers to customers.
Specifically, you will learn:
- What is content marketing?
- What is a content creator?
- Why is content marketing important?
- Types of content marketing
- Content planning and strategy
- Content creation process
- Content marketing tools
What is content marketing in digital marketing?
Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on producing and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract, engage, and retain potential customers.
Content marketing is a type of inbound marketing strategy that delivers value to a business’s audience through entertaining, educational, or informative content.
Content marketing comes in four basic forms — written, video, audio, and image.
Most businesses use several forms of content creation to engage with their audience across platforms like social media, websites, blogs, and emails.
This strategic content marketing approach puts the customer at the heart of a business’s messaging.
Rather than spamming people with advertising messages, content marketing offers them valuable content and engages them throughout the customer journey.
It goes beyond pushing a product to a client, instead putting the relevant and useful information out there and following the customer from the awareness stage to the decision stage.
Content marketing includes presenting content like how-to guides that offer a real benefit to the client.
When done right, content marketing conveys expertise and shows that a business values its customers.
Creating consistent, high-quality, and engaging content establishes and nurtures relationships.
When your customers think of you as a business that is genuinely interested in them, they are more likely to choose you over competitors.
What is a content creator?
A content creator refers to someone responsible for the ideation, creation, and promotion of content that connects a business to its current and potential clients.
The goal of content creators is to create meaningful content that captures readers’ attention and drives website traffic, conversions, and interactions with their business on external platforms like social media.
Digital content creators create content across any platform or channel.
Having dedicated content creators is a must for any business.
These content marketers will help bring ideas to life through quality content that helps your audience and customers find solutions and answers to their problems.
Why is content marketing important?
Now that we know what content marketing is, let’s take a look at its importance.
Content marketing is crucial for ensuring you have what you need to reach and engage your target audience.
Why?
Because it is a crucial part of digital marketing—a long-term marketing strategy that involves developing and sharing content across channels to reach current and potential customers.
This helps in your efforts to:
- Retain existing customers
- Improve organic search rankings
- Educate potential customers
- Grow brand awareness
- Engage with different online communities
- Build credibility
Improving organic rankings through content marketing can be especially beneficial for reaching potential customers.
You can do this through search engine optimization (SEO).
SEO involves creating and improving your website and content to rank higher in search engine results pages and increase the number of visitors to your website.
Content equals business growth. So, let us start with the types of content marketing you can create and then review your marketing strategy.
Types of Content Marketing
It is a good idea to produce various types of content to maximize your reach.
Here are some of the best types of content marketing you can use to grow your business:
BLOGGING
Blogging is, by far, one of the best tools you can have in your content marketing tool belt. One, because it’s free.
Now, it does take some time to set up and write, high quality content, but when blogging is done the RIGHT way, you are literally opening up an endless amount of opportunities for your online business.
Just think of blogging as your way of communicating with your audience.
BUT, here is the twist – think about what THEY want and how THEY will appreciate what you’re writing.
Many blogs write about their products, their features…but rarely do you find a blog that dives deep into how that product, or feature, or content helps the READER.
The more you can master this, the more dedicated your audience is going to be.
Benefits of Blogging
Benefits of blogging include:
- Communicating with your target audience
- Providing content to share on other platforms
- HUGE SEO opportunity
- Great way to build exposure
- Excellent place to collect leads
- Providing an opportunity for others to share your brand
- Increasing your website’s rank on the internet
- And on, and on, and on. Like we said, endless opportunities just by using your blog.
Content Marketing Ideas for Blogging
Quizzes and Surveys
Blog surveys are a great way to collect feedback from your readers.
This can help with more than website traffic.
Also, responses from quizzes and surveys can help you:
- Choose which products or services to promote and sell
- Grow your social media following
- Figure out other types of content creation your audience likes
- Anticipate customer service issues
For an effective quiz or survey, define your business goals before you start content creation.
Keeping your quizzes simple and providing incentives can improve response rates.
Answer a Question
Think about the questions you had when you were a beginner content creator.
Once you have the question, write a high-quality blog post to answer it.
Anticipating and answering your audience’s questions can help you earn their trust and improve your search engine results pages (SERPs).
Teach Something
If you want to use your blog as a teaching tool, there are a few things you will want to think about.
As you pick a topic, it’s wise to start small.
So, instead of covering a broad topic, pick a profitable niche topic that people in your industry might be asking about.
For example, this blog post is not about anything and everything concerning marketing.
Instead, it gives our readers a step-by-step guide to creating high-quality and valuable content.
As you start writing how-to blog posts, here are a few things to remember:
- Make use of short sentences and paragraphs and create a clear structure. This will make your instructions easier to follow.
- Your instructions should be easy for beginners, so don’t skip steps or offer shortcuts.
- Avoid jargon and technical search terms, and use examples to make new information easier to understand.
These things help your target audience learn and bring you more traffic and interest in your educational content.
Daily, Monthly, or Weekly Series
Writing a series of blog posts can be useful for your target audience, and it can help you grow your blog.
You can create and publish the series daily or on a chosen day per week or month.
A series can generate content that you can easily repurpose for other channels.
For instance, if you run a blog about blogging, you could turn a blog series about blogging into an eBook, video, or podcast.
This content strategy makes it simple to explore a particular topic fully.
It is useful for building internal and external links and for establishing you as a thought leader.
Compare and Contrast Solutions to a Problem
If you are an expert in your industry, you can share your expert opinion and simultaneously help your target audience to make informed decisions.
Curated Content for Target Audiences
Curated content will make your most important audience members feel like they are part of an exclusive group.
This could mean your audience turns into a group of promoters who share your content and encourage others to buy your products or services.
Create curated content that is specifically for this audience.
For example, our target audience is professional marketers and bloggers.
Therefore, we create high-quality and relevant content for marketers.
To curate your content, begin with detailed buyer personas and competitor research.
Next, create cluster contents that are just for that specific buyer persona.
Curated content is also the best place to highlight quotes and insights from industry leaders.
This content should not just inform a targeted audience. It should make them feel important.
SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
You need to be active on social media networks. Every. Single. Day. More than once. On more than one network. Non-negotiable.
The combination of a blog and social media marketing can skyrocket your online business.
The beauty of social media marketing is, again, endless opportunities!
You can pick which social media networks you want to share on and you can build a unique audience on each network.
If you want social media to work for you, you have to commit to posting daily. You need to be consistent.
If you don’t, you will lose exposure, you will lose your audience, you will lose reach, and you will lose opportunities.
The good news?
There are tons of tools to help you be present on social media without having to become a part-time social media manager for your own business.
For example GetTassi.com, this tool offers with a calendar and a huge library of statuses and graphics you can personalize for your business.
Social Media Marketing Ideas
Producing shareable social media posts can be a challenge.
Each social media network is a little different, and not every post will perform the same on all platfoms.
Here are a few ideas that will help us generate new social media content and will help you, too.
Create Educational Content
You can engage with your audience by creating educational content that teaches them something new.
Identify a niche topic relevant to your industry for a blog post or address a common problem with a simple “how-to” video.
By creating educational content, you position your business as a go-to resource site for valuable information.
Since most users prefer to watch short-form videos when learning about new products, consider breaking up your social media content into a series rather than a single long post or video.
Share Relevant Industry News
Your brand’s social media posts don’t always need to be original. Sharing relevant industry content and news provides valuable insights and keeps your audience engaged.
First, it can ensure that you are always engaging with your readers.
Second, it keeps your readers engaged and informed about the latest trends and news, which is especially crucial in fast-moving industries where staying up-to-date is important.
Share User-Generated Content
Sharing user-generated content on social media pages adds authenticity to your brand because it showcases real people who genuinely enjoy your product.
It can also lead to more social engagement and community building since people like seeing themselves and their peers featured on a brand’s page.
in addition, user-generated content is an easy way to keep your social media pages fresh without having to create more content in-house.
Collaborating With Other Businesses or Influencers
When you collaborate with another business or influencer, you get access to your partner‘s audience, which can significantly increase your brand’s exposure and help you gain new followers.
In addition, it can boost the credibility of your brand.
For instance, if an influencer trusts your product, it offers consumers social proof that your product or service is the real deal.
Partnering with others can lead to diverse and unique content that you may not be able to produce otherwise.
Additionally, collaborating with others can pave the way for future opportunities, including joint ventures and strategic partnerships.
Participate In Trends
Trends on social media come and go quickly, making it easy to feel like keeping up is pointless. However, if you’re able to jump on them quickly, it can significantly boost engagement with your followers and visibility.
Social media platforms tend to prioritize trending content, increasing the chances of your posts being seen and shared.
Plus, participating in trends signals that your brand is relevant and in touch with the world. Ignoring them and posting outdated content can make your brand feel disconnected, pushing audiences away.
Share Testimonials
A positive testimonial can influence a customer’s decision to buy your product. So, sharing it on social media can be an effective way to boost your brand’s credibility.
Posting customer reviews can help build trust with potential customers because it shows that your product or service actually works.
By showcasing real people and their experiences, you can demonstrate firsthand how your product or service may benefit your audience.
Host Contests or Giveaways
Social media contests and giveaways are some of the best ways to promote your business. After all, who doesn’t like free stuff?
These can help boost engagement by requiring followers to like, comment, or share to win.
Additionally, contests give your audience an incentive to share their contact information with you because they have a chance to gain something in return.
Ultimately, this can generate new leads and drive sales for your business.
EMAIL MARKETING
Email marketing does a few things. It gives you an opportunity to collect the information from visitors and the ability to reach them, whenever you want.
With blogging, readers must actively find your blog posts. With social media marketing, your audience must be online at the right time, and the algorithms are not getting in the way.
With email marketing – you can send out an email whenever you want to reach your audience. No algorithms. Guaranteed delivery.
Email marketing should be used as a way to build a relationship with your target audience.
Provide them with value, provide them insights they can’t get anywhere else, and of course – make them offers.
PODCASTS
There are programs out there that will take your video and automatically strip the audio from the video so essentially – you could do the video recording and in one sitting – have a video and podcast ready for your target audience.
Don’t overcomplicate it. Just think of ways you can provide value, promote your business, and deliver content to your target audience.
Generally, a great podcast revolves around a strong idea and expands on it with listener and expert feedback. If you’re launching your first podcast, be sure to maintain a consistent posting schedule.
It is also a good idea to follow the same structure for every episode. It’s about being your authentic self.
Content Marketing Ideas for Podcasts
Interviews
Do you know someone who could provide some value to your target audience?
Maybe you want to interview someone who has used your product or taken your program.
Interviews are insightful. They provide a different perspective to your target audience.
And they are pretty easy to execute.
You can record them on video, break them down to an audio, write a blog post about it, and put up some social media posts. From ONE interview. THAT is content creation machine.
Thought Leadership
This type of content creation centers on your professional experience.
Be sure to incorporate case studies and real-life scenarios into the podcast content.
Discuss Trends
Trends provide great content for podcasts. Whether you are focusing on long-term or current trends, this context is a great way to showcase how your products stay relevant to what’s new.
Although many people follow daily or weekly news podcasts, most podcasts are evergreen, similar to blogs.
Podcast listeners often revisit episodes years after their release. As a result, it’s important to connect trends to broader topics.
Contests and Giveaways
Contests provide a fun way for your podcast listeners to participate while helping you grow your subscriber base.
You can launch a contest by promoting a prize or giveaway on social media. Alternatively, consider hosting interactive contests where listeners can call in and join the podcast.
If you plan to offer a prize, make sure it is unique and fitting for your target audience.
VIDEOS
People prefer to consume information in different ways. Some people like to listen, some like to read, and some like to watch.
That is where video marketing comes into play. It meets the need of people who want to watch, not listen or read.
Video marketing is performing well right now.
Both short-form and long-form videos play a crucial role in your content marketing strategy.
So be sure to come up with ideas for both.
86% of marketers say that video marketing is effective for generating leads. This makes original video content an essential strategy for content marketing.
Here are some useful ideas for video content marketing:
Use Animation
Using animated videos makes it easier to understand new or complex information. So, leverage them to highlight the specific problem your product solves or to demonstrate how it works.
Repurpose Blog Content
Another effective idea for a video content marketing strategy is to repurpose the text from your top-performing blog posts as voiceovers. Long-form blogs can easily be transformed into an engaging video series.
You can also break up key points from blogs into bite-sized videos for your social media posts.
Then, add your videos to your best-performing blog posts.
This gives people who find your blog on search engines like Google another alternative way to get the information they are looking for.
How-To-Guides and Tutorials
How-to content is also very popular in video marketing.
To create a powerful instructional video, stick to short and specific instructions.
Do not skip anything; also, don’t want to overwhelm your viewers with extra information.
Use simple visual instructions to help your viewers learn, and offer a clear call to action at the end.
Engaging with the comments on your videos is also a great idea.
This reassures your audience that you are available if they have more questions and could help you come up with more video marketing ideas.
Product Demos and Use Cases
Product demos can help potential customers visualize how to use your products effectively.
It is also a place for you to share some product design processes.
By sharing the problem you initially solved with your product and how the solution changed through the process, you are building a relationship with your target audience.
This relationship builds trust and makes them more likely to engage with your products and brand.
Image-Based Content
In your blog or your social media, consider sharing unique graphics to enhance engagement.
These include:
- Photography
- Infographics
- Illustrations
- Gifs
- Memes
- Screenshots
This content marketing approach typically requires a design tool or a graphic designer to help you get the job done.
Photo and image-based posts are the most popular types of content businesses use to increase audience engagement.
When creating visual content, ensure you have a strong grasp of the basics.
These include:
- Use contrast and color
- Keep it simple
- Choose the right subject to illustrate your idea
Image-Based Content Marketing Ideas
Visual Storytelling
Visual content is excellent for quick storytelling. When crafting your story, focus on showing rather than telling.
Infographics
These are another form of content marketing that appeals to a certain kind of audience.
They do a good job of conveying complex or data-heavy information in a digestible way.
They also help break up walls of text. And tend to be shared on social media networks and referenced by other websites.
You can look for interesting data relevant to your industry and visualize them with infographics.
If you want your content to include infographics, keep these things in mind:
- Do your research
- Choose the right data for your target audience
- Make your key points easy to read and recall
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Select the best graph or chart for your data
-
Tell a simple visual story
-
Don’t add too much data
Content Marketing Ideas for Infographics
Infographics can take many forms and shapes.
Explore these ideas to fuel your creativity:
- FAQs: Convert your most frequently asked questions into an infographic
- Charts: Convey numerical data in pie charts, bar charts, and more
- Industry trends: Use data to illustrate current trends in your industry
- Process explanation: Break down a complex process related to your industry or product
- Company timeline: Tell the story of your company and its key milestones
Infographics can be impressive. And you do not need to hire a designer to do it!
You can use tools like Canva or Infogram to create these pieces of content yourself.
User-Generated Content
Fans of your brand or products are often looking for ways to get involved.
You can use user-generated content to show your followers that you care about their opinions.
To get your users to create and share content for your brand or products, invite them to get involved.
Try a custom hashtag or contest on social media platforms to start.
Email marketing can also be a great way to collect your customers’ photos, quotes, and stories.
WEBINARS & LIVE STREAMING
This is similar to video marketing, but it is different as it is in real time.
When you host a webinar, you are live and can interact with viewers. Versus a pre-recorded and edited video.
You can use tools like ZOOM for your webinars.
It not only allows you to host a webinar and have live chats with your participants, you can ALSO live stream it to YouTube or Facebook.
This means that you can be in two places at once!
Thank you technology
CONTENT OFFERS
Another type of content marketing is content offers.
These are templates, worksheets, whitepapers, or eBooks that your readers can download.
This is gated content — meaning your visitors will need to submit a form with their email for access.
67% of brands use lead generation as the primary metric for content creation success.
This means you should combine any content marketing efforts with content offers to draw new leads.
The best lead magnets solve a problem for your readers. Usually, they address urgent issues while offering lasting value to users.
To be immediately useful to your audience, a content offer should be specific and quick to use.
It should also offer value that reflects your high level of understanding and expertise.
This will keep your audience returning for more and help you convert more leads into delighted customers.
Depending on your business, an eBook might be a great way to start offering content to your audience that you can later convert into higher sales.
eBooks and white papers can give your audience a deeper understanding of a topic.
They can also help them solve an urgent issue.
While eBooks can be intense projects, you can also use existing content, like blogs, to build your eBooks.
TOOLS & TEMPLATES
A great content offer helps your audience solve an issue faster than they could figure it out on their own.
It means that your templates can be useful for your audience both now and later.
And these useful lead magnets don‘t just give you a chance to help out your audience.
They are also excellent resources for leads and for creating advocates for your brand.
If someone frequently uses one of your templates, they’re more likely to tell someone else about it.
This makes content offers a great way to grow your audience by word of mouth.
And word of mouth is one of the most trusted sources for customers.
This makes this type of content offer a win-win.
While some templates and tools need you to have advanced coding or technical knowledge, most are simple to put together.
You can easily create a template with tools like Google Docs and Microsoft Excel tools.
KITS & WORKBOOKS
Once you have put together some of the resources listed above, you might be ready to create a larger content offer.
Kits and workbook content offers usually include a range of different resources that work together.
For instance, say you have made a few different templates for social media captions on different platforms.
You can put these templates together to create the ultimate social media caption kit.
It is a great idea to break your kit or workbook into bite-sized pieces.
You will also want to use graphics and other media to break up large sections of text to keep things engaging.
A workbook or kit might also include:
- A Q&A
- Checklists
- Worksheets
- Schedules
FREE GUIDES
One of the best email list building strategies is to use Free Guides.
This is another form of content creation but can be leveraged to collect leads.
Instead of just giving away a free guide to people by giving them a link to download it – create a landing page, ask for people to input their email address, then you can have your email management system deliver the free guide.
The customer is happy because they get a free piece of content that is high in value and you are happy because they are getting a high quality piece of content and YOU just collected a lead to a potential customer.
TEST MESSAGING (SMS)
This is another new form of content creation and another REALLY effective way to communicate with your target audience.
You can use LeadPages to collect phone numbers and to send out text broadcasts.
Content Planning and Strategy
You would not start building a company without a mission statement.
So, there should be no content creation without a plan.
Otherwise, you risk getting derailed from your objective.
A content creation strategy includes everything from brand and tone to how you will promote your content and eventually repurpose it.
Let us go over how to create your content creation plan, step-by-step.
Set Your Content Goals
Similar to a traditional marketing campaign, your content marketing strategy should be centered on your marketing goals.
Your goals could range from increasing organic traffic to your blog to generating more leads to anything in between — as long as they are SMART goals.
An example of this kind of goal would be to attract potential customers to your website by 25% in the next quarter.
Once you determine that, each piece of content you create should be aligned with your content creation goal and contribute to your desired outcome.
In summary, start with your company goals, and then create your content.
Create a Buyer Persona
Building a content marketing strategy is more than considering what type of content you want to create.
You first need to know who you are speaking to, how you want to speak to them, and where to find them.
The key to creating successful inbound content is to make each reader feel like you are speaking directly to them.
The only way to do this is to get intimate with your visitors, leads, and customers — you need to know them like you know an old friend.
You need to know their pain points, their challenges, and their fears.
Similarly, you’d be aware of their best possible outcome, their dream solution, and their biggest fantasies.
Ideally, you should know and be able to speak directly to every individual who visits your website or blog, but you can’t.
The solution?
Create a buyer persona.
Buyer persona is the person that you want to market to and someone who will happily consume your content.
This semi-fictional character represents your target audience, i.e., the people who are most likely to benefit from your content and become customers.
Creating a buyer persona takes a bit of research, some guesswork, and tweaking. But the end result is a clear picture of the person you want to reach with your content.
Rely On The Buyer’s Journey
By creating content for each stage of the buyer‘s journey, you are ensuring that every visitor that comes to your website feels like they are receiving relevant and useful information.
You also want to choose a format for your content so that it is tailored to each stage of the buyer’s journey.
A new visitor in the awareness stage won’t want a live demo of your product, but they would read a blog post that helps them better understand their problem.
Prospects in the decision stage do not need to know about all the possible solutions; they need a consultation or demo that shows them that your product is the right solution.
Always meet your audience where they are.
Perform a Content Audit
Whether you have been creating content for a while without any clear direction or you have been following a content creation strategy all along, every marketing department can benefit from a content audit.
Just because you did not start out with a clearly defined content creation strategy does not mean that the content you already have won’t fit into one.
A content audit is simply taking inventory of the work you have already done, then organizing it to fit under your new content creation plan.
The content auditing process might involve some re-writing, or it could reveal gaps that need to be filled with content that appeals to your persona and their journey stage.
Below is how you’d perform your content audit:
Gather all of your content in a spreadsheet.
Create columns for target keywords, buyer persona, buyer’s journey stage, format, and main topic, and then fill these in for each content piece.
Add columns for your key metrics, like shares, page views, engagement, etc.
Finally, categorize each blog post by those that are doing well, need improvement, should be rewritten, or can be merged with another blog post.
While a content audit may seem a bit overwhelming, all the manual labor will be worth the increased website traffic and leads.
Choose The Right Format
Remember that buyer persona you created? You are creating content for them.
Which means-you should be crafting content in a format that is most easily and enjoyably consumed by your prospects.
The format you select might be a blog post, video, graphic, eBook, whitepaper, podcast, course or whatever your creative mind can conceive.
As long as it serves your persona, you will be in good shape.
Also, you do not need to stick to one format for every piece of content that you create.
But you should be able to create content in whatever format on a consistent cadence.
What we mean is, a podcast series might be a great marketing strategy, but if you lack the resources and patience to stick to it, then a blog might be a better route.
Digital marketing is the process of choosing the format, and then utilizing the right tools to publish and promote your content on the internet.
Here are a few questions to use as a guide when selecting your content format:
What stage of the buyer’s journey is this for?
How easy is it for your audience to consume this content?
Where does your persona spend their time on the internet?
What format can you create on a consistent basis?
Are you able to produce this content at a quality level that is competitive?
Choose Capable Content Creators
At this point, you are ready to start creating useful content, but first, you will need to build a team of content creators.
To get started, categorize each type of content you want to create and the type of content creator it takes to produce that content.
Here is an example list:
- Blogs — Writer
- Videos — Videographer/editor
- Podcasts — Podcast host/producer
- Graphics — Graphic designer
- Social media posts — Social media coordinator
- Lead Magnets — Lead acquisition expert
As you can see, there are many different types of content creators you will need to either outsource or hire to produce high-quality and engaging content that attracts, engages and converts your audience from viewers to customers.
In many businesses, there is one person responsible for all of this content, and that is a content strategist.
While having one content strategist might make sense, expecting one person to be able to produce a lot of that content doesn’t.
The best way to go about content creation is to partner with freelancers, use influencer marketing to boost your audience reach, and hire a content marketing strategist to help you organize your content creation.
Promote Your Content
Your content promotion plan should be guided by your persona.
Where do they spend their time on the internet? What time of day do they use a particular social media platform? How often do they want to see content from your brand? How do they like to consume your content? What email subject lines get them to click?
Content marketing varies by medium, and there are specific guidelines to follow for each.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the best tactics to reach your target audience for any reason, especially to promote your content.
The reason is anyone on your email list has opted in to hear from you and you can guarantee that they will get your messages.
Better yet, you can boost your open rates by sending relevant and useful content to segmented lists, meaning they will be eager to read everything you send their way.
Paid Advertisements
Pay-per-click (PPC) helps you get your useful content in front of new audiences through targeted, paid promotion.
These ads can run on search engines, social media, or other websites.
Once you define your buyer persona, you will want to go the paid promotion route so as not to waste money targeting uninterested parties.
Once you have your audience down, paid advertisements can yield a great ROI.
Social Media
While social media is a relationship-building tool, it can be used to promote your content.
It is all about finding the right balance between self-promotion, sharing useful information, and entertainment.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are all great mediums to both create and share relevant content.
The key is modifying that content to fit the platform.
Syndication
Getting your content promoted through authoritative, third-party channels is a great way to build your target audience.
Syndication gets your business in front of fresh eyes that you would not otherwise reach with your own efforts.
Repurpose Your Content
When you repurpose content, you are reusing something you spent a lot of time creating and transforming it in various formats so that it can be more widely consumed.
Think of it as recycling. You want to spend less time creating your content and more time getting it in front of your audience.
For example, that blog post that you wrote on affiliate marketing can also serve as a great infographic or even a video.
If you created something in one format, try to think of all the other formats that you could reuse that information that might be just as effective.
Let us dive into a few rules for sharing content on various platforms.
Website Content
Website content should focus on three things: your target keywords, your persona, and your solution.
Like your blog content, the content on your website needs to guide new visitors to your solution in a cohesive and natural way.
Think of website content like a map to your product or service.
Once you have attracted a potential customer, you must do everything you can to keep them on your website, and that is the key function of your website content.
Blog Content
The purpose of blog content is to support your brand or business by attracting visitors and bringing in qualified leads.
Blog content is a free resource that is not often directly tied to sales, but do not underestimate the power of a well-crafted blog to ultimately generate revenue for your company.
Research shows that businesses that blog more get more website traffic and leads than those that don’t.
Social Media Content
There is an art to creating content for social media.
But it is well worth your time since there are 3.96 billion users across social media platforms worldwide.
Plus, someone who follows you on social media is like a warm lead — they already like your business and are interested in what you have to say.
So, you have an eager audience that is ready to engage with your content.
Here are a few quick tips for creating content on some well-known social media platforms.
It is best for sharing high-quality imagery and short videos with brief captions.
Hashtags work well on Instagram as long as they are relevant to your account and business.
It can be used to build micro-communities via Facebook Groups or to share with a mass audience on Facebook Pages.
When it comes to sharing content, questions, and videos reap the most engagement.
Twitter best practices include short messages, supporting images, relevant hashtags, and retweets.
YouTube
This platform has1.3 billion users and counting.
Users frequently visit YouTube to watch useful content ranging from business to marketing videos.
Some of the most successful content on YouTube are how-to guides, vlogs, product reviews, and educational videos.
TikTok
TikTok has become one of the most well-known social media platforms on the market. It is best known for fun, short-form videos.
Content Creation Process: 9 Easy Steps
The content creation process involves steps that include writing and publishing various forms of content.
This process can be broken down into various key stages.
Each step plays a crucial role in the overall success of the content.
Follow these 9 steps to create quality content that attracts, engages and converts your audience from readers to customers.
Ideation
The first stage of the content creation process is ideation.
It involves generating content ideas that your target audience will find interesting and useful.
Those content ideas should focus on your audience’s interests, needs, and problems.
How can you find that information? Here are a few resources you can use to learn more about your target audience:
Online communities: Look for the topics your target audience talks about on social media platforms, forums and other online venues.
Analytics tools: Use Google Analytics, social media, and other tools you have to learn about your audience’s interests, needs, and pain points.
Competitive analysis: Evaluate your competitors to discover what type of content is working and which is not.
Customer feedback: Check the feedback and comments section on social media or the blog to discover new content ideas.
Industry research: Research the latest trends, topics, and industry news to explore new content creation ideas.
Sales reps’ input: Talk to your sales reps to identify the topics customers and prospects bring up most often.
Customer support calls: Listen to recorded calls from you support team to discover common themes across support calls that can be proactively addressed with content.
Research shows that the best way to organize content is through topic cluster.
Which means-you create a long-form, comprehensive pillar page based on a keyword that then links to content you have created on related blog posts.
You can use your target keyword to create a pillar piece that covers that topic in-depth, like … say a guide to digital marketing.
Then, you can create shorter pieces of content like:
These will help your target audience dive deeper into the topic.
If you are stumped for content ideas, you might want to consider looking for inspiration from industry studies, books you have read, your competitor’s websites, or related searches on search engines like Google.
Once you have all of your content ideas down, you can develop your editorial calendar and start creating.
As you research, make note of overarching content ideas that align with your audience.
These topics can form seed keywords—broad search terms you can enter into a keyword research tool to find more focused and relevant keywords.
Let’s go over how to do that next.
Content ideas can come from a variety of places both from within your content team, from your customers, from other stakeholders in your business, from new data, or from something that inspires you.
Depending on the goal of the piece of content, deciding the correct angle that you can create content around can prove challenging.
For example, if you are tasked with creating content that highlights a new product feature, you may have a basic idea of what you need to produce.
But if your task is broader, for example, writing a SEO content that will drive organic traffic to your website, then you may need to examine other methods of coming up with content ideas.
Here are some methods that will help get your creative juices flowing and help you find innovative and effective approaches to potential pieces of content.
How To Generate Content Ideas
Keyword research
It is a fantastic way to know how your target audience is talking about a topic.
In addition, keyword research can help you find new opportunities for content that you may not have considered on your own.
You can use keyword monthly search volume.
Search volume refers to the number of search queries for a specific keyword in search engines like Google.
Understand your customer
As a digital marketer, your first responsibility is to understand your customer.
So, when you are looking for new content ideas, think about what your customer might find engaging, interesting, or helpful.
Then, examine how those ideas could work with your content strategy.
You can check out websites like Quora to find out what topics people are asking about in your areas of expertise.
Understand your competition
Companies generally know who their competitors are on the open market.
But are they the same companies you need to fight to get the best placement for your website? Not necessarily!
As a content creator, you should always be aware of the topics your named and unnamed competitors are writing about in your industry.
Understanding how your competitors approach a topic will help you differentiate your company’s voice, approach, and content from theirs, identify gaps in their content strategy, and help your content stand out in the sales process.
Solicit customer feedback
Asking your customers may sound like a simple way to get an idea, but often, there are unanswered questions they have about your product or service that you can answer.
Creating content around those questions will have a direct and meaningful effect on your existing customers.
Brainstorm with larger groups in your organization
Your org-wide knowledge is a powerful tool to utilize when finding new content ideas.
For example, your customer support team has a lot of insight into the day-to-day problems your customers have.
Your sales team has a wealth of knowledge about which solutions potential customers need from you or want to hear the most about.
Tapping other groups in your org will help identify content ideas that speak to your customers’ needs.
Once you have finished the ideation step and know which topic you want to write about, the next step is to plan and outline what you are going to create.
Keyword Research
The second stage of the content creation process is Keyword research (SEO research).
It involves gathering relevant information and data on the topic to ensure the content is accurate and informative.
Keyword research will show you the search volume of a specific keyword phrase and whether it is worth the investment of creating content around it.
A good approach is to write down some questions that your persona might have based on their issues and goals.
Then, perform some SEO research around those queries to see if enough people are searching for them.
A good way to go about SEO research is to target keywords that are attainable, meaning that they have a monthly search volume and keyword difficulty that corresponds to your domain authority.
One key factor that helps you to rank higher in search engines like Google is domain authority.
You gain domain authority by how many external sites link back to your content.
In order for this to happen, you need to have a pretty large library of content that is valuable enough to cite.
That means, the longer you write high-quality content, the higher your domain authority and the easier it is to rank for highly competitive keywords that will put you on the first page of Google.
If you are not quite there yet, the best thing to do is to target long-tail, low-volume keywords with minimal keyword difficulty (less than 50) — we’re talking 200-1000 monthly search volume (MSV).
This will give you the best chance at ranking for keywords and getting your content in front of more people.
Trying to target highly competitive (high volume) keywords when you have just started blogging won’t pan out too well for you.
Here are some ways you could perform your SEO research:
Use keyword research tools, like SEMRush or Moz Keyword Explorer.
Type your keyword into a search engine like Google and take note of the auto-filled queries.
Check out the related searches section on SERPs (search engine results pages).
Content Planning
The third stage of the content creation process is Keyword research (SEO research).
It involves gathering relevant information and data on the topic to ensure the content is accurate and informative.
The first step in planning your content is to decide what type of content you want to create.
Some content ideas will be stronger if they are represented visually and could warrant an infographic or video.
Other types of content may be best suited for plaintext. For those, a blog post, article, or eBook might be the best type.
You can gain a lot of insight by investigating which types of content have already been created around your topic.
For example, type your topic idea (or keyword) into Google and see what kind of content comes up on page one.
Are there videos or other special result types? Do the URLs link back to infographics? Do images appear in the SERP? Knowing which types of content already exist around your topic should help inform your decision about what type of content to make.
The next stage involves creating an outline or structure for your content.
This can include deciding on the content format and the key points that will be covered.
Outlining: Create a detailed outline with the main points and sub points to cover in your content.
Structuring: Decide on the format and structure of the content (e.g., intro, body, and conclusion).
The final step is to decide on the scale of your content project.
If your content idea is specific and limited, you may only need one blog post, video, or article to properly address the topic.
But if you’re approaching a large topic, especially something central to your business’s value proposition or area of expertise, you may need to create multiple pieces of content around this one idea.
Successful content creators will decide exactly what their finished project will look like before they even start writing or creating.
For all our advice about how to approach SEO when creating content, check out our in-depth guide: SEO Guide for Content Marketers.
Questions to consider when planning content
- What persona am I targeting with this content?
- What stage of the buyer’s journey will this content speak to?
- How much time and money can I invest into creating this content?
- What additional resources will I need to execute my vision?
- Is the content I’m creating timely? Or is this form of content evergreen?
- How does this content fit into the grander scheme of my content strategy?
- Which audiences will this content help?
- Who in my organization will this content help?
Once you have your plan in place, you can start creating great content.
Creation
Once the planning stage of content creation is complete, it’s time to start creating the content.
It involves filming, designing and writing.
Filming: Create video content like interviews, product reviews or vlogs.
Designing: Create custom graphics, infographics or logos.
Writing: Produce written content like blogs, articles, or social media posts.
Whatever content you make, the creation process follows some pretty similar guidelines.
Let’s go over some helpful tips for creating any form of great content:
Write to your persona
Use their voice, their euphemisms, even their humor to construct a piece that resonates.
Tell your audience why your content is important to them
Use titles, meta descriptions, and other teasers to compel your audience to read your content.
Put the benefit of your content right in the title to let them know why they should read it.
Create engaging content
Use storytelling, visuals, and interactive elements to capture your audience’s attention.
Create valuable content
Provide value to your target audience by educating them or presenting solutions.
Create something unique
Your content should provide something different than what is already out there.
Stick to one idea
Then, use your content to reinforce it. Don’t confuse your reader by going on tangents or trying to explain multiple semi-related topics in a single piece.
Stay true to your voice
Don’t try to impress your audience with eloquent prose or an expansive vocabulary if they don’t speak that way.
Be clear and concise
You want your audience to relate to you and derive value from your content.
So, use clear language, avoid jargon, and keep the message straightforward.
Be credible
Cite new credible sources, use data to back up claims, and consider interviewing experts.
Actionable
Good content encourages the audience to do something, whether it is to think differently, apply the knowledge they have gained, share the content, or make a purchase.
Editing
After creating great content, you’ll need to review and revise it.
This stage ensures that the content meets the intended purpose and quality standards.
Reviewing: Check your content for any errors or mistakes.
Revising: Make changes to your content to ensure it meets the intended purpose and quality standards.
You may want to refine your content as you go, or you might wait a few days and review your work with fresh eyes.
There are a few things that you should definitely look out for as you edit your content, like active voice, short sentences, clear language, and plenty of whitespace.
Some content marketing tools that will help you cut down on your editing time are Grammarly and Hemingway Editor.
Optimization
Once the editing stage of content creation is complete, it’s time to start optimizing your content.
This involves ensuring your content is optimized for search engines like Google, social media platforms, and other relevant channels.
Search Engine Optimization: Include relevant keywords and meta descriptions to improve your content’s visibility in search engine result pages.
Social media optimization: Ensure your content is visually appealing and shareable on social media platforms like Facebook.
Multi-platform optimization: Ensure your content is optimized for platforms like mobile, desktop, and tablets.
Publishing
After creating, editing and optimizing great content, it’s time to publish it on the intended platform(s).
Blogging platforms: Publish written content on popular content management system (CMS) like WordPress.
Social media platforms: Share your content on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
Video sharing platforms: Upload video content to platforms like YouTube or TikTok.
Promoting Content
Finally, it‘s time to promote the content you have created.
Content creation and marketing go hand in hand.
So, you should promote your content across multiple channels including social media, email marketing, and even pay-per-click advertising. To help it reach more audiences.
To promote your content, think about what platforms your target audience is on.
Are they on Facebook, Instagram, X or YouTube? Wherever it might be, it’s important to meet them where they are at and promote the content on that channel.
In addition, collaborating with influencers or other brands will help you promote the content and reach even more audiences.
The tactics you will use will vary depending on content type you have created.
But here are a few of the content promotion tactics to consider:
- Send content to your email list.
- Use paid advertisements on social media platforms and search engines like Google.
- Pay or partner with influencers, third-party websites, and newsletters to feature your useful content.
- Share your content in forums and online communities where your target audience spends time.
- Create organic social media posts or teaser videos to promote your latest blog posts.
There is no right way to promote your content, and the best channel will change depending on the type of content, your target audience, and your specific goals, so it is critical to brainstorm and decide on the best channel for each piece of content you create.
Measurement
The final stage of the content creation process is measurement, which involves tracking and analyzing the content performance.
This stage can offer insights into what worked well and what did not and can help to inform future content creation strategies.
Without data, you can‘t know what is working or how to improve it.
There are several data points you could track when analyzing your content, so use your marketing and business goals as a guide to set some parameters.
Whatever you want to accomplish with your content will help you pick your metrics.
What you analyze is completely up to you, but here are some of the metrics digital marketers tend to track:
Page Views
The number of users that visit the content.
For blog posts this is page views, but for any content type, there is usually a “views” metric that will let you know how many times your content has been viewed by users.
Conversion rates
The percentage of users who take a desired action on your site, such as making a purchase or signing up for a service.
Backlinks
Links on other relevant sites that direct users to your website.
Social media reach
The total number of individuals who have seen your social media content.
Keyword rankings
The position your website holds in search engine results for your target keyword.
Episode downloads
The number of times your podcast content has been downloaded by users.
Organic Traffic
The amount of website traffic that comes from search engines.
This is unpaid traffic that you get from ranking high on search engines like Google.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of visitors who leave your website after visiting only one webpage.
This is an important metric to track because it can let you know that people are interested in clicking your blog posts, but then the content is immediately unsatisfying.
Conversion Rates
The percent of visitors that engage with a call to action (CTA) — whether it is a content offer, or filling out a form.
Engagement Rates
The number of people that interact with your content through comments, likes, shares, or in other ways.
Audience Growth
The new subscribers or leads that are generated from your piece of content.
Time On Page
The amount of time a user is on your webpage, whether it‘s a blog post, or a video (average watch time).
It’s important to keep track of where users drop off.
Do they stay on the webpage long enough to read the blog post or consume the content?
Paid Campaigns
The amount of website traffic that comes in from paid campaigns.
If you sponsor social media posts or pay for search engine ads, it is important to track how much website traffic comes from those campaigns.
You can use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to collect many data points.
Let us say you are interested in seeing your top-performing landing pages.
To get started, open Google Analytics and click the “Reports” tab.
Then, click “Engagement” and “Landing page.”
Now, adjust the time period to see the specific data you are interested in by going to the date in the top-right corner.
Sort pages by users, sessions, and other metrics to find the best-performing ones.
Monitor the most relevant data points for your website as a whole and for each pieces of content.
To find out which topics, content formats, and pieces perform well.
Then, you can move away from the topics that do not resonate with your target audience and focus more on ones that do.
Tools for Content Marketing
A content production workflow involves creating and publishing various forms of content.
To create high-quality content, content creators often use various marketing tools to assist them in the process.
Here are a few tools to use for content production.
Content Management Systems (CMS)
Content Management System platforms like WordPress, Wix, or SquareSpace allow users to create, manage and publish content on websites easily.
CMS platform is an effective tool for digital marketers to manage content right from creation till analysis on one platform.
Writing Tools
Writing tools like Grammarly, Hemingway Editor, or even Google Docs help you write and edit content with grammatical correctness and better readability.
Graphic Design Tools
Graphic design tools like Canva or Adobe Photoshop assist with designing custom graphics, logos, or infographics for your content.
Video Editing Tools
Video editing tools like Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro helps edit and produce high-quality video content.
Social Media Management Tools
Social media management platforms like Buffer, Hootsuite, or Sprout Social help manage social media accounts, schedule blog posts, and track analytics.
SEO Tools
SEO tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, or Google Analytics can help improve your content’s search engine ranking by analyzing the keywords, backlinks, and performance.
In summary, these are just few tools that content creators use.
Using these content creation tools, you can create high-quality content that resonates with your target audience.
Content Marketing: Conclusion
In conclusion, the content marketing process is an essential part of creating effective content.
Following the nine steps outlined in this blog post, you can produce high-quality and engaging content that drives relevant traffic to your website.
Each stage of the process is crucial in creating content – from ideation to measurement.
Remember, the key to success is clearly understanding your target audience, their needs, and their interests.
This will inform the content you produce and how you promote it.
It is also important to remember that the content creation workflow is iterative and constantly evolving.
By embracing a strategic and structured approach to content creation, anyone can create high-quality content that drives engagement, builds relationships, and ultimately helps achieve business goals.
Start Creating
Content creation is an iterative process that pays off tremendously with your target audience.
Once you have the content creation process down, you will be able to generate creative work that not only delights your target audience but also grows your business.