Content is and will always be important in the great scheme of things. People have been sharing stories since the dawn of humanity and will continue to do so while there is at least one able to hear or read them.
It is in our nature to seek and consume content and knowing this, you make your first steps towards being a good content marketer.
Why is content important? Well, let’s put it in simple terms: content answers questions or feeds the need for knowledge or leisure.
Content can be relaxing if you read a book or watch a movie, informative if you need to find an answer to a question or even educational if you use it to enhance your knowledge in some area of expertise you are less familiarized with.
For marketers, bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, and basically anyone who has something to say that it’s worth reading or listening about/to, content creation is the key to reach out to people.
Content is important for various reasons but one of the most important of them is information.
People who navigate online are most of the time looking for answers to some of their questions or for data to enhance their knowledge on a specific area of expertise.
Well, when it comes to marketing, content creation is the pillar of your strategy. You create content and publish it in order to get the people to read, watch or listen to your ideas, pitch your brand news or releases/updates. Regardless of your strategy, you will always depend on content, whether it is an article, a video, an Infographic or even advertising materials.
I will not teach you how to learn content creation, how to outsource content creation or how to make it faster.
I will tell you, however, some of my own strategies for creating and distributing content, a full set of strategies your content production process will benefit from.
Let’s dig in together:
There are lots of choices for you in this area. You can choose the traditional way and start writing or, you can choose to be in line with modern times and create video or audio content. Or, you can just as better do both, start a podcast or a vlog and transcribe your content for a personal blog where you publish both types of media. Whatever you do, make sure it is the right format for your targeted audience and of course, for your brand.
For example, at Bannersnack we are already creating content for several platforms, different content formats, to suit the needs of all the people who we target as our main audience.
As a consequence, we publish frequently on our main traditional blog, we use a lot of visuals and Infographics such as this one and, we publish the Bannersnack podcast and a branded Bannersnack video series on YouTube.
Original research will always be hunted over the internet. People who seek out information on a specific domain will search for your original research while your peers, other marketers, will use it to back up their own ideas and link back to you in return. Thus, with original research, you can expand your audience exponentially. There will always be those who will get to you via organic search plus the people sent by those who linked back to you. It’s a double win.
Here’s the perfect example in this case, of an article I wrote after I’ve conducted quick research on Twitter. I posted a poll, 238 people answered my question and found the answers I needed to write my blog post.
Plus, if you need more guidance on writing and promoting your research, I already wrote an article on this topic that is available here.
What is a content creation strategy? How do you start? These are two questions I can answer in just a few lines, right here. The strategy involves everything from planning, finding what you want to write or speak about and up to the point when you hit the publish button.
Your success, however, might as well depend on your first steps. You need a content creation calendar and ideas for content creation, ideas that will take form once you get them. But the most important part of your creative process, besides the above two essential elements, will be the title. The headline. My advice? Stop writing boring headlines. Use your imagination and try to walk in your audience’s shoes. Ask yourself whether or not you would click on your own headline. If yes, it is good. If not, then brainstorm for a better one.
Content creation is not about quantity but of course, about quality. However, search engines favor long articles that are well researched and documented, articles that answer questions in the most thorough way possible. Your audience will also favor your website if you offer them everything they want to read and in order to do that, most of the time, you will not be able to resume it to a few lines of text.
Here’s a good example of a long text from my blog, a blog post where I showcase the best and most lucrative ways to market yourself as a freelancer.
Also, if you need to read more on this topic, I suggest Orbitmedia’s article about the ideal length of a blog post.
A great idea when it comes to content creation is to ask people for feedback on what you have already published.
Maybe you are the most acclaimed expert in your domain but that doesn’t mean you know exactly what people need. Talk to them. Ask them for their feedback. Be open to their suggestions and show that you are interested in helping them not in building a brand.
There are also content creation tools you can use in this case such as the Trustpilot or the G2Crowd in order to ask people to give their feedback about a specific product or service. Thus, you can use their own responses in order to build a better product or service and power up your content creation process. You’ll be able to create better articles, better stories, landing pages or
Do you know why reality-tv is so popular? It’s popular because it’s real. People are tired of metaphors and logical examples. They want to read about real stories, stories they can relate to in the real world. Make sure, you include such examples in your content, whenever it is possible. Real examples will also help you build a stronger foundation to everything you say. If you cannot find stats or charts, write an article similar to this piece featured by Hubspot, and come up with visual examples that will convince your readers you have done your research.
Remember my advice regarding publishing original research? Well, you will not always be able to conduct your own research which is not only time consuming but also difficult to obtain daily. However, you can make your content more believable by backing it up with others’ research, facts and numbers.
At Bannersnack, we did an experiment on Verizon Media platform and we’ve used the numbers to showcase our research. Base on the facts, we wrote the article and included everything that we thought to be of interest to our audience, in our text.
In conclusion, whatever you want to say, search online and find actual research that can back up your ideas. Use these findings, include them in your articles, podcasts or video shows and make your content more believable.
You need to write an introduction to whatever article you are going to publish. However, it’s important to make it short. People don’t want to read about what you are going to give them, they want the information that is relevant, right away. As of consequence, make sure you include the main keywords in your intro section and nothing more. Jump right into the fire and go straight to the main topic.
Here’s an example from Buffer, one that will help you make a quick idea about how an intro should look like. As you can see, Alex Turnbull uses short sentences, he breaks down the main text in several paragraphs and manages to led the audience to his main idea with only two or three sentences.
Adapt to the audience, write in their style and always try to think outside the box, by putting them in their shoes and figuring out whether or not your content is relevant to them.
Here, you have two options.
Firstly, you can always choose to walk the path of the evergreen content. It’s the type of content that never gets old. It never gets out of style or becomes obsolete. It’s the type of content that is and will be relevant forever.
Secondly, you need to adapt to the audience and speak in their language. Putting yourself in their shoes, in this case, means that you need to look at your content creation as if you were part of the audience, not the marketer. User intent is an important factor in this case and in order to get there and understand what people need, you have to be one of them. If you would not read your article, as a part of the audience, the article is not worthy to be published.
Personal experiences are the best form of original research. You know what you are talking about, you know the facts, the data, everything that can and should be part of your story. People will dig this type of content because it is authentic and real. And, as we’ve already discussed, people like real things.
As of consequence, if possible, make sure you can document content and that you have something to write about, an experience that is worth mentioning and given as an example to the audience.
A good example, in this case, is the famous blogger/vlogger/podcaster Gary Vaynerchuk who always uses his own experiences and documents his own content in order to reach out to the audience in a proper, direct way.
Repurposing content is an old idea that proved to be right, over and over again. There are many options for repurposing, especially when you create content in different formats such as audio/video and text/presentations.
For instance, you can repurpose your audio podcasts or video shows and use them inside your articles in order to support your claiming or add new information, as I did in this article about influencer marketing.
You can also repurpose the entire podcast or video show as text, and publish it on your blog or website.
Consistency is essential when you produce content. Your audience will eventually grow in numbers and they will get used to a specific style, a specific scientific method, a specific tone, and so on.
Inconsistency may lead to a loss in numbers and as a consequence, you need to stay focused and engaged in not lowering down your quality.
Remember about repurposing content? You can do a similar thing by repurposing old articles as well and republishing them with minor changes and updates that make them valid in the present day.
Some good examples of repurposing content are featured in this article: https://www.shareaholic.com/blog/repurpose-old-content/.
I recommend you to read it and choose to follow some of the examples Danny Wong is talking about, including republishing on other platforms such as Medium or turning posts into Infographics.
Visual storytelling is essential these days when people have a lower attention span than ever. Images speak to us directly; they help us understand an idea or a fact in just a few seconds and this is why you need to use them in numbers in order to make your articles more susceptible to the audience’s need for knowledge, like this post on Bannersnack Blog.
Readability is another essential thing for content creation. It’s not enough to disseminate information, it’s important to make it accessible to the audience as well. And readability, adds to the accessibility.
What do you need to take care of, in this case? Well, for starters, use headlines as much as you can and break up your texts with images and white spaces. Also, make sure your fonts are readable and in a proper size.
What is content creation without a strategy? And, to strategize, means more than writing for a blog or publishing a podcast. These final five steps are about content creation strategy and at this point, I am going to remind you about the importance of content formats. I mean, multiple content formats.
Some people read blogs, while others subscribe to podcasts, vlogs, social media, and so on. It’s almost impossible to attract everyone with one type of content format. The right choice, in this case, is to use at least two content delivery channels. For instance, you can write on a blog and create a social media Group or combine writing with podcasting or vlogging, whatever suits best your needs and expertise.
Or, you can combine several types of content on a single page, like I already did in this post about influencer marketing where I use text, visuals and audio content at the same time.
Don’t write just to fill up your free time. If you want to be successful, you should always seek to improve your audience’s experiences and deliver something they really need. It could be information, tutorials, guides, statistics or even something to help them relax and smile once in a while.
Whatever you choose, however, keep in mind that you don’t create content for you. You create content for the audience.
You can power up your content production process by externalizing part of the marketing strategy. How? Create content for advertising. And, publish ads on whichever platform you think your audience frequents most. Ads can help you reach out to people otherwise unlikely to visit your website or subscribe to your podcasts and as a consequence, expand the audience you have on your main content delivery platform.
You can buy ads on any platform, and I suggest you to pick the one that will suit your strategy best, the one your audience is using most frequently. To this end, CMI gives a great example of an Instagram ad for an App that despite all reluctance against this type of content, managed to reach out to a significant bunch of people, almost 100k, and fulfilled its purpose almost instantly.
Content creation and social media go hand in hand. You can use social channels to distribute your content, you can use them to publish original content or, you can set up groups and exchange information on Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms that support these features.
For instance, I always use LinkedIn because I think it is a professional network and most of my peers and my targeted audience is already there, ready to grasp on some quality content created just for them.
I promote Bannersnack content on LinkedIn, but I also promote my blog as well with good to very good results on the long run.
An email list and consequently, the newsletter, can help you disseminate content on a rather personal form, directly to your readers/customers.
Email lists can help you, even more, not only to attract readers but also to engage with the audience from time to time, exchange information and request feedback, answer questions, etc.
You can send weekly newsletters and reach out to your audience by simply starting with a dedicated page like the one I built myself here.
From this, you can develop a list of emails to which you can send your updates whenever you publish something new or come up with a new product or service.
Content is the backbone of every marketing strategy. You need content for a website, for a slideshow, a social media channel or an advertising campaign.
With this article, I tried to pinpoint some of the best 20 techniques for powering up the content production process, techniques I use on a daily basis for my various professional projects, including this blog.
What other strategies do you use and to what extent?
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