How to create high quality content? This is one of the most thought-provoking questions in content marketing that gets many different answers and at the same time generates many other questions.
One morning, while having coffee we (the content marketing team from Bannersnack) found ourselves talking about this subject – high quality content.
And from our discussion we realized that there are two types of content:
1. Content From Experience
The first one, is that one type of content created by somebody who is experienced in its field.
Let’s talk about a piece of content created by a social media specialist who has big and medium clients to work for.
a. Content from your own experience
For example, let’s take a look at Gary Vaynerchuk. He built his personal brand with his charisma in the wine industry with Wine Library TV, he started to invest in companies like Twitter and Tumblr. He created content from his own perspective but also from his own experience. Then he launched the VaynerMedia Agency where he began his journey in the advertising industry and also VaynerSport – “a full-service athlete representation agency that guides players through a variety of issues involving their professional career”. It seems like he is a very busy guy.
Now his blog is one of the top marketing, social media and entrepreneurship blogs and also he is launching a daily videos series about his journey in the online, advertising, entrepreneurship industry.
Why? Because he is talking from his own experience!
But what should you do if you are not Gary, you want to launch a personal blog for your industry but you don’t have the amount of experience?
Well…you have 3 paths to choose from.
The first one is waiting a few years and get deep into the business. Work, learn, experience, fail and then start a blog, a podcast or a video channel. Then, you’ll be able to talk from your own experience.
Think about that, let’s say that you want to become a designer and learn how to create great visuals, but you also want to create content for the ones following you. So what you can do is starting to learn and work on design basics and at the same time you can write on a blog or launch a YouTube video channel about your experience. There are thousands of people who want to learn how to design and this type of content can be a good start from them.
And this is only a simple example that came into my mind right now.
People love to hear others experience in a certain field.
Secondly is to document your entire journey. Even if you start blogging about how you work, what do you think about a certain topic or even write about your experience in a certain situation.
Third, if you don’t have enough experience in your field, start talking with others that do.
b. Content from others’ Experience
For example, John Lee Dumas has a podcast called “Entrepreneur On Fire” in which he interviews other entrepreneurs. They are talking about the struggle of being an entrepreneur, how to manage your time and finances, what are the steps to being a good entrepreneur and other interesting topics for entrepreneurs.
Or if we look at Tim Ferriss’s latest project called “Tools of Titans”. A series of podcast interviews that became a book where Tim put together every interview he took for the last 2 years with nearly 200 world-class performers.
As Tim says about the book “is a relentless focus on actionable details.”
But what about that moment when you are experienced in an industry and you have clients from other industries for whom you need to create content? What type of content should you create for them?
The answer is, high quality content (dooh) . But then the other question comes up again –
HOW to create high quality content?
Answering the industry’s questions and solve their problem with your content. Be the one who is answering those questions. Take your time to document, learn, experience and then answer it with a video, a blog post or a visual (something like an infographic or a slideshare presentation).
There are social networks like Quora where people are asking questions and they need an answer for them.
So you could take those questions and get deep and create long form content for them.
2. Long form Content
I’m talking about in depth content, long and very well researched content such as studies, researches, guides or industry documents.
a. From a blog to the biggest conference
For example, let’s talk about Content Marketing Institute.
They are the top global leaders in content marketing and they train marketers and other specialists on how to have a content marketing strategy that brings you great results.
But CMI is not only a website or a blog on which you can read some tactics or opinions about content marketing. They are doing much more than that.
They launch researches about Content Marketing in the B2B or B2C sections for specific parts of the world such as Europe, North America and others.
These types of research can help specialists see where is the content marketing industry situated, how other marketers use these tactics and they also give great ideas for other specialists to talk about.
For example, if you are a content marketer and you want to write about content marketing, you can use their researches and start writing more elaborated articles about that subject.
The other thing that CMI does is training their audience through the PNR podcast and Content Inc. PNR – This Old Marketing is a weekly podcast series in which Joe Pulizzi (who is the evangelist of content marketing) and Robert Rose talk about the industry. The format is a simple audio one that you can easily consume while you shop, go for a jog, or like I’m doing, when you clean your house. They choose topics interesting for the content marketing industry, they have moments of rants and raves and they are saying their opinions about different topics or articles. I believe that this is the best content marketing podcast that you can subscribe and follow. I bet that you can learn a lot from them.
But what about offline content? Because we just talked about blog, research and podcasts. Well, CMI is organizing 2 types of events: the small training for marketing departments and also the big ones like Content Marketing World or Intelligent Content Marketing. And this is how they bring the best speakers to talk from their own experience about content marketing.
So there you go – a few examples on how to create quality content for your industry. Joe started a website called contentmarketinginstitute.com and today is organizing the biggest event in content marketing industry, is the best resource in content marketing and have the best podcast about content marketing.
CMI is everything you need to know about Content Marketing!
But what if you are a one show person and, you want to create long form content for your industry that will make a difference? You can create guides or step-by-step documents!
b. Step-by-step guides and online academies
Let’s take Neil Patel as an example. Even if the guy founded brands like Hello Bar, Kissmetrics or Crazy Egg he is also posting regularly on QuickSprout or on his personal blog. And there are tremendous other bloggers who are talking about content marketing but only a few of them who are invest a lot of money in creating guides for the industry.
This is the difference between them and Neil.
He created and launched several guides for the SEO industry, Content Marketing and even Social Media. Guides with step by step points on what you should know about these topics, even if you are a beginner or an advanced specialist.
At Bannersnack, we’ve done the same thing. We’ve launched the first Banner Design Academy from which you can learn the basics of creating and designing banner ads for your business. And this type of content not only that brought us great brand awareness but it has also helped us from the SEO perspective and gave the industry topics and resources to write about.
If we want to have quality content for our industry we need to create it. Even if we work harder than ever before or if we go deeper into the topic we write about.
The value of the content will give us the results we want because when we help the industry, we become thought leaders and people will start using our resources with trust.
And this is what big brands and other specialists work for – a trustworthy brand.
These are the 2 tactics you can take to create high quality content for your industry. Look at what experience you have, use it for your own content and start acting like a thought leader when you are giving away these resources.
Now back to you, let me know in the comment section below what you think about these ways.
Which one do you find more difficult? Gaining experience or creating long form pieces of content such as researches, step-by-step guides or documents?
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