7 Vital Things to Consider When Creating Content |
Posted: January 28, 2020 |
Whether you are a blogger, vlogger or a business owner, you need to consistently create awesome content to keep people interested in your brand. Now, the type of content you create, and how you create it is entirely up to you. For one, you can choose to invest time and resources in creating top quality content for your brand. You can also decide to just phone it in and put out decent, but poor content with the hope that someone doesn't notice. The first option is for the long term while the second will only work until you get found out. With that said, how do you create fantastic content? Read on to find out some great content creation tips. 1. Set Goals and Objectives It’s important to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve when creating content. Your content creation journey will be pretty much a waste of time if you don't have performance indicators to measure progress. You can only know what indicators to use to track your progress when you have definite goals and objectives. For instance, are you doing it to market an individual product or a brand as a whole? What is your target audience and how will you measure the success of your campaign? Is it by traffic numbers, new subscribers, comments, likes and shares, or sales? 2. Be Original Sometimes, when you're pressed for time, you may be tempted to rehash an article or recreate a video you saw on your competitor's site. While that will be easy and more convenient in that moment, it could significantly reduce your online visibility when Google decides to penalize you. In September 2019, Google announced that they were updating their search algorithms to prioritize original content. In a subsequent blog post explaining the update, they said that they would involve thousands of human readers to vet the content that appears on top of search results. Some of the key things they would consider include the publisher's reputation and history in regard to producing original content. 3. Craft Great Headlines The headline is the first thing readers will see when a new page loads. If it’s poorly written, it will push them away and they won’t bother reading anything else. A good headline needs to be brief and captivating. It should encourage the reader to engage with your content. Ideally, a title should contain about 6 words but a maximum of 8 words is also not bad. Additionally, make sure to include your keyword in the headings as it helps your content rank higher on search engines. When you master the art of writing great headlines, you’ll start seeing more people reading your posts. 4. Understand Your Audience In the current world, there are very few products that are designed for everyone. In most cases, there is a very specific demographic being targeted at every stage of the content generation cycle. For each stage in the buyer’s journey, you need to ask yourself if what you have produced is relevant to your audience. Remember, to drive sales and conversions, you need to do three things: answer your audience's questions, educate them about what you're selling, and most importantly engage them. To achieve that, thoroughly study your target audience and customize your message to appeal to them. Key things to consider are age, gender, location, level of education and employment status. 5. Choose Relevant Content The visitors who land on your website or channel are usually looking be educated, informed or entertained. How effectively you can do that is often what decides the success or failure of your brand. Studies show that 55% of people read online content for 15 seconds or less. This means that you have to provide the type of content that your target audience is looking for right away. Doing adequate research on the topic you want to write about is one of the first things you need to do. Particularly, include additional details such as quotes, statistics to support every claim you make in your posts and to maintain your reputation and authority. Studying your competitors is also be a great idea as you will gain insights into trends affecting your industry. Checking how the industry leaders create content is also crucial. Do they use pictures, videos, skits, charts, or audios to pass their message? How do they structure their posts from the beginning to the end? The aim is to produce content that your audience craves, which will ultimately help you to gain new subscribers and increase sales. 6. Measure Audience Feedback In content marketing, audience feedback is measured by engagement. These are essentially the comments, likes and shares that your audience makes after going through your content. Audience feedback is a barometer of how effective, or irrelevant your message is. Obviously, if you get more likes and shares on your posts, you know you're doing something right and you should keep up with what you're doing. If you get lots of negative reactions, it shows that your content is not likable and provides insights into tweaks you can make. If you only get a handful of likes and comments, it's a sign that your content marketing strategy isn’t working. 7. Use Strong Calls-to-Action (CTAs) Calls-to-Actions are essentially prompts to your audience that convince them to go to the next step. That could be making a purchase, subscribing or liking your Facebook page. A call to action elicits a feeling of urgency which is key in lead conversion. If you're running a marketing campaign, calls to action are the most important part of your posts. Many businesses experience a low conversion rate and one of the main reasons for this is either a lack of CTAs or poorly written CTAs. Your content may be the best in your industry but if you don’t have a button or link that leads the visitors to the next step, you will lose many customers/subscribers. CTAs are typically placed at the end of posts and encourage the reader to perform an action. You can highlight a CTA by using a different colour or italicizing it. Marketers capable of creating great CTAs will see their campaign performance skyrocket. Producing top-notch content isn’t as difficult as it seems. If you follow the above steps, you will effortlessly produce great content in no time. And the good thing is, good content is timeless and will still be working for you months or years down the line.
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