10 Ways to Ensure You Have Great Content: A Guide to Great Content Creation
Your Guide to Great Content Creation
When it comes to getting optimal exposure for a brand or product, the content we share is key. However, creating compelling content can take practice, and even for businesses who have been doing it for some time, content creation can be much easier said than done.
In the following, I'll dive into the basics of content creation and provide ten ways to ensure your small business is constantly churning out great things for your audience.
What is Content Creation?
Content creation is "the process of generating topic ideas that appeal to your buyer persona, creating written or visual content around those ideas, and making that information accessible to your audience as a blog, video, infographic, or other formats."
So why is it so important?
Well, when it comes to marketing your product or service, in a nutshell:
People buy from businesses they like.
People like businesses they feel they can trust.
Relationships build trust.
Your CONTENT helps build those relationships online.
Content creation is one of THE best inbound marketing practices. It can draw your ideal customer to your website, provide them with free and valuable information, and, if done correctly, can engage and retain your current customers.
And if your ROI for content marketing is of concern, take a look at these stats from Hubspot.com:
Content marketing brings in 3x as many leads and costs 62% less than traditional marketing.
Small businesses that use content marketing get 126% more leads than those that don't.
61% of online purchases are the direct result of a customer reading a blog.
Companies that publish 16 or more blog posts per month get 3.5x more traffic than those that post four or less per month.
Content marketing brings in 3x as many leads and costs 62% less than traditional marketing.
-Hubspot
How to Create Great Content
So now that you know WHAT content creation is and WHY it is so vital to your small business, let's dive into HOW to make your content great. Here are ten ways to do so:
1. Define Your Goals:
Before creating any content, the first thing you should do is understand what you expect your audience to get out of it. Ask yourself these questions:
How do I want my audience to perceive my content?
What do I want them to do?
What actions do I want them to take after they consume my content?
How will it help them?
Your answers to the above will help you to define your SMART goals-- those that are Specific, Measureable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Based. Here are a few examples of SMART goals:
Gain 20 leads from a piece of downloaded content in one month.
Get 30% of former customers to buy a secondary product within the year.
Increase social media followers by 10% in two weeks.
The moment you are clear on your goals, the easier it will be to develop content that aligns with those goals.
2. Know Your Audience:
A common mistake made when creating content is to try to speak to EVERYONE. The problem is that in attempting to speak to everyone who comes across your content, you end up helping no one.
Before you sit down and start typing away at your content, you need to clearly understand your audience, their pain points, and how you can help solve them. When you know the ins and outs of your audience's thought process and feelings, you can easily create compelling content that hones in on those thoughts and feelings.
Think of your content like a search engine: You want your content to be the specific answer to what they are searching for. You want it to be THE answer to the problem at hand!
The first step to defining and knowing your ideal audience is to create a buyer persona. Your buyer persona will help you understand their demographics and psychographics and, therefore, a good picture of their thought process and buying behaviors.
Demographics are the quantitative traits or things you can measure, such as age, gender, location, job title, etc.
Psychographics are the attributes you can't measure, such as their attitude, belief systems, values, and interests.
3. Trial and Error:
Creating compelling and engaging content can be a process. Sometimes it takes several tries to see what works and what doesn't for your audience.
During the process, don't be afraid to observe what your competitors are doing. Follow their social media accounts to see what they are posting. Sign up for their newsletters to see how they are using e-mail. You want to be in the know of what your ideal customer is already seeing.
Likewise, search for relevant topics on Google to see what pops up. Observe the format of the content displayed, what the content says, and the images used.
Performing a content audit is another way to review and refine your content in a way that increases your traffic and leads. In a content audit, you take an inventory of the things you have already done and then organize it to fit your new content plan.
Below are four easy steps to performing a content audit:
List out all of your existing content in a spreadsheet.
Create columns for the topic, target keywords, buyer persona, buying stage, and content format. Complete the columns for each piece of content you have.
Add columns for your key metrics (i.e., page views, shares, engagement).
Categorize each post by those that: Are doing well, need improvement, should be rewritten, or can merge with another post.
4. Choose the proper channels:
Between the various social media platforms, e-mail marketing, video, and blogging, there seem to be a million and one ways to get your content in front of your audience.
But don't let yourself fall into the trap of thinking you need to use every single channel out there (or even just one)! Instead, choose the formats and platforms that make sense for your audience and your business. Ask yourself:
Where does my audience like to hang out the most when online?
How do they like to consume information?
Which type of content will be easiest for me to create consistently?
Remember, your content is all about serving your audience. You want to craft it in a way that your buyer persona can easily consume.
5. Create content pillars:
As you piece together your content, break down and create categories of content that apply to your brand. These are known as your content pillars and are the 3-5 main focus topics for your business.
Think of them as the answers to all of your audience's questions-- the keywords they search for in Google when your business pops up. They are the foundation of your business!
For example, an accounting business would have the following core content pillars:
Bookkeeping tips and tricks
Interviews and stories from individuals and businesses who got their finances in order
Industry news and what it means for you
Accounting basics
Once your content pillars are defined, you can use the "3 E's" to make creating pieces of content easier:
Engagement: Conversation starters, such as questions to your audience or personal opinions on a popular topic.
Evergreen: Content-based around the key terms for your business that can be updated and referred back to in the years to come.
Events: Content around a particular industry event or occurrence.
6. Plan it out!
To make content creation easy, try batching your content into various topics each week. You can further break things down by batching your weekly content into multiple types of posts each day of the week.
For example, a local restaurant may choose to post about appetizers one week, beverages the next week, and main courses the following week. The same restaurant above may decide to post weekly specials on one day, new menu items on the next, and restaurant trivia the day after.
Once you piece your content together, make a weekly plan for distributing it and use a scheduling app to get it out. Schedulers such as Later, Hootsuite, or Planoly are all great platforms to "set and forget" your content.
7. Repurpose Your Content:
Repurposing your content is one of the best ways to stretch your information and widely provide value over several platforms and formats. Not to mention it will save you a ton of time!
Think of it as "recycling." If you created a piece of content in one format, think of other effective ways to use it while remaining relevant.
For example, you can transcribe and turn a video into a blog post. You can then take the blog post and break it down into several social media posts or infographics. That infographic and be turned into a 15-30 second video reel.
8. Play with Video and Reels:
Reels and videos are an excellent way to show your expertise in a compelling, eye-catching way. But if you're stuck coming up with ideas for your videos or reels, that's when the above step comes into play: Repurpose your existing content!
Just as you can turn a video into a blog post, you can also turn blog content into a video or a short 15-30 second video reel. You can even take existing reel trends and recreate them into fun reels that make sense for your business.
And if you're introverted or camera-shy, you can always use photos or sites such as Canva to create short videos and reels using stock images.
9. Show your face!
Often, people don't just buy a product or service because of what it is, but they buy because of the person and its story!
Using photos and videos of yourself in your content helps them get to know the person behind the brand and helps them feel more connected and in touch with you.
Not to mention, using visual content such as a photo or video of yourself is 40x more likely to be shared on social media versus other types of content. It's what first catches their attention and what keeps them engaged!
10. Research hashtags.
When connecting your social media content to a specific topic, event, theme, or conversation, you'll want to make sure that your hashtag strategy is on point.
Hashtags (a/k/a keywords) make it easier to discover posts around those specific topics by aggregating all social media content with that same hashtag. Therefore, it is essential to research which hashtags are relevant to your business and which ones your audience is searching for to include in your content.
An excellent way to research relevant hashtags for your content is to write down some questions that your ideal customer would have based on their obstacles and goals (which you now know from your buyer persona). Next, search for keywords and those questions to see if enough people are searching for them.
Your keywords should be attainable with a search volume and difficulty level that corresponds to your business and level of authority. If you're just getting started, using overly general or highly competitive words will only result in you getting lost in the feed and not seen at all.
For more about keywords and SEO, be sure to check out my blog post, 5 Basic Tips for Small Business to Get Started with SEO.
Bonus tip: Have fun with your content.
Content creation marketing can seem overwhelming and downright HARD at times. However, the most important thing to remember when creating your content is making it simple, making it memorable, and making it fun.
With the above tips, you'll not only be on your way to creating great content, but you'll be on your way to building positive relationships and being the "go-to" person for your audience in no time.
If you need help coming up with fun and exciting content for your small business (or if you have tons of ideas and need help making them happen), reach out to me today. I'd be happy to help!
