Content Creation: All You Need To Know

When you enter a question online in the search bar, the link displayed in the search results is the content. Whether you know it or not, you consume content every day. The content allows us to understand the situation, answer our questions, entertain us, make us smile, guide our decisions, etc.

What is content creation?

Content creation is the process of conducting research, generating strategic ideas, making these ideas into high-value collateral, and then promoting these works to target audiences. Digital content comes in many forms, including web pages, blogs, infographics, videos, and social media posts. Because content can take many forms blog posts, videos, e-books, infographics, advertisements, or other formats. Creating great content starts with a well-established process.

Millions of pieces of content are published online every single day. To stand out, your content needs to be of high quality. That means it’s not only written and designed well but also that it’s developed with the needs of your audience in mind. The amount of effort you put into your brand’s content is directly proportional to the value you get from it. High-quality content will help you:

Stand out as an authoritative thought leader.
Grow your subscribers and email list.
Increase your website traffic.
Keep your customers engaged.
Generate revenue.

Types of Content

Content comes in all shapes and sizes. It can be a piece of writing, audio, video, or an image. Some of the types of content you’ll find in marketing include:

Written content: Blogs, SEO articles, white papers, eBooks, emails, social media posts.
Imagery: Infographics, GIFs.
Audio: Podcasts, audiobooks.
Video: Animations, webinars, talking heads.

Content creation process

Keyword Research

Keyword research will show you the search volume of a specific keyword phrase and whether it’s worth the investment of creating a piece of content around it. A good way to go about keyword research is to write down some questions that your persona might have based on their obstacles and goals. Then, perform some keyword research around those queries to see if enough people are searching for them. Knowing which keywords your audience is searching for helps you fine-tune your content to meet the most common search intents. Good content reduces megatons of information into what’s most relevant and helpful to the reader.

Ideating

Content ideas can come from a variety of places. Depending on the goal of the piece of content, deciding the correct angle you should take on a specific topic can prove challenging. You can also get ideas by asking your customers for feedback, investigating what your competition is writing about, making keyword research, looking for inspiration from books you’ve read, industry studies, your competitor’s sites, or related searches on SERPs.

Content Planning and Strategy

A content strategy includes everything from brand and tone to how you will promote your content and eventually repurpose it. Set Your Content Goals. Once you determine that, each piece of content you create should be aligned with your goal and contribute to your desired outcome.

The first step in planning your piece of content is to decide what form you want it to take. Some ideas will be stronger if they are represented visually and could warrant an infographic or video. Other pieces of content may be best suited for plaintext. You can gain a lot of insight by investigating which types of content have already been created around your topic.

Creating content

Content creation is a living, breathing process. This process should be fluid and may need adjustment as you gain new information about your customers and audience.

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 something unique. Don’t simply regurgitate the information that’s already out there. Infuse a unique style or cite new research to emphasize your points.
Stick to one idea and 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 concise and clear. You want your audience to relate to you and derive value from your content and not have to sift through jargon or confusing metaphors.
Your content should serve as a platform for communicating your brand’s unique perspectives, capabilities, and value proposition. It also needs to tell a story that resonates strongly enough to convince readers to act.
Identify worthwhile content topics. Kick-off your creative ideation process by determining which subjects you should write about and eliminate the ones you don’t feel reflect your brand’s identity in the most meaningful and targeted way.
Prioritize your ideas. Make sure you have a prioritization process to gauge the comparative value and urgency of your content ideas and help you decide which ones to move forward with.

Content Editing

The way you edit your work is a very subjective process. You might be very concerned with grammar, or you might be aiming for more colloquial work. Either way, there are things you should definitely pay attention to when you optimize your content, such as active voice, clear language, short sentences, and lots of whitespaces. Also, consider having a colleague or friend review your work. Content riddled with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, technical issues, or factual inaccuracies can cost you the trust and respect of your audience, and possibly even their patronage. To avoid being ridiculed or labeled a fake news provider for making lazy, low-quality assets, carefully prove, test, and fact-check each item to make sure it’s clean, functional, error-free, and beyond reproach possible.

Content exists everywhere, but its success relies on your ability to adapt it to the medium on which it lives. Creating great content starts with a well-established process. The content creation process is nuanced and not always as simple as it might seem. But doing it well can truly impact your business. Choose what works best for you and always be ready to change your format if the current one is no longer working.