Top Tips for Creating Effective Content
Content marketing is a strategy for promoting your brand’s products or services by creating and sharing content that does not explicitly promote your brand.
The major goal of content marketing is to encourage potential customers to develop a natural interest in your brand. This is likely to result in a purchase in the long run. However, you must have engaging, high-quality content if your content marketing strategy is going to be successful.
Creating an effective content marketing campaign is easier said than done! In fact, one in three marketers admits that their content is only “somewhat” or “not so” effective, according to the State of Content Marketing report. Even marketers struggle with content creation which highlights how challenging effective content creation is. To help you, this blog will offer seven tips on content creation and tricks for creating effective content.
1. Start with “why?”
The first step to creating good content is being clear about your goals. There are multiple elements to consider in content creation and it’s easy to get lost in the details. With that in mind, you must be clear about your goals from the beginning.
Do you want to gain subscribers? Generate traffic for your website? Or generate downloads for your app? Setting a goal at the beginning is beneficial because you haven’t committed to any strategies or schedules.
The longer you wait to set your goals, the more complicated it will become. A clear goal also ensures all members of your team work in the same direction, which will benefit your team as well as productivity.
SMART content
Make sure your content creation goal is SMART. This means it should be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound. An effective example of a SMART content creation goal would be “produce and publish 2 blog posts every month”.
Using the smart model ensures that your goals are distinct and meaningful, thus making them effective.
By krakenimages
2. Know your audience
The second step to creating good content is knowing your target audience. Effective content adds value to the lives of your potential customers. The more specific your content caters to the needs of your target audience, the more value it will generate.
As such, effective content should always cover issues that are important to your audience. One example could be a video tutorial for a task they struggle with or a blog post about one of their preferences.
To find topics relevant to your audience, you have to do market research to understand your target segment. What does your typical customer look like? What are their preferences? What do they struggle with? All of this is valuable information that can be used to create good content.
One way to develop a deep understanding of your customer’s needs is to create a buyer persona. Once you know the needs of your target segment, you can start creating content that is tailored to them specifically.
Targeted content will ensure that potential customers will engage with your content. These customers will appreciate your content more, as they realise that their needs and problems are accounted for by your company. Consequently, consumers of your content will develop a deeper connection with your brand, hence increasing the likelihood of future purchases.
3. Choose the right format
The third step to boosting your content is choosing the right format. As you may have realised, you are currently reading a blog post. We use blog posts as part of our content strategy, but it doesn’t mean this is the right format for your business.
Many other channels can be used for content creation, for example, social media, podcasts, or ebooks. Be reflective and only consider formats that are relevant and accessible to your target audience.
Once you have identified appropriate channels, you can start considering the segmentation opportunities that different channels have to offer. For example, both Facebook and LinkedIn are social networking sites, but they have different user bases.
LinkedIn allows you to reach B2B customers and potential partners whilst Facebook has a more casual audience. Use this knowledge to reach different members of your target audience with content that is relevant to them.
4. Get organised
- Who will be in charge of content creation? Things such as tone of voice and publishing time should be consistent. It is therefore advisable to have someone overlooking and managing the process. You should consider working with a copywriter or a marketing agency.
- How frequently do you want the content to be published? More is not always better, but too little might get lost – it’s a delicate balance. One way or the other, ensure that you choose a frequency and stick to it. This allows your customers to know when to expect your content, which helps to establish a sense of reliability.
- How will you publish your content? Having exceptional content is only part of the story, to maximise effectiveness make sure that it reaches your target audience at the right time. Look at the activity report of your platform and use publishing tools to ensure that your content reaches them at the perfect time.
Once you have found an answer to these basic questions, you can start creating good content.
By Marten Bjork
5. Be prepared to change
A good content writer is always ready for change. It’s hard! Sometimes, you put a lot of work into a content strategy, but you are not seeing the results you expected.
If that’s the case, it’s important to take a step back and evaluate the situation. It’s good practice to report on content strategy implementation, as it helps identify successes as well as mistakes. Looking at reports will allow you to find the reason why your content is performing in a certain way.
Keeping up with trends and events
It is also worth looking at trends and current events to find reasons why engagement is low. Global events, such as a pandemic, may lead to major shifts in audience behaviour. Once the issues have been identified, you have to evaluate whether they will affect your content in the long term. If they do, you have to change your content.
This will be tough, especially if your business has invested a lot of time into the old strategy. However, there is no point in sticking to content that will not help you achieve your business targets.
You should adjust your content plan constantly, ensuring it stays relevant. Looking at your monthly reports is a good start as it allows you to identify content that did exceptionally well. Analyse the best-performing pieces and try to replicate their success.
By Headway
6. Highlight your USP
Effective content should be structured around your unique selling points as other businesses might offer a product that is similar to yours. Good content will highlight your point of differentiation and give your brand a competitive edge.
However, don’t fall into the trap of self-promotion! Keep in mind that the goal of content creation should always be to deliver value to the reader. To draw attention to your USP, you should create content around it rather than content about it.
How to Create Effective USP Content
Good content should leave the reader wanting more, leading them to your business naturally. For example, imagine you have an online language-learning business and your USP is your outstanding visual learning interface. To highlight your USP with content, you could create a piece about the benefits of visual learning for languages. As a result of this, your audience will develop an understanding of your USP, which will help them understand why your business is superior to competitors.
In comparison, providing your audience with self-promoting content will be far less effective. For example, a blog post about why your business is better than your competitors will not provide the reader with any real value. Readers won’t take away anything from this experience, as there are no learning opportunities or solutions to their problems. Furthermore, readers might regard excessive self-promotion as disingenuous and annoying, which would harm your reputation.
7. Catch their attention
To engage audiences with your content, you need to hook them in! A recent study by Microsoft suggests that the average attention span has dropped to just 8 seconds. This means you don’t even have 10 seconds to convince readers to click on your podcast, video, or blog post – you have just 8!
To make sure your content grabs their attention, you need to invest a lot of thought into the beginning of your content. Especially things such as email subject lines, Youtube thumbnails, blog headings, and the first few seconds of a TikTok.
Look at trends and use your knowledge of your target audience to find phrases that will catch their attention. However, do not overpromise and underdeliver. If you have caught their attention, make sure they will be impressed with the value you provide. Otherwise, it will reflect badly on your business and ruin your chances of future engagement.
By Joshua Earle
Summary
To summarise, creating good content is not a straightforward task and there are many things to consider. This blog post has provided you with 7 valuable tips on content creation. In summary:
- Be clear about your content creation goal from the beginning
- Create content tailored to your target audience
- Choose the right format and channel
- Be organised. Creating good content is a lot of work – take care of the logistics before you start
- Change is necessary, so review your content constantly
- Create content around your USP not about it
- You only have 8 seconds to catch their attention, make them count!
Need help creating awesome content for your business? Get in touch with the team at Yay!Starter and we’ll help you to set up a successful content strategy.