Writing bad content is easy! Creating high quality, value-packed content is not. It takes time, effort and a lot of resources. And if you hope to create it again and again, it requires a formulated process.
Below we look at how to streamline the content creation process and begin creating truly exceptional content in 5 easy steps.
1. Have a plan
Start by deciding what you want your content to achieve. This could be brand awareness, generating leads, growing your subscriber list or providing customers with the answers they are looking for.
Whatever you decide, make sure that you set goals that drive profitable action and that your objectives tie into your business outcomes.
Once you are clear on what it is you want to achieve, you can decide on an appropriate topic as well as the type of content you’d like to create. For example, a blog post, video, infographic, etc. Don’t forget to keep your target audience in mind when following this step.
You may feel most comfortable planning one piece of content at a time, but many content marketers prefer to brainstorm several months’ worth of content in advance, and then place it in a content calendar. This approach does take more effort, but the upside is that it significantly improves the efficiency of your content creation process.
2. Do your research
Once you have a plan, it’s time to do the research. You can start by Googleing your chosen topics and looking at what the top search results include. Since these pages already rank highly, it might be worth following a similar style and layout.
But don’t stop there, explore your topic carefully by looking at multiple resources and taking note of anything you find relevant and interesting.
It’s also advisable to conduct keyword research to make sure that you optimise your content for the most valuable keywords.
Pro tip: This step is crucial if you want to rank on search engines.
Conducting keyword research is really the only way to find out what people are searching for using search engines. You need to know this to avoid creating content about topics that nobody is looking for.
Many businesses make this mistake, and it’s likely a big part of the reason why 90.63% of pages get no traffic from Google, according to an Ahrefs study.
Image source: https://ahrefs.com/blog/keyword-research/
“If nobody is searching for what you’re writing about, you won’t get traffic from Google, no matter how hard you try,” says CMO of Ahrefs, Tim Soulo. A sobering thought when you think about how much time and effort goes into creating quality content. So don’t skip this step. It’s the most important.
Finally, bring all your research together using an article outline. This is a clear bulleted list of everything you’d like your content to cover. It will make the content creation process much easier.
3. Begin writing
If you followed the above steps, writing should be easy. Just keep in mind your goals and speak directly to your audience. Also, don’t forget to set aside some time to edit your content, or even better, ask someone to do it for you!
A carefully edited piece of content won’t just benefit your audience, it’ll boost your search rankings too! Google wants to show users the best results for every query, and one of the ways to ensure your content gets seen is to edit your content thoroughly.
4. It’s time to publish
Once you’re happy with your content, it’s time to publish it. But before you hit publish, make sure that you spend some time optimising it for SEO.
Your main keyword should appear within the first 60 characters of your headline (title tag), meta description and the page’s URL.
You should also make sure to add alt tags to all images within your content. These tags should be as descriptive as possible and should include your keywords where appropriate.
5. Promote, promote, promote
Your job isn’t done yet though. Once you’ve published your content, it’s time to promote it. No content creation process is truly complete without promotion.
Get to work by sharing a link on your social media channels, notifying your email subscribers and posting on online forums like Reddit. You can even share it via email with industry influencers.
Conclusion
Establishing and streamlining your content creation process can take a lot of time and effort. But it’s well worth it. With a predictable, repeatable process in place, you’ll begin to find it easier and easier to create high-quality content every single time.
Don’t have the time or the skills? Contact us today and we’ll do it all for you!
