Content is a potent tool. It can power your digital marketing campaigns and influence potential customers into buying your products and services. To stay ahead in a highly competitive online marketplace, you have to produce high-quality content. Your content gives a glimpse of your business, and you may just have less than 2 minutes to make an impression on your potential customers.
What Is Content?
Content refers to text-based articles, blogs, graphics etc. that attempts to deliver information or entertainment to your audience. Content must be:
- Correct
- Clear
- Concise
- Informative
- Engaging
Whether you are writing an article or designing a graphic, remember that the end product has to be appealing enough to hold the attention of your audience until your message has been delivered. So, then what makes for great content? Content that stays in the mind of the viewer long after it has been read, is great content, to say the least. So, want to learn how to produce content that lingers on in the customers’ minds? Read on.
The First Step – The Audience
We just defined content, so let’s move on to the first step - “Who”. You guessed it right, the “Who” is your target audience and you have to identify them.
Here is a tip – imagine your target audience as a person with certain personality traits as that of a human. For instance, if your focus group is working women in their 20’s, think of your audience as a woman who has skills, strength, ambition, energy etc. Once you have created the persona, you can proceed with the next step of content creation for digital marketing.
The Second Step – Ideation
Let your creative juices flow. There are many ways to tell a story and adding another vantage point to yours will make it more interesting. Don’t be afraid to brainstorm and try out new ideas but keep them relevant.
Your audience expects high-quality content that will keep them hooked. This is probably where you can decide on the length of the content – ideally, it should be short and sweet owing to the fact that attention spans have become shorter.
The Third Step – Visibility
To make your content visible to search engines, you must include SEO techniques for content marketing. Create a framework of SEO keywords and include them in your content. If it’s a blog that you are writing, blend the keywords in so they do not stare at the viewer. Without keywords, your content will languish on a corner of the internet, unseen, unread and unused.
Content creators often start with keywords even before ideation. That’s how important SEO is for your content.
The Fourth Step – Take a break
Once in a while, take a pause to analyze the partially created content to see if it conforms to the initial plan.
Here is a short questionnaire to help you stay on track:
a) Is the content clear, concise and to the point?
b) Does it give the message it was originally intended to?
c) Does the tone of the message or blog comply with the idea?
d) Is the information correct and based on facts?
e) Is the flow of the content smooth?
At any step, if you find yourself lost or in need of more information to produce good content, flag it. Metaphorically speaking, sweeping things under the rug does not do anybody any good. And if there are logical snags, this is where it will most likely crop up.
The Fifth Step – Revise & Review
Revise your content not once, not twice but as many times as needed. This step is vital to improving your content. Plan for several iterations of revisions for your content as you will most likely want to rewrite after your first draft. Return to your content after short breaks and you would surely find yourself working on the grammar and sentence constructions. There is always a better way to say it! And this holds very true for text-based content. Yet, revise till your work feels complete.
A fresh pair of eyes can help you give a lot of perspective on the content created for digital marketing. For instance, your blog might feel wordy or lengthy to your colleagues and reviewers. Yet, you don’t have a clue why they feel that way because you have created standard-length content. Then why? Look for answers as you review your formatting – does it make your blog look too full of information? Rearranging the blog to display the information better with the help of editing tools like tables etc. will help in such cases.
In Conclusion: There’s No One Way to Create Good Content
There is no one way to create good content. Inspiration can strike at any time. You may find yourself hammering away on your keyboard as soon as an idea strikes you. The basic steps mentioned above are not a waterfall model either. Creating content for digital marketing is more like the “Agile” method where you can hop, skip and jump between steps till you have the perfect output, in this case, content.
Delve into your experience to create original content instead of simply researching available information for good content creates trust and lasting impressions. Remember, content is king, always.