Where is the first place you turn to for an answer to your burning question? For the majority of the world, it would be Google (or any other search engine). This isn't surprising because Google alone answers over four billion search questions every day. When you enter a question into its search bar, the links that appear in your search results represent answers which you may be looking for (which is also known as content). Regardless of whether you know it or not, you're actually consuming content on a daily basis.
Content is a large part of your everyday life. It’s hard to avoid, but why would you want to? Content keeps us informed, answers our questions, entertains us, makes us smile, guides our decisions, and more. Content helps you attract, engage, and delight prospects and customers, bring new visitors to your site, and ultimately, generate revenue for your company. In other words, if you’re not creating content, then you’re behind the curve.
Why is Content Important?
Content creation represents an ultimate inbound marketing opportunity. When you create content, you’re providing useful information to your audience (at no cost) which in turn increases your chances of attracting potential customers to what you intend to offer. Also, great content also contributes to retaining existing customers by encouraging quality engagement.
What are some Content Examples?
- Blog Writing
- Podcasting
- Video Broadcasting
- Graphic Development
- Content Giveaways (such as Whitepapers, Research Notes, Templates, and more).
Start with a Content Audit
Even if you have been creating content for some time without any clear direction or you’ve been following a strategy all along, every conscious effort to create content can benefit from a content audit. Even if you did not start out with a clearly defined strategy doesn’t mean that the content you have created prior to this won’t fit into your new strategy. A content audit simply means taking inventory of the work that you’ve already done, then organizing it to fit under your new plan.
The process might involve some re-writing, or it could reveal gaps that need to be filled with content that appeals to your persona and their journey stage.
Choosing the Correct Format
Always keep the person you're writing for at the forefront of everything you're creating content for. I can't stress enough that you’re creating content for them (not for the whole world). That means you should be crafting content in a format that is most easily and enjoyably consumed by them.
The format you choose might be a blog post, video, Slideshare, graphic, ebook, whitepaper, podcast, or whatever your creative mind can conceive. As long as it serves the person you are writing for, you’ll be in a good space.
What's more, is you don’t actually need to stick to only one format for the content that you create. You should be able to create content — in whatever format — on a consistent cadence. This means, even if a podcast series might be a great marketing tactic, but if you lack the resources (and patience) to stick to it, then a blog might be a better route.
Just to get this definition out of the way digital content creation just simply means that it is the process of choosing the format (usually digital), and then utilizing the right tools to publish and promote your content online. That's it. It's just content creation but done digitally.
The Most Important Part: Content Promotion
Everyone gets caught up in content creation, but forget that creating great content is useless if no one actually sees it. In a perfect world, herds of people would flock to your site every time you published a new post. In reality — especially when you’re just starting out — you’ll need to entice people to consume your content. Hence why content promotion is just as important to your strategy as whatever content you create.
Your promotion plan should be guided by who you are planning to create for and where do they spend their time. Is it online or offline? What time of day do they use a particular platform? How often do they want to see content from you? How do they like to consume content? What email subject lines get them to click? and more.
Conclusion: Start Creating
Content creation is an iterative process that pays off tremendously with your audience (if you have dedicated your content creation for the audience you intend to reach out to). Once you have the content creation process down, you’ll be able to generate creative work that not only delights your audience but also grows your business.
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