Have you ever heard the saying, “Content is king”? Since content is a powerful way to grow an online brand, establish expertise in a niche market, and educate your target audience about what you bring to the virtual table, it’s no surprise that content is viewed as a top priority for any successful website. Recent research indicates that high-quality, educational content makes customers 131 percent more likely to purchase from your business. There are a wide range of content types, such as blog posts, eBooks, social media posts, videos, and even podcasts. The type of content you create depends on your site’s needs and your target audience. Keep reading to find out what exactly content creation is and why your site needs it.

What is Content Creation?

Content creation refers to the process of finding topics to write about, determining the best type of content to use, developing a strategy, creating the content, reviewing the content, and finally, publishing the content. Unlike school papers that are reviewed by teachers and perhaps classmates, content creation typically involves various stakeholders in the review process. For example, weekly blog posts may be reviewed by your boss and then sent off to your clients for their final review and approval.

Finding Topics

When you are ready to find content topics, it’s helpful to consider your site goals. These goals will guide your content planning process. What products and/or services do you sell? Where is your business based? Does your business give back to local or international causes? What common questions are your target audience looking up on search engines? Use the answers to these questions to craft relevant, engaging content, so you stay focused on your business needs.

You can also reach out to your content team, customers, and other key stakeholders (i.e. clients or agency partners) for topic ideas. Indeed, you may be surprised by how many great topic ideas you are given for content. Additionally, you can also research what your competition is writing about in the digital marketplace. Read what your competition’s site content looks like, which can help you identify areas to stand out. For example, you can add your company’s unique perspective, different types of data and links, and visuals that align with your brand and customers.

Planning

Once you decide which topics to write about, the next step is to plan and outline what you will create. If the content will be published on your website, a blog post, or eBook is a great content type to use. On the other hand, infographics, videos, or engaging images are perfect for social media content. For podcasts, this will need to be planned out with engaging text and data to back up your points. No matter what content form you choose, a helpful tip is to research your topic on search engines. This will help you identify how others have presented your topic, such as a blog post, video, or infographic.

Aside from planning which content forms to use, it’s also recommended that you conduct keyword research based on your topic. This involves adding relevant links to keywords that your audience is looking up on major search engines like Google. By doing this, your content will be optimized. This will help your target audience find your awesome content on search engines. 

Creating Awesome Content

After you have found topics and planned out what types of content to create, you will begin the really fun part – creating the content! For any type of written content, keep in mind that today’s online readers prefer to have large sections of text broken up into smaller, more manageable chunks. You can make your text even more engaging by adding relevant images, screenshots, and videos, along with subheadings and bullet points. This will improve your overall readability scores too, which search engines use to rank your site’s SEO scores. 

After writing your initial drafts, you will likely proof-read and then send it off to relevant stakeholders for review and final approval. You may need to make some edits, which is a normal part of the content creation process. Even after you publish your content, remember that this is an ongoing process. For example, you may later notice that there is a broken link in a previously published article on your site’s blog. This will require removing the link and replacing it with a working link. 

As content creators, we have an important role in the overall health and success of our company’s website. We are helping build our brand’s identity and sharing our expertise with the online community. The content we share helps people learn about what we offer, our company’s mission and values, and what we care about as awesome human beings. If you are looking for a perfect, affordable web solution for your business, look no further than Awesome Website Guys. We would love for you to join our awesome family!