Blogging

Introduction to Content Creation

When creating content, you must think differently about how to communicate with your audience and provide them value, not just sell and showcase your products or services. You want to provide information and value through high-quality content that engages and engages your audience so much that they become new, loyal customers. Content marketing is a longer process than simply blogging about your products, which may not necessarily provide value to your audience. Investing time in creating high-quality content creates assets that can be shared across multiple channels. Your content should communicate to your customers by providing quality information rather than selling or praising your business.

Environmental Scanning

The key to creating engaging content is to understand what your customers want. To do this, you need to scan the environment to evaluate your competitors, audience, platforms, trends, and resources.

Competition – By carefully studying what your competitors are doing from a content standpoint, you can evaluate what works and how it engages your audience, and identify elements you can replicate or improve, or identify gaps that you can fill.

Resources – Looking at what is currently being discussed will also give you an idea of what resources you need to join the conversation, whether it’s time, money, talent, hardware, or software.

Trends – Evaluating current trends will help you identify areas in which to get involved and how trends can help you stay ahead of the curve.

Audience – Evaluate your competitors’ audiences and who you expect as your own customers. This will further give you insight into creating that type of content.

Platform – After evaluating all the other factors, it is important to understand which platform is right for both your audience and your content.

Who Are Your Customers?

It’s important to understand your audience to ensure you create digital content that engages and benefits your audience. To create content that your audience will love, you need to think closely about your customer: their demographic characteristics such as age, gender, location, interests, and online behavior. To do this you need to understand your customers and what they want and need, and this requires research.

Research Peer Research:

Peer research: Check out the blogs and social channels of your coworkers, industry leaders, competitors, and similar companies and see what they post. Then, based on that group, find out what style of content they use. Which genre gets more engagement and which less. You can also research your stakeholders using tools like You Gov https://yougov.co.uk.

Targeted research: Look at your existing audience and see what kind of content they share and engage with.

Platform specific research: Research the platforms where you plan to post content, where you already have an audience, or where you want to build an audience. This research will find out what content works well on each platform. Keyword Planner is part of Google’s advertising platform, but it can also be used to determine how often search terms are typed into Google and to research related and alternative keywords. This is great for deciding what topic you want to write about. Are your customers constantly looking for answers on a particular topic that you are an expert on? This would be a perfect topic for a blog.

Analytics: Using analytics on your website and social media channels will give you a comprehensive understanding of who your audience is and what type of content they engage with. Social Listening: This is a way to learn and evaluate what is being said about your company on social media, blogs, forums, etc. In the online world, people can search using specific words and phrases. Social listening helps your organization know where your audience is and where they should be online.

Google Alerts: By setting up alerts right in your inbox, you can see if your business is being talked about in your industry. Plus, setting up alerts on relevant topics in your industry will keep you updated. This helps ensure that the content you create is relevant to your audience.

#Hashtag research: This can be done in a number of ways, including searching for specific hashtags on specific platforms or setting up a #hashtag monitoring screen in a management tool like Hootsuite. This allows you to research and monitor specific conversations to understand which hashtags are being used and whether they are being used regularly. This research becomes the first part of your content strategy.

Purchasing Third-Party Content

Sharing third-party content is important to support your content strategy. Third-party content provides your customers with more authentic information that supports your brand’s ideals and personality. Sharing third-party content captures your audience’s attention and ensures engagement. Third-party content may include reviews, products you endorse, or articles that are of interest to your brand.

Here are some top tips for sourcing third-party content:

Google News (https://news.google.co.uk/) provides a regular stream of content based on search terms entered. Google’s algorithms bring the most relevant content to the top of the list based on search terms, content source, and many other ranking signals.

Google Alerts (https://www.google.co.uk/alerts) You can set up alerts for specific search terms. When an article matching that search term is published, Google will email that content straight to your inbox. You can set Google Alerts to send content “immediately,” “once a day,” or “once a week,” and you can get all results or just the best results.

Hootsuite (http://www.hootsuite.com/) This platform has a great publishing feature that provides content based on up to three topics.

Buzzsumo (http://buzzsumo.com/) is a search tool that tracks content across all social media sites and ranks it based on the number of shares on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest. It monitors content based on topic or user and uses an advanced search engine to provide accurate results.

Linkedin Pulse (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse) is a great source of high-quality content written by industry leaders from around the world.

Building A Content Strategy

To ensure you achieve your content goals, you need to develop and create a content strategy.

The main points to consider are:

What is your message?
Where is your content going?
Do you know who your customers are?

Planning 6-12 months out ensures your content is relevant to your audience. With a clear plan to follow, your content is more likely to be impactful.

There are many “trigger points” to consider, such as product cycles, new product launches, seasonal content, upcoming events, etc. Knowing what you have planned for your business will help your audience stay up to date. Not all planned content will be suitable for all target groups, so it’s always a good idea to segment your audience as part of your strategy. Likewise, not all audiences use the same platforms, so it’s important to publish your content in the right places. When thinking about your content strategy, you should also think about your company’s key performance indicators and how developing great content will help you achieve your chosen KPIs.

What Makes Good Online Content?

To write great copy that engages your audience, you need to keep the following points in mind:

Use your headline to spark curiosity – “5 Easy Tips to Improve Your Twitter Profile” or “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Facebook Reach” to get the reader to click through and get interested in your content. Use phrases like. You are filling the gap of knowledge.

Promise your headline will give your readers added value Your text should add value to your readers’ time, and you can take advantage of that value by highlighting it in your headline. Attract your readers by promising added value in the form of the headline. A good example of this is a title like “16 Tricks and Features You Didn’t Know About…” This suggests to the reader that they are about to learn something new and encourages them to engage with your content and learn more. Stay focused – Use your text to explain how your message will impact your reader.

Tell a story – The easiest way to connect with your readers is to tell them a story or involve them in it. Use words like “you,” “we,” and “our” to get your message across.

Be consistent – Readers become accustomed to a certain tone and writing style. So, if you stay true to your style, you will be able to attract your audience. Deviating too far from your existing style can alienate your readers.

Use formulas – There are many writing formulas that provide a consistent structure for both the writer and the reader. A very simple but effective formula is the “before – after – how to get there” formula. The “before” section describes the reader’s current scenario, the “after” section describes the ideal outcome for the reader, and the “how to get there” section fills the gap between before and after. This is a very effective way to contextualize your reader’s current state and write about what you can offer them and how you can get them to where you want them to be.

Ask questions – Whether it’s a Facebook post or a blog post, the biggest goal of any digital communication is to start a conversation with your audience. A good way to do this through your blog is to ask your readers a question, ask them to answer it, and ask them to respond with their opinions by commenting in the comment section. This has many benefits besides connecting with your audience through your current blog posts. The conversation will make it clear what other topics your audience wants to see, giving you more topics to include in your blog and connect with your audience.

Link to other articles and sources – Include relevant links to other articles and resources in your articles that provide more context for the topic you’re writing about.

Easy to share – Once you’ve created great and engaging content that impresses your readers, it’s ideal for them to share your content within their own networks and increase exposure. Make this easy by adding one-click share buttons to your blog or website to make the process as easy as possible for your readers.

What Makes A Good Image?

Relevance – We look at relevance from two perspectives. First, if you’re using an image on its own (on a platform like Instagram or Facebook), you need to make sure the image is relevant to your audience. Does this match your post? Secondly, if you are using an image as the cover image for your blog post or article, it is important to consider whether the image relates to the overall tone and message of your blog post.

Attractive – It is very important to consider the quality of the image you want to share. The image should be attractive and grab the reader’s attention.

Brand personality – The image should represent your brand positively and match the message you want to convey.

Behind the Scenes – Use these types of images to give your readers/followers a peek behind the scenes. This could be what’s happening in your office, the manufacturing of your products, or when you’re traveling. Use images to add a human element to your brand.

Consistency – Like any type of content, be consistent in the way you create, share, and brand your images. Your readers and followers will become addicted to your style and look for your unique style in their feed.

Branding – Using images that include your logo or other branding is a great way to increase brand awareness. Tools like Canva allow you to subtly overlay your logo over your images to maintain consistency across your brand.

Quality – The points above mean having high quality images from a marketing perspective, but before you get into any of this, it’s important to start with high quality images. Most smartphones these days have cameras that are good enough to capture high-resolution images that are good enough for social media.

Color Palette – Some companies use images that are very close to their brand colors. This technique isn’t for everyone, but it works fine for image-based platforms like Instagram.

Images On Social Media

Each platform has an optimal image size. In order for your images to display properly, you need to optimize them to ensure that your audience gets the most impact with your message. Social platforms keep changing their optimal sizes, so keep them up to date. A good rule of thumb for now is this:

Facebook 940 x 788 pixels

Twitter Post 1024 x 512 pixels

Instagram post 1080 x 1080 pixels

Pinterest Graphic 735 x 1102 pixels

YouTube 1600 x 1800 pixels

LinkedIn 700 x 400 pixels

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