For any entrepreneur, time is always a luxury. One of the things that they want to do least is spend tons of time creating new content to market their brands. The fact of the matter though is that if you use a logical, proven, best practice oriented process, it really doesn’t have to be difficult. With that in mind, today I want to share with you an easy process for creating killer content that will attract your ideal customers and grow your brand.
Do Your Keyword Research
No doubt, the persona creation I described in my last article was a good start to this process, but you still need to do a bit more work when defining what content you are going to create. Keyword research will help you accomplish this. By researching keywords, you’ll find out how many times these keywords are showing up in searches. Basically, if the keywords are not showing up very often, the article simply isn’t worth writing. After all, why spend your valuable time writing an article that nobody is going to see?
One easy way I use to figure out what keywords to start researching is by thinking of my client personas, putting myself in their shoes and trying to figure out what it is they would be typing into search engines. For instance, maybe my buyer personas would be typing something like:
Blog writing services that specialize in Real Estate
Digital marketing services for restaurants
Content marketing agencies for artificial intelligence start ups
So I can pick keywords out of these searches and then research those, to see if there are enough people searching for them.
IMPORTANT NOTE: It’s important to remember that the higher a keyword ranks, the more competitive it is. The more competitive it is, the less likely your content is going to be easily found by your ideal clients. So, at the end of the day you want to pick keywords that aren’t too competitive, but also are showing up in your research.
My favorite tool to do keyword research is the Moz Keyword Explorer.
Come Up With Your Idea Draft
Now that you have the keyword research out of the way, it’s time to put pen to paper and start sketching out the bones of your content. When I am brainstorming for a new blog article for instance, I typically log into my website’s WordPress CMS, click “New Post” and start making an outline of what it is I want to cover. I first start with the main key takeaways, making sure that I have an idea for content to go with each of them that will naturally work the keywords I researched into the article.
Next, I start filling in the outline with details that fall under each main key takeaway. Some of these require that I go online and do research, some require that I create screenshots or illustrations to go along with my article, some simply require me documenting what I want to say. This takes the longest of course, but the nice thing is once this is done, I’m ready to write my article.
Create Your Content
Now you’ll notice I called this, “Create Your Content”. Why not, “Write Your Blog”? Because a blog might not be what you are setting out to make. You might be getting ready to film a video, design an infographic, record a podcast, create a white paper, or maybe you are writing a blog post. What vehicle you use to get your content out does not matter. What does matter though is that the vehicle you are using is one that is widely used by the people in your key buyer personas.
When you create your content, be sure to remember these key best practices:
Remember your persona- You need to always remember your persona. Not just with the vehicle you are going to use to get the content out there, but also the way you speak to the reader. For instance, if your persona isn’t very technologically savvy, and you are writing about a tech product, don’t use terms that are super technical. If your voice isn’t geared towards your key personas, they will glaze over and refuse to engage with your content.
Make sure your content is unique- I know at a certain point, there are only so many ways you can describe a concept. For instance, there are only so many ways I can approach the concept of inbound marketing and write about it. That said, whenever I write about a topic that is written about all over the Internet, I always try my hardest to put my spin and approach on it. This often speaks to the voice I write in, and my in general no-nonsense way of approaching and addressing tasks. Whatever your spin is, make sure you have one. If you are simply repeating all the same buzzwords that everyone else does, your content is going to be deemed boring and people are going to move on.
Stick to a single topic- I have to admit, I am super, super guilty of this. What happens often as I start writing an article is that I get excited about it and start adding more and more to it. Before I know, I am off topic and writing about a totally different topic. Don’t fall for this trap. Not only does it make your content hard to understand, it will turn off your potential customers. If you find yourself veering off the path of your original content idea, stop and cut that part out of your content, and save it somewhere for a future piece of content.
Edit And Upload
Whatever type of content you are creating, you are for sure going to need to edit it. First off, nothing comes out perfect the first time. If you are writing, your grammar may need touched up. Obviously if you are shooting video, there is always an editing process. Even things like white papers and infographics will need edited. Everyone likes to do this differently, but my general rule of thumb is that I like to edit things the day after I did the first draft. The reason is because at that point, my head is so deep in it, if I immediately go back and review, I’m bound to miss something. When I take care of it the next day, it’s almost like I’m looking at it with a fresh set of eyes.
Once that is done, the last (and happiest) step is simply uploading it wherever the content is going to reside. 🙂
Content marketing can be daunting, especially if you are running a small business and don’t have enough time in the day. Just because you don’t have time to do it yourself doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have the very best marketing content on planet earth. Want to discuss having us help you along the way? Just click the button below.
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