It’s one thing to create content, and it’s another to create engaging content. Think about it for a moment. There are thousands upon thousands of sites demanding the same attention from audiences. And everyone knows there is only so much time in a day, yet alone bandwidth, to consume content. That’s why creating innovative, fresh content regularly is key for all content creators.
Creating high-quality content isn’t easy and often not cheap either. It takes time and money to turn around an article that is timely, SEO-boosting, and noteworthy. And just creating content for the sake of having something to post or to cover a topic your competition did can actually do more harm than good. Your content needs to be relevant and informative or entertaining, and most importantly, it needs to be authentic.
You want to create content that sticks and that readers will see as informative and reliable. Not sure where or how to start? Below are three ways to create digital content that throws its weight around and gets you a bang for your buck.
1. Use Predictive Software
The ironic part of creating new content is that only a small majority of the content you create will likely be deemed a success. This isn’t to say you aren’t a great writer (or you aren’t working with great writers). Rather, it’s just a matter of the algorithm in addition to how or when users are finding your content. Search engines like Google have a complex way of determining which pieces of content rank toward the top of a results page. This is why utilizing predictive software can be beneficial to your brand.
Predictive software isn’t new, but more and more content creators are utilizing this tool. Essentially, this software will take the guessing out of writing. You’ll know before you put pen to paper if your content idea is worth pursuing. This, obviously, will save you time and money — two hard to come by components in the world of marketing and content creation!
With predictive content ROI, you will have a better sense of which articles on your site are most valuable to audiences. You’ll begin to see patterns within your content strategies, recognizing what will do well on your site and what is worth skipping over. Through key metrics — like total unique visitors, time spent, and page views — you can see what matters most to your readers.
2. Analyzing Content KPIs
Writing an article and moving onto the next one is not the best way to improve your site’s overall content. It’s crucial to keep an eye on how articles are performing. Not doing so will only hurt your future content plan. Evaluating the key performance indicators of previous online content will enable you to create better resonating content for your audiences. It will also directly tell you if what you’re writing is moving the needle for your business goals.
A crucial misstep for any content creator is writing without KPIs in the first place. This is where your overall content strategy comes into play. You’ll want to identify which pieces of content on your site are written for awareness, for instance, as opposed to lead generation. The structure of these pieces will differ as well as their overall tone and approach. A piece meant for awareness will likely not have as many calls to action or as a lead generation piece.
Once you have established your KPIs and aligned them to each piece of content, then you can properly analyze them. Analyzing content KPIs from previous online materials takes a bit of time, but it’s well worth the effort. You’ll want to track several components for each piece of content. This can include article views and social shares for awareness and click-through-rate and number of downloads for lead generation. Once you have a system in place, you’ll be able to see what published pieces are working and which ones may need to be edited.
3. Establish Content Flow
Let’s face it — consumers get bored quickly. You only have a few seconds to capture a user’s attention. This is a challenging task, mainly because users today are inundated with content 24/7. From the constant news cycle to social media, there is an abundance of content available. This is why creating a variety of content is important.
Content flow is exactly what it sounds like — how your content flows together as a campaign. Let’s say you need to create five new pieces of content for an upcoming brand launch. While you could write all five pieces as Q&A blog posts around the product launch, that wouldn’t be beneficial. You will likely see greater response from audiences if you create a Q&A piece as well as a blog post for organic search, an e-newsletter for current customers, and some social posts.
Content flow also improves visibility. This is because a variety of content ensures you are meeting audiences where they are in their search journey. It also means you have a repertoire of content to choose from and correspondingly push out when appropriate.
Creating interesting content is a process. It’s not something that you can just pull out of your hat. You will need to dedicate some thought power and time to construct a strategy that makes sense for your brand. With this in place, you’ll be able to write content that reaches your target audiences and is deemed worthy in their eyes as well as Google’s algorithm.
