5 Rules for creating effective content

Content is king. I’m sure you’ve heard this phrase many times, and for good reason. A well-developed content strategy, competently written and optimized copy, is key to the success of promoting your business. Many companies invest heavily in creating content and analyzing new trends, which allows them to discover new opportunities and attract customers. 

No matter the size of your business — small or large, from IT to beauty, there are a few rules for creating effective content.

1. Analyze your audience and their interests

Before you start developing your content strategy, you should analyze your audience. This will help you find out what your audience likes, what their interests are, and what they want to know most. Answering the following questions will help you build knowledge about your audience and create effective content: 

• Average demographics
• Industry
• What device is most commonly used to explore content?
• What content catches their attention the most?
• What time of day do they prefer to read social media?

To do this, it’s worth conducting audience surveys or analyzing the market. But in general, every company has a portrait of its audience, as this is necessary before a business enters the market. And to analyze the interaction with content, it is enough to observe the engagement on social networks and upload analytics using special tools such as Google Analytics. Also, any social network or blog has a section with statistics. For example, you can observe the statistics of your responses on Quora, learn about your reach on LinkedIn and other social networks.

You can add to this list of questions based on your goals and interests. In the end, you’ll have a portrait of your audience and their interests that you can use to build a content strategy.

2. Analyze current content publishing trends and platforms

In addition to traditional content publishing and distribution channels (email, social media, blog), don’t forget to test new hypotheses and try new types of content. It could be a video shot in a new style or edited in an original way; it could be a podcast or a song; it could be a moving image. Current marketing blogs as well as Google Trends and other analysis services will help to analyze trends.

3. Optimize your content

SEO is one of the most important parts of modern marketing. No website is made without an initial analysis of the semantic core, keyword analysis, similar articles in the output and competitor analysis.

In order to get your content into the top 10 or top 15 search results, pay attention to the following points:

• Content should be original, useful, and relevant to the audience.
• Use the necessary keywords for promotion, but don’t overdo it.  Analyze the frequency of keywords with special tools.
• Don’t get carried away by too many links in articles.

4. Distribute your content and find new uses for it

After publishing an article or a short post, marketers sometimes forget the most important thing: to share the content in the rest of the channels — social networks of the company or the author, or anyone who was involved in publishing the content. This allows you to attract additional audiences and get a wider reach. The more channels you cover, the better! 

You can also use an article or comment in a variety of ways. You can take quick notes from an article and share them on various social media channels, add quotes to images and share them on Pinterest, for example, while a comment can be used to create a full article or series of articles on a topic, or even record a podcast.

Don’t let your content go to waste, because it’s your resources and your time. Keep it up to date with new information to keep it popular for a long time.

5. Analyze your content for audience appeal

As you publish content, monitor audience engagement: Are there a lot of comments? Is the article being shared a lot? Is there a lot of reach or traffic?

It is often the case that the article is good, but the way it is presented is wrong. Experiment, try new formats, and communicate with your audience.

Finally, I’d like to give you a few more tips to help you optimize your content strategy:

• Distribute content in percentages: useful content 60-70%, sales content 30-40%.
• Don’t forget to review and adjust your content strategy at least once a month.
• Conduct competitive and audience analysis for better understanding.

Content means new opportunities, customers and users, so don’t waste resources on content marketing and copywriting. The future of your business depends on it.

Photo Credit: Sebastian Pandeleche / Unsplash

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