Content marketing is one of the most popular ways many businesses use in getting their product to their target audience.
A lot of marketers see content as a critical business asset and make sure that they produce not only unique content but also content that engages their readers and make them take an action that the business wants.
Content marketing institute states that about 56% of businesses report that they would like to increase their spending on content creation, the idea behind this is simple; content marketing is an inexpensive way to reach your audience quickly and it works well if done correctly.
Effective content creation doesn't just involve writing any content that comes to one's mind; it involves adequate planning and conscious effort.
In this guide, you'll get to know six content creation hacks that will help you create remarkable content on time without sacrificing quality to get you the results you want.
Without further ado, let's get right into it.
3-Step Content Creation Process
Creating content can be a hard thing to do, but you can make it more comfortable and fun to do.
It is always easier to create quality content if you follow a laid-out process; it makes you organized and achieves your aim of creating unique content.
Below is a 3-step process to create unique content:
- The Ideation Process
The first step to creating content is the ideation stage – it is the creation of ideas. The aim here is to generate many content ideas as possible.
Before developing content ideas, you must know your audience, know what they need based on the products and services you offer; this will help you in developing content ideas that align with what your business offers.
Here are ways you can generate content ideas:
Check Competitor Websites
An effective way of generating content ideas is to go through competitor websites. Your competitors are those who are operating in the same niche as you are; they can sometimes serve a way of generating content ideas.
To find your competitors, try to input a keyword about what services or products you offer in search engines like Google, websites that come up other than yours that offer the same thing you do are your competitors.
You can go through their website/blog and find great content ideas worth writing about.
Find content with most social shares using Buzzsumo
Sometimes content with a lot of social shares indicates that people like the content, and you can take advantage of that opportunity to create content around these trending topics.
One tool that helps you in this regard is Buzzsumo. Buzzsumo is a tool that helps you find content with the most social shares by merely searching for a keyword.
To see content that is trending, simply put in a keyword related to what your business does, and Buzzsumo gives you a list of contents written by others that have lots of social shares as this would give you an idea of what your target audience wants.
Use Google Autosuggest
Google also serves as an effective way of generating content ideas. All you need to do put in a keyword, and Google tries to predict what you might want to search for; that way, you get to see different suggestions that might give you an idea for content.
- The Content Planning Stage
When you've got a list of content ideas, the next stage is to plan how to write your content.
This stage is concerned with deciding the content structure and type, there are different types of ways to write your content, for example, you can decide to write in case studies, infographics, videos, product reviews, list-type contents (listicles), and many more.
- The Content Creation Stage
After choosing the content idea and deciding the type structure of the content, the content creation process sets-in. The content creation stage is the final stage, where the actual content is created.
This involves researching and gathering different sources of information that will be used in creating your content.
6 Content Creation Hacks
- Create Idea Lists
Sometimes you run out of content ideas, which are normal, but you can avoid this by developing idea lists. Creating idea lists is one of the best content creation hacks to save yourself time when creating your content.
It is also the first step to a content creation process. Having idea lists lets you never run out of what to write about, you can create your idea lists by having ideas spreadsheets that you can refer to anything you want to create your content.
Having an idea lists is one content creation hack that makes your content creation process simple, easy, and straight forward. To get started, all you have to do is to create spreadsheets where you write out dozens of ideas that you can think of or have researched using the various ways of finding content ideas as listed above.
- Focus On Evergreen Content
Focusing on evergreen is among the best content creation hacks for producing remarkable content. As a content creator and marketer, you want to make sure that the content you create lasts for a considerable amount of time while still remaining relevant.
Evergreen content allows you to reach a wider audience because the readers will still find it relevant when they come across the content even when it has been published for quite a while.
Evergreen content is also a proper SEO technique as it tends to rank better than content with a short life span.
- Develop A Content Calendar
Not having a content calendar can make you a bit disorganized as a content marketer and creator. Having a content calendar is one content creation hack that eases your content creation process; a content calendar outlines your publishing schedules to control how often you create and publish your content.
Having a content calendar makes you productive in several ways:
- A content calendar helps you to be proactive by allowing know what content to create next.
- Content calendars are time savers; it allows you the time to do other essential things.
- It makes you organized because you have everything planned out.
You can create your content calendar by using the following content calendar tools listed below
- Trello
- Asana
- Microsoft Excel
- Google sheets
- Coschedule
- Google Calendar
- Repurpose Content
Content creation hacks make you produce quality content within the minimum time possible. That is what repurposing your content does for you.
This is why it is important to create evergreen contents because they can be easily updated as at when needed.
Consistently writing new content can be hard; this is why content repurposing is a time-saving content creation hack to use. All you have to do is look out for one of your content that has performed quite well in the past and look at how you can repurpose it to become even better.
Alternatively, if you produce video content, you can decide to repurpose it into written content and share it across different marketing channels.
You can also turn written content into videos, infographics, and eBooks, etc. and promote it to your target audience.
- Leverage Content Batching
One of the best content creation hacks you can use is leverage content batching. Sometimes you might find it challenging to create time for developing content due to one reason or another; you can use content badging to your advantage.
Content batching involves creating a large amount of content at a go, which is creating much content at a time, usually in a day or week. All you need to do is decide for a time where you create most, if not all, of your content; this could be video content, social media posts, blog contents, etc.
Here are ways to create content in batches:
Create Workspace
The first step to batch create your content is to create a suitable workspace to do your work. You want to make sure that you remove all distractions to be most productive. Get all your work material in place and set your working time.
Set Attainable Targets
The next step is to set targets you can achieve easily. Don't set unrealistic targets you can't achieve, which might leave you stressed out and affect the quality of content you produce. Setting targets involves deciding on the number of contents you can produce for a limited set of time.
Create your content
Here, you create content you have decided to produce. This involves creating a content draft and then editing them.
Integrate content into your calendar
After creating your content, the next will be to integrate them into your content calendar, specifying the time when they will be published and promoted to your target audience.
- Automate Repeated Tasks
Another content creation hack to produce quality content on time is by automating tasks you repeatedly do. This saves you lots of time, allowing you to produce content with good quality; you can do this by using templates to create your content.
If you regularly create content like blog posts, emails, videos, etc. you can make use of premade templates to make your job easier. There are lots of templates you can find online to help you achieve this.
Conclusion
As a content marketer or creator, you want to make sure that you churn out content on time without sacrificing quality.
These 6 Content creation hacks will help you achieve this by saving you time, making you productive to produce quality content.
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