7 Steps To Creating Amazing Marketing Content

Creating amazing marketing content

Anyone can sit down and write a ‘standard’ blog post, they could even whip up a ‘great’ piece of content marketing if they’re lucky… but creating ‘amazing’ content, that takes time, dedication, and effort. It requires an in-depth understanding of your audience, goals, and your own personal talent. However, that’s not to say you can’t do it! Read on for our 7 steps to creating amazing marketing content.

Before you begin, take a long hard look at what you actually want to achieve with your Content Marketing. Develop goals in order to guide your content creation process, and refer to these goals throughout the project to ensure that you stay on track.

1. Identify Your Audience

You can’t create outstanding content without first understanding who’s going to read it! Use tools social tools like Facebook Insights or Google Analytics to gain valuable insight into your audience’s behaviour and interests. These are rich resources of information, so ensure you spend time exploring these channels further! Segment your audience into different categories and target specific content types to these groups for maximum impact.

You can use tools like Buzzsumo, to analyse the people who are sharing relevant content related to your brand. Simply input topics or key phrases related to your industry and record who’s sharing the top-performing content.

2. Content Marketing Outreach

Once you’ve uncovered who you’ll be targeting, you can begin interacting and ‘building relationships’ with relevant people. Research and connect with media partners, bloggers & influencers who can help promote your content to your target audience. Find mutual interests around content and draw up a win-win agreement.

There are a number of ways to connect with your audience, including engaging with communities, both online and offline such as relevant blogs/forums, social groups or meet-ups, conferences and lectures. Establishing your presence in these communities give you a better chance when it comes to successfully getting content picked up and shared. Sometimes the best thing to do is to ask the journalist/blogger/publisher what kind of content they’d be looking for to speed up the process. Clarifying what content key influencers are interested in, will give you a strong indication of the kinds of topics, formats, or platforms you should be covering and using.

3. Content Inspiration

It can be hard to come up with great content ideas without researching what has and hasn’t worked in the past. Carry out industry research to developing ideas and find inspiration with these online tools – Buzzsumo, Subreddits, Mention, & Followerwonk. Identify top themes and topics that you should be following, ensure you record it all in one handy Excel spreadsheet, so you can refer back to them easily. Another great way to come up with ideas is to find a problem to solve! Identify small issues within your industry, and develop content that solves these dilemmas.

It’s important to remember that any idea has the potential to be a great one, even if it’s something that’s been done before. You can always adapt and differentiate your content by tailoring it towards your specific audience, or expanding upon existing information.

4. Goal Alignment & Validation

Weed out the bad ideas and select the cream of the crop to ensure that you’re creating relevant, shareable content. Do they align with the goals you want to achieve? If you can’t validate your idea then don’t proceed. Ask yourself whether these ideas fulfill your audience’s needs, will your audience be interested in this type of content? Is this content marketing easily shareable? Will it help your brand achieve its goals? Are the ideas ‘on brand’, do they fit with your brand’s values? It’s easy to get attached to your own work, so having an impartial opinion will also allow you to validate your ideas without bias. Once your ideas have been validated and aligned to your goals, you can begin the creation process.

5. Content Creation

When it comes to creating amazing content, you’re only limited by your imagination & budget. Don’t feel limited by your skillset – if you’re not an illustrator or videographer, there are always freelancers or agencies (like the team at GDR) who can help. Decide which format(s) will work best with each idea, and utilise the relevant talent. There are a number of major content types to consider:

Written Content – includes, but is not limited to; Blog posts, Guest features, Interviews, Surveys/Quizzes, Newsletters, FAQs, or Whitepapers.

Visual & Interactive Content – such as Illustrations, Memes, Apps, Charts, Infographics, Videos, Gifs, Maps, or Microsites.

6. Proofing

You’re close to the final hurdle now. You’ve watched your ideas grow and develop into awesome content, and you’re ready to share it with an active and interested audience. However, before you succumb to the excitement and hit publish, take a second to pause and review.

It’s important to have an external source proof your work. Get a colleague or paid service to check for any spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors you may have missed. It’s well worth having an expert do this properly, they’ll not only spell check but will be able to offer constructive comments on how to maximise the readability of your content, ensuring the best possible product is delivered to your audience.

7. Publication

With the final piece proofed, it’s time to unleash your creation into the world! Think about where and how you’ll be publishing your content, externally and internally. Include social media platforms, email communications, adding to your blog, and reach out to the guest bloggers, influencers, media partners you’ve connected with, user-generated content websites like Buzzfeed, etc.

Don’t feel limited to one option, your content can always be repurposed and redeveloped to suit different sites and platforms. When publishing to external sources, ensure that the platform is not only relevant to your users, but also frequented by the people you’re targeting as well. Evaluate your social media feeds using their free insight tools to see when your users are most active, and use this data to influence your publication dates and times.

How can GDR help?

Now you know where and how you’ll be publishing your content, it’s time to unleash your creation. Promoting the content, and engaging the influencers you’ve collected will be covered properly in a later blog post, but for now, don’t forget to seed the content via social, and continue to engage with the influencers and communities you’ve connected with. Need help with your content marketing then why not get in contact with one of our experienced, local team today.

We’d love to help!