Any effective digital marketer knows that implementing a successful content creation strategy takes time. It’s not easy to create compelling, informative content that resonates with your target audience, and so it’s important to get as much value out of each piece of content you create and publish.
To start, it’s helpful to form a general direction for your content creation strategy. This often comes down to determining a number of “themes” for your content, and then coming up with different ideas for each of those themes. Often, these themes are related to the various products and/or services your brand offers.
Let’s say you run an accounting firm. Examples of content themes could be “tax planning,” “business valuation” and “payroll management.” Once you’ve established those themes, you can start to brainstorm content topic ideas that might coincide well with each theme. Consider the most common questions you receive from your clients in each of these areas, which products/services are the most profitable for your business and any trends you are seeing in your industry.
Next, take your topic ideas and run them through Google Keyword Planner. This will allow you to find out if people are searching for particular themes or topics related to your business.
Honing in on your content topics
After you’ve determined the best themes and general topics for your content creation strategy, we suggest using Renoun.io, an effective, easy-to-use and (best of all) free tool that enables you to search for specific topics that could resonate with your target audience. All you have to do is type your keywords or topic ideas into the search bar and Renoun.io will provide you with a wide range of articles from various websites and blogs across the web.
This will give you a better idea of which specific topics for your blog or other content are most likely to have a real impact. There are also similar tools to Renoun.io out there, including Alltop and Blekko. While Renoun.io is our personal favorite, you might find value in the other topic brainstorming platforms available, as well.
Creating your editorial calendar
Without proper planning, it’s easy for a business to let its content marketing efforts fall by the wayside when other, more pressing issues come up. One way to avoid this common challenge is to create an editorial calendar. Simply take your content topics and plan out when you are going to create, publish and promote each piece. You may do this using a simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheet, or you can use a more robust tool like KaPost or Social Cast.
Above all else, maintaining a successful content creation strategy requires an investment of time, sound topic and keyword research and sticking to a schedule. If you need assistance with your digital marketing efforts, consider working with a professional third-party content writing service.