The Secret Sauce for Creating Great Content Consistently

Today, content is the king, queen, and everything in between. Every brand makes use of content to escalate their growth and communicate directly to their customers. More and more businesses are investing in content marketing and setting their strategy in place at this time. Following content marketing trends is necessary for companies today that recognize the role good content plays in reaching new audience sets and getting their loyalty. 

But, curating a great piece of content every single time can be taxing. How can you go from erratically creating mediocre content to developing targeted, high-quality content consistently? Keep reading to find out!

Challenges and advantages of content marketing

Before we dig deep into how you can deliver exquisite content, let’s first understand the challenges and the many advantages content marketing offers. Content marketing is a technique that helps you engage with your target group using various types of content like blogs, ebooks, videos, infographics, and more. Content can help you attract prospects as well as build lasting relationships with them.

Advantages

• It helps you reach an audience that does not trust ads
• It helps acquire customers by keeping the cost low
• It leads to organic conversions and revenue
• It can power your conversations across the various stages of the marketing funnel

Challenges

Content marketing is not magic. You cannot see the results immediately; you have to be patient.

• It is time-consuming, and you need proper resources to make it work
• Finding fresh content ideas can sometimes be difficult
• Creating quality content is time-consuming
• It gets difficult to be different as the internet is filled with innovative content from across the globe

The secret sauce to building a solid, self-sustaining content infrastructure

Make brainstorming a common practice

Brands need to create something different to stand out in the noisy world of content today. The voice of your brand needs to be clear, concise, and distinct from others. For this, you need innovative ideas, and a great way to do this is by having regular brainstorming sessions. Recording these ideas will help you find that one fantastic idea or a few good ones. Not only does this practice keep your team’s brain buzzing, but it also helps in filling up gaps in your brand’s communications.

Set achievable goals

Once you start regular brainstorming sessions, your team will be constantly motivated to innovate, and you will always have an abundance of content ideas. Now, how do you choose ideas that resonate with your brand? The answer is simple, with goals. Be it growth in the number of followers or more organic views on the website; your team will work towards hitting those numbers by setting achievable goals. 

Sure, you may have an idea that could go viral, but what if it does absolutely nothing for your brand? Or worse, it negatively affects your brand. Keep those in check by setting achievable goals that you can show in numbers at the end of every quarter. 

Use technology

From idea generation to organization, today, there are so many tools that can be used by content marketers, writers, editors, and strategists to make their lives easier. AI-powered tools like Peppertype.ai can help generate countless blog ideas within seconds if you face writer’s block. Checklists, templates, and briefs are always available online to help you structure your thoughts better. Writers can always use tools like Grammarly and the Hemmingway app to ensure they’re pushing out grammatically correct content. And finally, project management tools and trackers are a great way to ensure timelines are being met. 

An editorial calendar is key

An editorial calendar keeps track of the content that’s supposed to go out and keeps track of all the steps and people involved. You can create an editorial calendar however you want. It can be on Google Sheets, Excel, Asana, or even Trello. Use whatever works for you but make sure you have one. In many of these platforms, you can record each piece of content and track its progress from one team to another. You can assign deadlines and manage them all together. 

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Repurpose content

It’s not always necessary to produce new content. Make repurposing a part of your content workflow to ensure consistency. This means you can recreate a top-performing blog into a slideshow or carousel on Facebook, or perhaps a video on YouTube. By regularly monitoring your content’s performance, you can create an infrastructure that allows you to squeeze the juice out of every piece of content you create. 

What should an efficient content workflow look like?

Content without a clear workflow means you are inviting inefficiencies. Once you have set a goal and have the resources in place, build a workflow with the help of any of the numerous online tools.

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Examples of content workflows and how they must look like:

1. Create a content outline: Prepare a brief so that every person in the workflow knows their role in creating the content specified by the editor. The outline should have necessary information like audience demographics, keyword research, content structure, and CTAs.
2. Get necessary inputs: In the beginning, it is essential to get inputs from people in various fields. For example, the SEO team may require specific elements, and the design team may add something else. Here, the brief is enhanced to include the necessary H1, H2s, graphics needed and is mapped to the people in the team required for this content brief to come to life. 
3. Creation: The creation process is then much smoother since the brief is clear, and there wouldn’t be many changes once it is complete. 
4. Review: The team must put their heads together and review the completed content. This review process must ensure that the content is without errors and in line with the brand tone. The review process is generally the job of the editor. 
5. Schedule your posts: As a content team member, one must know when the audience is available online. Usually, mornings and evenings are an excellent time to distribute content, but this differs from business to business. 
6. Publish: While publishing your post, it is essential to add the necessary CTAs. These goals will be set in the outline and require it to be added in the publishing phase. 
7. Distribution: Now that your content is live, it is necessary to start distributing it among your audience. You can do so via email, social media ads, search or display ads, or various tools on digital platforms like Youtube Premiere. 
8. Monitoring: Once your content starts reaching your audience, the performance should be monitored. How are people reacting to your content? Are they clicking on the CTA? What needs to be done to improve the search ranking? These questions are answered as the numbers start trickling in.

You can have a workflow that works for your business and the type of content you produce. Having a workflow helps allocate the work to the right people and ensures you always put your best foot forward. 

Some advantages of having a workflow:

• You don’t waste your time on a single piece of content
• Accurately manage your team’s time
• Your team will know exactly what their role is
• It helps enhance the results

This is our secret to creating great content consistently. Being organized and well-structured helps ensure that all content is created smoothly and distributed to the right audience. This structure will definitely play a massive role in building lasting relationships with your audience. 

Content marketing trends you can’t miss in 2021

1. Spark emotions: Keeping your audience engaged for even 30 seconds is a considerable feat in a world that moves faster than nano-seconds. Keep them hooked for 30 minutes, and you’re halfway to being a content God! The secret to doing this? Emotions. Spark the same emotions within your content consistently and watch the magic unveil. 
2. Build a community: Stand for a cause, rally behind a reason and be more than a brand. Build a community around your brand and content—a close-knit network of loyal evangelists who follow your content religiously. 
3. Video: While infusing content with authenticity, let your audience get as close to the real stories as possible. While long-form, in-depth videos are still valuable for long-term strategy, short-form videos gain more popularity across platforms and fast. Go long and embrace short-form video content too. 

Useful content marketing tips

• Stay up to date with the best content marketing tools like WordPress, Yoast, RankMath, BuzzSumo, SEMRush, Ahrefs, UberSuggest, MailChimp, and more. You can also use content generator tools like Peppertype.ai to optimize your content creation process. 
• Create a pool of your best content ideas from an array of sources. Also, listen to your audience carefully. Some of the best content marketing ideas come from understanding the potential customer’s pain points and solving them differently. 
• Find your voice and stick to it. Consistency is vital for enduring brands. Make sure your messaging and voice stay consistent across platforms to avoid confusing your followers. 
• Always track your content. Whom is it attracting? How far and wide is it being shared? Who is interacting with it? What steps is your audience taking after interacting with it? Answering these key questions and more will provide insight and direction, enabling you to take further action. 
• Incorporate both paid and organic content in your strategy. Promote posts that are already doing well organically to reach your ideal audience. 

The secret to great content marketing…is authenticity, trustworthy expertise, originality, and structured consistency. 

But remember, with great power comes great responsibility. How will you use this secret sauce to spice up your content? 

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