“Summertime” – Photography and Styling by Rachael Honner

What is Content Creation? To clarify, let’s first discuss the basics of Digital Content Creation.

Content creation is the process of developing and creating content for a variety of purposes. It may be marketing, advertising or educational related. By and large, content production is expressed through the following mediums:

• writing
• editing
• formatting
• designing

Content creation will involve one of the below tools, purposely created for websites, blogs, email campaigns, social media posts, and other digital channels. Whatever the chosen context, it should always speak directly to your audience:

• text
• images
• audio
• video or other forms of content

Content Creation can be created by individuals, teams, or organizations, for example, a content creation agency. However you choose for your content to be produced and shared, it should always speak in your brand’s tone of voice and be relevant to the product/services you provide. Above all, the material should sound authentic and not overpromise on any service or product that you or your business offers.

“Sunrise at Samford”- Photography by Rachael Honner

What are the primary goals of Content Creation? “Content Creation” is a key component of a successful digital marketing strategy. It aims to attract and retain new customers, boost SEO, generate leads and build brand awareness

The main goal of content creation is to create content engaging to readers, with the additional goal of increasing brand awareness and driving website traffic. Additionally, it can also do the following:

• Content creation can also help establish a brand as an authority in its industry and help build relationships with partners, customers and other stakeholders. This can be a great way to grow an industry following and have work shared by related businesses that attract quality leads to your website. An added bonus to this is that when another business shares a link to our website or blog, Google rewards our page ranking
• Content should be relevant to a customer’s needs, and interests and written in a way that encourages others to engage with your brand. Also, think about what problems you can solve for your time-poor customers
• Content should also be educational, entertaining, and inspiring. Creative content that includes both imagery and short videos can help reader cognizance and comprehension.
• It should be shareable and timely and provide customers with something of value

Roadside Flowers – Photography by Rachael Honner

Digital Content Creation developed from your Brand’s Tone of Voice

Beware of creating blog posts or social media content around SEO word targets/ phrases. Whilst it’s great to use key-search words, at the same time, these words and phrases can be difficult to read, offer less knowledge and are distracting for your potential customers/ readers. Good SEO takes time to build and aims to find a balance between ticking SEO requirements and growing an authentic audience. Given these points, it’s important to do the following:

• Speak authentically, tell stories and speak from the heart where appropriate
• Create content that is informative, helpful and engaging and written in the professional voice of the services you provide
• Share easy-to-read posts and pages. A word of caution, using an excessive amount of complicated words can be distracting to your readers
• Share helpful knowledge and “How to Guides” about your services/product
• Share an engaging story about your service and the people who work there

“Wadjigu Country”- Photo by Rachael Honner

How to Manage your Content? Because It’s Important to Learn/Grow from Your Posts!  

• Research your audience and plan your topics. Before you start creating content, you need to know who you’re creating it for and what you’re writing about. Take the time to learn who your target audience is, their interests and topics relevant to them
• Create Compelling Content. Once you have an idea of what type of content you want to create, you need to make sure it’s compelling. This means writing or creating content that is engaging, useful, informative and relevant to your target audience
• You also need to make sure your content is optimized for search engine optimization (SEO) so that it can be easily found by your potential customers
• Craft an “Interesting Title”. An intriguing title aims to motivate the right people to click on your content. Make sure your titles accurately describe what the content is about. How to Guides, Power Pages (high-value educational posts with links), 101’s and Emotive (heartfelt stories and authentically shared posts are great ways to engage readership.)

Write a compelling introduction. Once you’ve hooked people in with your title, you need to keep them interested with a strong introduction. Introduce the topic and give people a reason to keep reading by doing the following:

• Stay on topic
• Create a Practical Blog Post – Overly complicated and hard-to-read blog posts rarely consider the reader or respect their valuable time. Be that as it may, building trust with your customers starts early!
• Don’t rely on AI to create written content in your voice – AI tools can be helpful however blog posts written in your unique tone will gain more utility by speaking to your customer in an informative, unique and authentic manner
• Include relevant images and videos – Content shared with visuals is more engaging and can often help drive home points more effectively. Include images, videos and other visuals wherever you can to make your content more interesting.
• Promote Your Content – Once you’ve created your content, you need to promote it. This can include social media campaigns, email marketing, paid advertising and more. You should also consider repurposing existing content to reach more people and maximize your reach.
• Measure and Analyse – Once your content has been published, measuring and analysing its performance is important. This includes tracking metrics such as website traffic, social media engagement, click-through rates and more. This will help you understand what type of content is performing well and what needs to be improved upon.

Content creation can be challenging, but with the right approach, you can create content that your audience will love. Research your topics, craft a compelling title, use numbers to abbreviate complicated content, include relevant visuals and keep your content organized and accurate. And remember, the right tone can make a big difference in how your content is received.