Consistent content development isn’t always easy.
But you know it’s important to build your brand and business.
To stand out, your content needs to be original, relevant, and compelling.
These days, your target audience is bombarded by ads all day. A 2017 report showed 615 million devices had an adblocker installed.
That’s why high-quality content has become an important tool for organizations to earn the attention of their target audience. This is where blog posts, videos, emails, and social media updates can make all the difference.
But content development requires effort and time.
Even if you have the time, coming up with original content day after day is challenging.
Fortunately, there are six simple steps you can take to ensure consistent content development.
These strategies are promoted and used by top web content creators and writers.
1. Process First
An easy way to ensure consistent content development is to develop a process.
For starters, try to batch all the tasks associated with content development, e.g.:
- Day 1: brainstorm ideas
- Day 2: research and outline content
- Day 3: content creation
- Day 4: schedule content
The entire process is less daunting once you break it into chunks. Here’s how I published a new blog post each week by spending only a short time on each task.
So if you’re writing a blog post consider starting with your headline on the first day. Beginning with your headline may help you structure your post, too.
Brian Clark, in the Copyblogger eBook, How to Write Magnetic Headlines, says:
“A headline is a promise.”
(But some writers write their headlines after their drafts; you’ll find a process that works for you.)
To map out your content development process, list all the activities you need to complete. Next, schedule each task.
2. Know Your Audience
Can you guess one of the most critical roles for content development teams in 2020?
The position of audience development manager makes the list, writes Robert Rose for the Content Marketing Institute’s blog.
And it’s true, content development must be guided by what your audience’s needs. This applies to your overall content strategy; but it’s necessary on a granular level, too: each post should be solving a proven audience need.
Digital marketer and entrepreneur Neil Patel says understanding your audience is the only marketing strategy you need.
“Putting your customers’ needs first can help improve relationships with your audience and retain customers.”
Neil Patel
When it comes to content, you want to solve a problem for your target audience.
What do they need help with?
Use a tool like Ahrefs or Ubersuggest to see popular searches.
BuzzSumo helps identify top performing angles.
When coming up with ideas for your piece, consider these questions courtesy of writer Henneke Duistermaat:
- Who are you writing for? What are their concerns and goals?
- What action do you expect your reader to take? What is the purpose of your content?
- Why should they believe you? What makes your content credible? A track record? Research?
3. Consume Information
A simple way to stay inspired is to stay updated with your industry.
Consider this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
This might be industry talks, research, or conference papers.
You could, for instance, check the topics of upcoming panel discussions. What’s your industry talking about?
For quick news updates, tools like Pocket, AllTop, and Feedly, will aggregate stories across topics.
You may find that an insight from one article ties in with an observation from a recent research paper or conversation.
Inspiration strikes frequently when you connect these ideas and experiences, said Steve Jobs.
“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.”
ACTION TIP: Keep track of ideas, figures, quotes by taking notes on your phone or notebook
4. Use Writing to Develop Your Content
Of course, ideas are an important part of the content development process. But the power is in how you express them.
The best way to explore these ideas is through writing. You’ll find as you work through various drafts, your thoughts start developing.
In the Language Sciences journal, Richard Menary, then a researcher with the Department of Philosophy at the University of Wollongong, said writing is thinking:
“…there are two complementary senses in which writing is thinking, firstly there is the sense in which the act of writing is itself a process of thinking. Secondly. There are the enduring products of this process – the vehicles of thought – written sentences.These vehicles are manipulated in a variety of ways and these manipulations are further examples of thinking in action.”
Neil Haave, an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta, built on Menary’s theories. Haave says we produce new thoughts during the act of writing through a combination of physical and mental processes:
So writing is not simply a way to record our thoughts:
“The act of manipulating the thought vehicles (sentences) is a way of manipulating our thinking by integrating different ideas—it produces thinking: Writing is thinking. Thus writing is not just about enhancing memory and recording thoughts—it is not simply the recording and transmission of information, though it does play that additional role. Rather, when writing sentences, creating new sentences and moving the contained phrases and container sentences around in new structures, the writer is actively thinking, bringing ideas together in new ways that illuminate each other in a manner unknown until that moment.”
ACTION TIP: Try to include a regular writing slot in your week. Here’s a few writing routines for famous authors for inspiration.
5. Create and Share
The next part of the content development process is to create your content and share your work.
If you’ve done your audience research, you already know where to find your audience online.
As mentioned above, you could create a short social media post based on your longer form content. Or perhaps if you’re on LinkedIn or Facebook, you know videos perform well on those platforms. Then you could turn your content into a video.
Key for amplifying your post is an understanding of your audience and the platforms they use.
Good sources to supplement your own research include:
- Statistia
- We are Social
Experiment with your content delivery. Some industry experts suggest optimal times for posting on different social networks. Test whether or not this is relevant for your audience.
6. Evaluate
The beauty of digital content is that you can access real-time analytics.
What this means is you can study which formats generate the most engagement. Or, perhaps certain hashtags help to increase visibility.
Study the data and use it to refine your content development strategy. Here’s a detailed article from Search Engine Journal on the role of data in content development. (It’s no surprise that audience research leads the list.)
Consistent content creation can be challenging. But it’s worth the effort, both for you and your target audience. Start mapping out your content development process right away; then you’ll be on the path to regularly producing compelling content day after day.
Featured image credit: Photo by Alexa Williams on Unsplash
