Everything revolves around content, be it a business or a personal website. Content has one purpose-it educates those who read, listen or watch. But Content must be extraordinary. We may ask what defines an extra ordinary content? An incredible content is created with a plan in mind- It has a prospect and a goal. An amazing content knows who its target customer is and how to solve their problem. But Why would you want to create incredible content? For this we have go back to the age of cavemen? Ummm......., no, just kidding, that wont be necessary. We'll be looking at those pre-internet days. Preinternet days were when outbound marketing thrived. It was all about acquiring physical space. It was literally about who could afford to get the biggest billboard advertisement, whose magazine advertisement was a page long, who had the largest store (well.. this one is somewhat true even for today). competition was for space. Now, lets come back to present day. Today internet has billions of web pages. so space is not a matter anymore. Its the attention that matters. Today content creation is all about gabbing people's attention and a remarkable feat is not achieved by advertising your product to the customers but rather helping them by solving their problems. This help can be given in many forms - Ebooks, blog posts, website, social media, infograpics, videos, etc. So, what do we need to do to get peoples' attention? We gotta build incredible content. Planning Creating, Distributing and Analyzing are the four steps to building amazing content. Now, lets discuss each of these phases. PLANFirst, comes Planning. It is said that 50% of the work is done if planning is done properly and the same applies here. Planning involves defining a purpose for your content. Your purpose might be to attract customers to your website, it can also be used for generating new leads or it might just help customers make a purchase decision. its your task to figure out the purpose of your message and deliver the message in the right format, so the purpose is met. What is the right way or rather which is the right way? Every one is different in this world. You have to understand your buyer persona. If your prospect is a reader then Delivering the information using a blog post might be a good idea; on the other hand if your prospect is a visual thinker then an infographic might serve the purpose better. It all comes down to purpose. When planning it is also necessary to consider the plan from the buyer's/ visitor's perspective. Buyer's perspective will depend on the stage the buyer is in. If a buyer is starting to have a glimpse of his/her problem then plan to have content that will identify the buyer's problem. When a buyer knows his/her problem then the buyer must be looking for options to solve the problem. Then content must be about solutions. If the buyers has several options presented and looking to make a decision then it will time to create a content that points the buyer to right direction or product. CREATEfirst and foremost when creating your content remember to keep the content educational. Visitors are viewing your content because of its value so quality content is essential. Its important to keep your content short and to the point. Length is important but not with the sacrifice of quality. According to a recent report a content with pictures get more views than text only content. Use of infographics have also increased. So, when creating a content it would be a good idea to have a combination of these elements. The content must be presentable. Whether its an e-book, email, blog post, or infographic design matters. You might have a great content but if its not attractive then only handful of people will read your content. Days of those short blog posts are gone. In a study it is found out that lengthy articles or content of about five hundred to eight hundred words are preferable since they create an illusion of credibility and handwork. DISTRIBUTEOK, now you have created your content. But visitors are not gonna come by themselves. You gotta promote your content. You gotta distribute through the right channels. You might choose to distribute your content through your website, you might even create a separate blog for these contents only. The possibilities are endless. The social media sites are amazing for distributing contents. Its always a wise choice to create a separate Facebook page for your blog or website and share your content through your Facebook page. If the article is business related then LinkedIn is a good place to share your content. If the content is infographic then the right place is Pinterest. you can even tweet about your content. Sometimes its a good place to brag about your content. Emailing your content to your clients is never a bad idea, heck, for 50% of the times we use our cell phones for checking emails, other than occasional phone calls. If your content has value to offer than your customers will be delighted. Running out of ideas? I still got some. Place a slider in your website's front page and showcase the recent and most important contents. Place some catchy images in the slider to get the visitors attention. Website landing pages are a great way to show your visitor that you got something new and it might just solve their problem. When you are done distributing and promoting. Check back after a few days or even months. If the content is still relevant, then add some new information, if possible then resubmit and promote again. ANALYSISAfraid of math, bars, figures and charts? Don't be. They are extremely friendly.
Analysis is done to keep track of the contents' progress. If the content is successful and driving traffic to your website and ultimately generating leads then we will want to know why? If the content is not successful, even then we will want to know what went wrong. For these results to show up, analysis must be done. But what to include in an analysis? I am gonna discuss some of the these elements but analysis must not be limited to these.
Analysis lets your determine which methods work and which ones fail. The last step would be to continue to repeat the methods which are successful.
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