Content Creation: A Best Practices Guide

Think of content creation as a venn diagram. On one side, you have the audience’s needs. On the other side, you have the brand’s goals. These two sides meet with interesting, purposeful, unique content.

It should be simple to identify brand goals, however, clearly identifying its audience’s needs is more of a process. It helps to take a new point of view: instead of trying to speak to an audience, speak directly to the individuals within the audience. It’s much easier to narrow the message down to key personas when taking this perspective. One way to make sure the brand’s message is getting across to these personas is to make sure their attributes mesh well with the brand attributes. Those consuming the content respond better to content that suits their attitudes and needs. Admittedly finding the right voice for a certain persona across channels is difficult. This article discusses how to target accurately.

Great content has a voice that feels accessible. A one-way communication method between the brand and user is no longer acceptable. Instead, users need to be able to interact with a brand and know they’re being heard. In the distracting, crowed online environment, content like this is used to display why your brand deserves the user’s attention.

Content tips to keep readers happy and interested:

1. Keep it length appropriate for the topic and the channel through which it is delivered. It may be tempting to tell a longer story in a YouTube video where there are no length restrictions, but an ideal time for a video is about 1 minute 30 seconds because it allows viewers to stay engaged.
2. Educate the reader with information that is useful to them and relevant to their attitudes and needs.
3. Bring some entertainment to the table to keep readers interested.
4. Make its appearance visually appealing. Try to separate ideas into properly sized paragraphs, use lists where needed, and pieces like the infographic below to add something extra.

Don’t Forget About SEO!

Lastly, keep in mind that a brand’s content must be easily found by its target personas. SEO helps bring a brand’s pages to the top of search engine results and help readers find what they are looking for instantly. Creating content that meets a user’s needs is key, but ensuring they can find it is of utmost importance. More information on SEO can be found here.