6 Content Creator Tips: Get the Most Out of Your Marketing Efforts

When you started your business did you realize how much time and effort would go into being a content creator?

Chances are, unless you are a Social Media Manager, you thought you'd help people with your products or service and spend your days working your business, not being a full time content creator!

Marketing is a necessary evil, but effective content creation can be overwhelming.

The goal is for your content to be informative, relevant, engaging and for it to move your ideal customer along the path to doing business with you. This post will give you some tips to market in a way that gets you results.

You'll want a balance of "long form" content that ranks higher in organic traffic, generates more leads and converts people into buyers, and "short form" content to fill your social media sites, grab attention for a short period of time, and move your audience along the customer journey. 

What is long form content?

Long form content covers a topic in depth and answers the questions of your audience is searching for. 

You'll find varying suggestions around word length for a blog post to meet the long form definition, but since the average first page result in Google is 1890 words, we are going to go with that.

Don't fool yourself into thinking that short form content is easier to create and more likely consumed with the fast paced lifestyle and limited attention span these days.  

A well researched post, video or product page that informs and engages your audience is worth its weight in gold. Here's a super informative example of long form content.

You've done the research and the creation. Simple systems, organization and planning will let you quickly and easily create short form content for more than one platform from your hard work.

Think of long form content as the "Ultimate Guide" or "Everything you ever wanted to know about XYZ." It's the front end hard work that pays off in oodles of short form content you can repurpose to your other platforms.  Well worth your time and effort on the front end!

What is short form content?

We all know that attention spans these days are dropping faster than the stock market.

Short form content is usually brief and easy to consume.  It can come in many forms and its goal is to quickly convey easy to understand information before your audience gets distracted. 🐿

The ultimate goal of content marketing is to attract that perfect fit client. Your short form content can be just what they need to hook them into wanting to find out more. Perfect for those who don't know you and/or your stellar offer yet and need short bits of content to warm up to your brilliance.

What is the customer journey?

The customer journey is the path or steps a customer takes from beginning to end in their experience with your brand.

Understanding the kinds of thoughts, questions and problems your ideal customer has and creating content that helps them move to the next step toward doing business with you is the KEY to increasing revenue and nurturing customer loyalty.

It's time to plan out a content strategy that will have you creating a steady flow of relevant content to keep your audience engaged, educated and moving along the path to ultimately doing business with you:

REPURPOSE WITH PURPOSE

Take the time and effort to create in-depth quality content (long form) and it will allow you to quickly and easily repurpose it into smaller chunks of content (short form), social media posts and short, more specific mini blog posts.

1. Create your long form content:

• Blog (over 1890 words)
• Podcast
• Webinar
• Video (over 10 minutes)
• Ebook

2. Break your long form content into short form content:

• Instagram Images and captions
• Facebook Post
• Videos (under 10 minutes)
• Tiktoks
• Infographics
• Short blog post under 1000 words
• Weekly email

USE A CONTENT PLANNER

There's nothing worse than having great ideas for content, doing the research, plotting out your keywords and hashtags, then being completely overwhelmed in disorganization!

I use a content planner template that systemizes the process from idea, to research, to long form creation.  It allows me to keep track of everything in one place, rather than my previous system of sticky notes, screenshots and composition notebooks.

I'll be posting soon on how to build a content calendar to get more done in less time.

BE STRATEGIC

Strategy plays an integral role in successful content creation.  Take the time to plan what, when and where you are going to share your content.

Your content calendar planner will give you ninja marketing skills by focusing on your customer journey and knowing exactly what post to move your dream client along the path from gobbling up your incredibly useful and relevant content to whipping out their wallet and becoming a raving fan. 

BE PRODUCTIVE

You got into business because you have a passion and a product or service that will serve others, right?

You probably didn't get into business to spend hours upon hours creating social media content!

1. Make a plan:

• What are the topics your audience is most interested in?
• What steps do they take from just learning about your business all the way through to hitting the buy now button? 
• What kind of content does your audience prefer?  
• What platform(s) do they frequent?
• What content will you create and when/how will you publish it?
• What keywords and hashtags will help get your content seen?
• What will you work on this week?

2. Get organized:

• Do you have one place you house your plan, research and marketing assets? (I have used Trello in the past, but have fallen in love with Notion)
• Can you quickly and easily put your hands on everything you will need to create your content or is it spread between computer files, screen shots, cloud storage and sticky notes in the bottom of your purse?
• Are your images and graphic design collateral in files and tools you can easily access and quickly find what you need? (I use Adobe Stock, Unsplash, Pixistock, Creative Market and Canva)
• Do you know what seasonal posts, holidays, selling seasons are 60-90 days out? Get your ideas into a content calendar and you'll never again be panic posting at the last minute because you didn't realize Black Friday was next week! 

3. Batch and Sprint:

• Batching content entails grouping like creative activities together in one sitting 

- writing all the short captions

- collecting the images

- creating graphics in Canva

- filming videos

- researching blog post ideas

- scheduling out posts for the next week

• Sprint work entails setting a timer for at least 25 minutes, turning off ALL distractions and not stopping the work until the timer goes off.  Save so much time by getting your brain in the flow of the work you are doing without the lag of context switching from one task to another. (I use the Forest App to stay focused) 

4. Schedule it:

• Use a scheduler to plan and push out your content. Not only will it save you tons of time, it will give you stats on how well your posts are performing. (I use Planoly and Hootsuite, but have heard good things about Later.)
• A scheduler will help you re-purpose content you have posted in the past that performed the best.  It's perfectly ok to "re-post" content and you should because with algorithms these days only a small percentage is seeing your content as it is.  

RESEARCH + USE KEYWORDS

Keyword research is an important part of your content creation strategy. Don't spend time creating content that no one is searching for.

Your research will inform you as to what people are typing into search engines to find websites and services like those that you offer. 

Doing your research and creating content based on your findings will have you popping up higher and higher in the search results.  Check out my favorite SEO Specialist, Sarah Buchanan-Smith.

BE CONSISTENT

A big part of being a content creator is having consistent, high-quality content. You don't want to be the artist who releases one great single, then disappears for years at a time.

It's important to set up systems and processes that will help you stay consistent with your work schedule (even if it's just once per month).

Here are some tips to help you stay on track:

• Find what works for you. Some people like making videos every week while others prefer writing posts once a month or even less frequently. Whatever works best for you, do it!

• Get organized. Staying organized will help keep your mind clear and focused when it comes time to create new content. Keep track of ideas and projects so nothing slips through the cracks!

• Set deadlines or targets for each project so there's less pressure when creating something new—but still enough motivation not to procrastinate too long before finishing an assignment

 Are you ready to get your marketing game plan together?

I encourage you to take some time to make a plan around what you want your main content topics to be about.  Brainstorm sub-topics and then go do some research into your keywords and begin putting together a plan to create long form content that is broad and answers the questions your audience is actively searching for.  

Next, break that down into short form content to repurpose that work into social media posts, short blog posts, quick videos.  

If you work in sprints and batch your tasks, you'll speed up the time it takes you to churn out content.

Say it with me, "Yes Kelly! I'm going to start kicking ass in content creation with a plan!"