Master Content Creation: All About Content Marketing

Introduction

In this Blog Post, we’ll be giving you some Key Takeaways and strategies to use in your Inbound Business.

Content Marketing is a way of Inbound, the average adult spends more than 20 hours per week with digital media, thanks to smartphones and tablets. Google also receives over four million search queries per minute.

A lot of effort goes into creating a single piece of content: research, planning, editing, and so on.

After that, there's promotion, reporting, etc. You must publish a large amount of content for each of your buyer personas at various stages of the buyer's journey as a content professional.

This can be time-consuming or difficult, especially if you're working alone.

To make this easy and less time-consuming you can use a Content Creation Framework. If you create a repeatable, organized, and agile Content Creation Framework can make the content creation process more enjoyable and rewarding.

So, What is a Content Creation Framework?

A content creation framework is a plan that outlines which steps must be completed, how long each step will take, and who is responsible for completing each step.

Your team can foster creative ideas in an organized and scalable manner with a framework in place. A framework achieves the ideal balance of autonomy and long-term content sustainability.

Building a Content Creation Framework

There are 5 steps in building a Content Creation Framework.

1. Conceptualizing content
2. Planning a timeline
3. Creating a workflow
4. Reviewing and editing content
5. Organizing and storing content

Conceptualizing content 

Conceptualizing content is to generate relevant ideas for your content offers.

A content offer is something you create and distribute in exchange for personal information such as a name and email address.

Conduct some online research, such as reading blogs related to your industry or reviewing the results of content marketing surveys. Another option is to make a list of frequently asked sales questions or important industry knowledge that your target market would benefit from knowing.

Focus on creating content for each stage of the buyer's journey—awareness, consideration, and decision—as you gather ideas.

Planning a timetable 

When creating a timeline, keep in mind that you'll want to maintain agility while also having enough time to execute your initiatives.

When planning content creation over a quarter, try to have at least two or three content offers in mind, and organize your content according to the stages of the buyer's journey.

Remember your objectives here. Is this quarter's focus on increasing lead volume? Is it improving your sales team's close/win rate? Is it increasing the number of visitors to your blog?

Determine what content you need to concentrate on based on your goals. Plan out what content you'll need and when it'll go live. This will give you an idea of the resources you'll need in-house to create this content yourself. You can also use your goals to determine whether you need freelance assistance.

Along with planning your content offers, identify any company-wide initiatives that will require content support over the next three months. Posts about upcoming events, rebranding information, and new corporate partnerships are all examples of additional content.

Creating a workflow.

 A workflow is an intuitive breakdown of the work involved in content creation. It is the series of steps that a piece of content takes from creation to publication.

Your workflow should make it clear who is responsible for what. It should also specify whether or not external influencers or freelancers will be involved and, if so, in what capacity.

Because there are multiple components involved in creating content, you'll want to be very specific with your steps—even if you're a one-person team. As your content grows over time, you'll have a clear workflow to follow when adding the resources you'll need to produce more content quickly.

Content review and editing 

You must have a review system in place to ensure that your content is accurate, well-written, and consistent with your brand. This review process may involve working with an in-house or freelance editor as well as having an SEO specialist format and update the content, depending on your team's setup.

Use the following seven best practices during the review process:

• Set clear expectations.
• Define roles in the reviewal process.
• Determine a timeline.
• Use a style guide.
• Track edits.
• Manage progress.
• Optimize for search engines.

Organizing and storing content

When you're finished with your content, save it in a centralized location where your team can access it, such as Google Drive or Dropbox. If you have a content management system or CMS, you could also store it there.

Understandably organizing your content is essential for repurposing, reusing, or even finding that content later on.

Remember that your content creation framework should be constantly evolving. Your company's goals will change from quarter to quarter and year to year, so your content creation framework should adapt to those changes.

Furthermore, content marketing is ever-changing. Keep up with industry trends and best practices so you can incorporate them into your framework.

Repurposing Content

Now that you’re familiarized with the Content Creation Framework, now let’s talk about Repurposing Content.

So, What is Repurposing Content?

Content repurposing, also known as content recycling, is the practice of reusing existing content and presenting it in a new format to increase its reach and lifespan. With content repurposing, you can plan for a variety of different ways to share new content as you create it.

Repurposing content allows you to increase the value of your content by transforming it to serve a different purpose, such as converting the messaging from several blog posts to create a handbook or repurposing content from your guide to help you to create an academic video series. The messaging is identical, but the channel or format in which it is consumed differs.

Concept of Repurpose Content

To begin, you may need to modify content to ensure a positive user experience. "What needs to be added, removed, or rephrased?" ask yourself.

Following that, you might be able to combine related or unrelated content to create new value or meaning.

Finally, is there a chance to expand on something you've already done to delve deeper into the subject? Consider a comprehensive big-picture perspective.

Keeping these three points in mind, let's take a look at a tried-and-true method for repurposing content. Please keep in mind that this isn't the only way to repurpose content. This method is especially beneficial for lean content creation teams looking to maximize their time.

When recycling content, consider how a tree grows from the ground up. Every healthy tree has three parts: roots, trunk, and a crown made up of multiple branches.

Consider your roots to be a collection of short-form content, such as blog posts, social media messages, and videos.

Consider your roots to be a collection of short-form content, such as blog posts, social messages, and videos.

The function of roots is to connect — to form bonds with other roots that grow into a tree, which produces a trunk.

Consider the trunk to be a longer-form content offer, similar to a guide or ebook. What emerges from the trunk? Branches. Consider each branch to be a new extension for your content offers, such as a webinar or infographic.

How to Repurpose Content

So, how do you Repurpose Content?

What you need is a long-term goal that you can work toward. If you have a specific goal in mind, such as creating a comprehensive guide, weekly content creation activities such as social media and blogging can play a much larger role in supporting your overall content marketing strategy.

Don't make content just for the sake of making content. If you want to convert your potential customers into valuable customers by attracting, engaging, and delighting them, you should base all of your buyer personas on the buyer's journey.

 Consider each piece of content that adds value to your buyer persona's journey as a seed. This is a plantable seed. And if that seed is consistently nurtured, it will sprout and begin to develop a foundation of roots that will grow into a healthy sapling. If you keep nurturing it, that sapling will grow into a mature tree with strong branches.

Identifying content in the buyer's journey will sow strong seeds for your content creation efforts.

Let's start by identifying the seed to get a better understanding of this concept.

To find your seed, you must first have an idea that you care about and are willing to nurture and help grow.

Step one: Choose a content format and topic.

Know your audience, and use your Buyer's Personas. Keep your goals in mind while doing it. This is the overarching concept or seed for the tree you want to grow. Before you plant it and develop the roots, you must first identify it.

Step Two: Compile a list of supporting subtopics.

The key here is to select subtopics that are strong enough to provide value on their while also complementing the other subtopics that align with the specific topic we're writing about. These are your roots. You'll need these to grow into a strong, compelling offer.

List as many ideas as you can when identifying supporting subtopics. The more subtopics you can identify, the stronger your roots will be.

Step Three: Select the most powerful supporting subtopics.

Select the most powerful supporting subtopics to recycle into your content offer. If you have extra subtopics, you can use them for potential content ideas in support of the overall theme in the future.

If you already have content for one of your subtopics, consider repurposing it in your guide. However, if it doesn't make sense, or if there is a subtopic that has yet to be created that would be more relevant, don't include it in your repurposing plan. Always prioritize your audience over your business.

Step Four: Create content for each subtopic.

Work through each project and document your progress on your primary social media channel before beginning to write each blog post.

You should select the most popular social media channel among your target audience.

When doing research for the content you're creating, make a list of interesting things you think would be useful to share on social media. These could include stats, quotes, or anything else you can explain in a limited number of characters. This is an excellent way to maintain a steady flow of interesting, useful content on your social channels.

Once you've gathered the necessary content for a specific subtopic, write and publish a blog post about it. Embed photos as visual aids throughout each blog post where they make sense and add value.

Repurpose your blog content into a video to enhance the user experience.

Embed the video near the top of the blog post and host it on your YouTube channel. This is a nice added value for readers because it allows them to interact with the same content differently.

Again, the video content tells the same story as your primary social media post and blog post, but in a different content format and on a different distribution channel.

Step Five: Download or create a template for your guide.

Once you have all the content you need to Repurpose it into a guide. This step is pretty self-explainable.

If you're looking for marketing resources and templates for various content offer types, HubSpot's Marketing Resources Library is a great place to start. There's something for every content marketer, from lead generation resources to editorial calendar creation.

Step Six: Recycle blog content and format it into chapters.

Repurpose all of your blog content, social media photos, and YouTube videos to help build the majority of your comprehensive guide.

While you can simply copy and paste the blog content, you should also adjust, combine, and expand on the content you already created to add context and value to the guide.

Consider using bulleted lists in the original piece you create if you want to set yourself up for content that can be expanded on.

For example, using bullet-pointed lists in your blog posts can help people sift through our content. You can also expand that bullet point into several sentences or paragraphs, making it easier to repurpose your content in the future.

Step Seven: Create the rest of the content needed to complete your guide.

Once you've finished your chapter content, all you need to do is write an introduction and a conclusion to complete the guide. Effective writers always leave these tasks until last.

They will help you form your step-by-step guide by nurturing continuous growth of the roots.

And there you have it: an efficient method for synthesizing and recycling a series of short-form content initiatives to create a compelling long-form offer.

Measuring and Analyzing Content

Setting goals and tracking the right metrics for your business will help you determine the success of your content.

There are numerous metrics available that can be used to analyze the performance of your content. You may be interested in web page visitors, time on page, and referral traffic for a blog post. Perhaps you're more interested in watch time, social media shares, and impressions for a video. If you offer a webinar, landing page conversions for registration may be your most important metric.

Numerous metrics influence the success of content, regardless of its type.

Organic Metrics

Numerous objectives can be achieved through content marketing.

You might want to increase brand awareness, gain search engine authority, increase lead generation, or influence customer loyalty, for example.

Organic metrics, regardless of the goal you've set for your content, will play a significant role in its success. Organic metrics allow you to track the effectiveness of your non-paid content marketing efforts.

 These metrics are divided into four categories: web page traffic, social media, email, and conversion.

Organic metrics shed light on two crucial areas: First, they show the performance of your non-paid channels' content.

Second, they reveal the best opportunities for paid promotion. Adding paid promotion to an already proven effective piece of content will maximize your return on investment and optimize the performance of your content.

You can determine the success of your content and promotional efforts by setting SMART goals and selecting metrics that support them.

Paid Metrics

When you have a piece of content that is performing well due to organic promotion, supplementing it with the paid promotion can be a great way to boost its success. The metrics you should monitor in your paid promotion will differ depending on the type of advertisement you are running.

If you're an e-commerce fashion company that has seen above-average success with a blog post titled "ten fashion trends to look out for this summer," paid promotion can help this article succeed even more.

Here are a few key metrics to consider when reporting on the paid promotion of your content.

• Quality scores
• Cost-per-click
• Cost-per-acquisition
• Close rate

Continuous evaluation of your performance as you run your own paid ads will optimize your ads to yield the highest return on investment.

When reviewing your paid metrics, don't forget to compare them to your organic results. You might be surprised at how paid performance can influence organic metrics for your content.

Tracking Conversions

Attribution models are directly related to your content's goals and metrics. There are numerous attribution models available for tracking conversions.

There is no right or wrong way to run a report; it simply depends on what you hope to glean from the data. If you want to understand how all the pages or channels viewed before a conversion affect conversion rates, you’ll run one report. You'll need to run a different report to figure out what happened at the exact point of conversion.

You could even run a combination of reports to learn more about what's going on in different parts of your flywheel.

It is entirely up to you to select the best attribution model for your company based on your goals and the questions you want answering. So start exploring, try out a few models, and use what you learn to optimize your content strategy.

Communicating Content Performance

Communicating the performance of your content relative to your goals is an excellent way to align teams while remaining transparent about your work. Let's discuss content performance in the context of your team, department, and company.

First, make your objectives clear and simple to understand. You want people from all walks of life in your company to understand the work you've done. Use simple language to make it easier for them.

Second, make your objectives clear. By sharing your company's goals, you and your team will be held accountable for the work done to achieve these goals. You can accomplish this by publishing them internally so that your team and other teams are aware of your goals and metrics and can track your team's performance.

Third, use all of the information you've gathered to inform your company's leadership about goal achievement.

Use your goal attainment documentation to demonstrate all of the hard work you and your team put in to propel your company forward.

Conclusion

Okay, I know all this is a little bit daunting but using these Key Takeaways in your Content Marketing effort will bore fruit. Growing your Content Marketing will take time but remember all good things don’t happen all at once. Pace yourself and remember your goals.

Take your time to build your Content Marketing Strategy, build a Content Creation Framework, Repurpose your Content, and Measure and Analyze it. Doing this will give your Content Marketing Strategy a boost and make your Inbound Business thrive!