Content Creation Guide: Write Better Content, Faster
Content creation is the process of generating new blog posts ideas that resonate with your readers, carefully structuring content outline, creating content around these outlines, and distributing this content through various formats.
Today’s bloggers and content marketers are under great pressure to produce an increasingly more-in-depth article. The content creation landscape is thus being advanced with every passing of new content.
No one is creating 5 ways to be a better blogger anymore, or five tips to rock the auditions. There are thousands of such content already in the internet sphere.
Any piece of content that is longer than 3000 words in length can be considered to be Long-form content. Unlike the common 500 words blog posts, long-form content requires heavy investment: extensive research, several hours or even days, proofreading and editing, graphics creation, SEO optimization and promotional strategy setup.
I normally aim at creating at least two long-form content a month, but they are super helpful as they get traction quite easily. The only limiting factor is manpower.
Why Long Form Content
Better rankings by search engines. Search engines such as Google love exceedingly helpful content that are super in-depth. If you write an amazing post that tackles the users’ problems at an extensive level, Google notices it and it will rank you higher on search result pages.
Long Form Content are more authoritative. If you ask me a question and answer it in few words, and I get it right, it is implied that yes I do know something about the topic. However, if you ask someone else the same question and she answers it extensively, refers to surprising stats and even gives a prediction on the future trends around the topic, then she will appear well versed and hence her response is way more authoritative than mine.
Blogs who occasionally throw in great long-form content are considered more authoritative and they will earn great loyalty from their readers, who can easily become paid customers for their services and products.
Long-Form Content is timeless. This means, if you create a great long-form content today, it will still be referring great traffic to your blog for the next decades or so without really requiring occasional updates
More Shares. Many content creators are looking for great content to link to. For instance, this SEO beginners guide has been linked to 83000 times so far by 12000 domains.
Apart from backlinks, you get thousands of social media shares with the right promotional strategy in place.
Sometimes deciding what to write can be quite a task. In our content creation experimentation, we’ve found the following types to be quite engaging with our readers.
Content that opens our eyes to bigger things
Content that makes us smile/laugh
Content that brings a totally new perspective to common phenomena
content that takes us back to the forgotten basics
Content that tells a story…. (we’ve got a module on the storytelling approach)
Content that challenges us out of our comfort zones
Content that reveals secrets
Content that outlines exactly how one went about something and achieved results
Content that shows us that dreams do come true
Content that takes us on an exciting ride
Decide on the format.Most long-form content are presented as either infographic or list articles, sometimes combinations of both. Research actually shows that posts that answer the question ‘why’ are great when it comes to long-form content. For capturing leads (email addresses for your subscribers), cheat sheets, eBooks, and whitepapers are great formats to adopt for your long-form content.
Select an evergreen topic to write about.You don’t want to spend hours and hours on a topic that wouldn’t be relevant in the near future.
Start the Content Creation Process. Now, this is actually the trickiest and the most time-consuming step. Long form content can run into several thousands of words, and to keep yourself motivated all through can be harder.
The following sub-steps are helpful.
>>>Develop a detailed outline.
For instance, If you are writing a blog post on Long-form content, then the following could be a basic outline for your post
Benefits/Why Long Form Content Counts
Steps to Creating log form content
Conclusion/In a nutshell
>>>Write Down the main points/subheadings in each section
What is Long-form Content
Long-form content gets better rankings
Long-form Content are more authoritative
>>>> Flesh the skeleton outline.
Now you start writing your blog post based on the outline you have created.
This step also entails several editing to ensure that your article is professional, says what it should say and free of glaring grammatical errors.
>>>>Spicing Your Post
You would want to spice your long-form content with supporting stats, charts, graphs, photos, infographics, screenshots etc.
>>>> Optimizing for search engines.
This is a crucial step to ensure that your long form content is indexed and can be easily found online in the search engine results pages (SERPs)
Content Formats to Employ in Your Content Creation Process
Your own personal research. If you are in the blogging niche, you may want to do a detailed research on why most blogs die even before getting noticed. You do this by reaching out to 100 or so expert bloggers and having their contributions. You then analyze the trends and compile a detailed report, supported by screenshots, graphs, charts, and statistics
Case Studies. Are you offering a service or a product on your blog? Case studies can be very helpful in getting you even higher paying clients. For instance, if you are offering training on freelance writing, then a case study of ‘How so and so went from $40 to $740 a month writing articles after taking Freelance Writing Training”
How-to articles. You can write great explainer articles such as how to for beginners.
List articles. This type of content will be covered in detail on Day 7 module. Some of the great ideas to include in the list articles include ideas and resources, best free and paid tools, top influencers, best books collections, common mistakes eg 11 common mistakes that new bloggers make
Answering Frequently Asked Questions. You can come up with an article on 100 Frequently Asked Questions Answered.
Explaining common concepts in your industry. For example, “100 Terminologies That Every Fashion Blogger Should Know”
Product Reviews. You can write detailed and out-of-bias reviews of the products you are promoting on your website.
Content Creation Formating: Making it Easy for The Eye
With evergreen content, as they tend to be very long, employ the following features:
Employ Minimalist Blog Design in your web design approach
Bulletins and numbered points
5 Types of Visual Content You Should Include in Your Blog Posts
The Importance of Digital Marketing in Growing Your Business
8 Insightful Instagram Marketing Tips for Beginners
and updated on: March 13, 2021	