Did you know 90% of customers enjoy custom content from their favorite brands?

The modern consumer is complex. They no longer become mesmerized by advertisements. Instead, they rely on educational content to make a purchase decision.

This is where content creation comes in. As an expert, you’re the best person to provide advice and facts for a specific niche. In addition, content helps boost your SEO value and drives more traffic to your website.

All of this helps to bring in leads and sales, making your brand an authority figure.

Do you need more help with digital content creation? Read this guide and understand everything you need to know about content marketing.

What Is Digital Content Creation and Content Marketing?

You know your website needs content. But what are content creation and content marketing?

Simply put, digital content is information expressed in different forms of media. The most common types include audio, text, graphics, video, images, and animations.

Content’s goal is to educate the audience and compel them to perform an action, such as a subscription or a purchase. In addition, most content is made for a specific audience.

Digital content is typically published on a website, social media channel, and is even available as an ebook or a PDF. Depending on the medium, content is expressed in other ways, such as a song.

To ensure your business reaches an audience, you need content marketing. This is using your content as a tool to attract more customers/followers or enticing existing customers/followers.

The Success of Content Marketing

Yes, content creation and marketing help build your audience, engage your current audience, and accomplish a myriad of business goals. But where’s the proof? Here are some statistics you should know as part of your content marketing metrics.

These statistics not only prove content marketing is successful but also help you plan your content strategy by identifying how consumers use the web.

Still not convinced? Here are even more content marketing statistics that prove the success of this strategy.

  • 60% of marketers release daily content
  • 93% of B2B marketers use content
  • 57% of marketers say custom content creation is their priority
  • Unique website traffic rises 7.8x higher with content marketing
  • Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing strategies
  • 39% of a marketing budget is spent on content marketing
  • 82% of marketers who blog see a positive result from their ROI
  • Conversion rates are 6x higher with content marketing
  • 78% of CMOs believe content creation is the future of marketing
  • 41% of large organizations and 48% of small organizations have a content marketing strategy
  • B2B marketers use an average of 13 different content marketing tactics
  • 64% of marketers outsource their content writing
  • 72% of marketers produce more content this year than they did the previous year

These statistics should prove that content marketing is one of the most useful tools you can use.

How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy

Now that you have a firm understanding of content and content marketing, you should know how to create a content marketing strategy.

There are many ways to create and promote your content. In order to find a successful method, you must first know your content marketing strategy.

Here are a few pointers to keep in mind.

Know Your Goals

The first step of every content marketing strategy is to know your mission. This outlines your overall goals for your content — what you want to achieve through content creation and smaller goals that add to your ultimate goal.

Examples of overall goals include more traffic or more sales. To achieve these goals, some of your smaller goals can include releasing a certain amount of articles each week or experimenting with different types of content.

Identify Your Audience

Before you can start creating content, you should be able to properly identify your audience. While every brand uses a specific voice and image for their content, these factors largely depend on your audience.

If you’re creating content to attract consumers, tailor your content to those who are buying your products. Speak to them directly — a popular strategy is identifying a problem and offering a solution.

Even if you’re not selling anything, you should always know your audience and how to create content that’s appropriate for them.

For example, let’s say you run a political podcast. Certain political beliefs attract a specific audience. You’ll want to cover relevant stories but discuss these topics in a way your specific political audience will enjoy.

What if you want a more diverse blog that covers a wide variety of topics? You can still write about diverse topics while still identifying a specific audience.

Not sure who your audience is? Here are other crucial points to consider:

  • Gender
  • Age
  • Income
  • Education
  • Location
  • Language

While these analytics are general, they give you enough of an audience insight to tailor your content.

Plan the Process

Now that you covered your basics, you need to start planning your overall process.

A process helps keep you organized, ensuring you release enough content and it’s of the highest quality. Here are important aspects of the content creation process:

  • Who creates, updates and maintains your content
  • Your publishing schedule or content calendar
  • Any resources you need
  • Your content production workflow
  • Who has final content approval

All of these resources will help you create a process that works efficiently for you and your team.

How to Create Content

Now that you have your strategy down, how do you go about creating content? Here’s some advice to know.

Know Which Type of Content You Want to Create

There are many forms of content. While many brands will benefit from utilizing all content forms in their strategy, different brands will stick to one form of content over others.

In short, content is in audio, text or visual forms.

Content creators have the choice to write an article, host a blog, create videos, or host a podcast. Take a look at all of these content forms and experiment with each to determine the best type for your business.

Create a Topic

One of the most challenging parts of content creation is knowing what to write about.

This is where a content calendar comes in. You think of content ideas and plan when you will release them, so you always have content you can create and release.

Still stuck? Most forms of content follow one of these types:

  • Tutorials
  • How-To’s
  • Guides
  • Case studies
  • Checklists
  • Industry news
  • Expert advice
  • Interviews
  • Reviews

All of these types of content work because they’re educational, useful, conversational, and they can even be fun.

Research Keywords

A good way to decide what to write is by knowing which keywords you’ll use to optimize your blogs.

When web users search for content, they type specific keywords into a Google search. Using high-ranking keywords will help your audience find your content.

But there are many keywords out there. How do you know which keywords you should use? A good keyword…

  • Has high search results
  • Has low competition
  • Has low difficulty

You want to use a keyword that lots of people are searching for. However, keywords get oversaturated. To ensure your content isn’t lost in your competitor’s, a low-competition keyword isn’t optimized by different blots.

In addition, low difficulty is a factor to keep in mind.

Difficulty refers to the number of backlinks a page needs to rank for that keyword. It’s important you choose a keyword with low difficulty so you’re not relying on a backlinking strategy.

How do you find this information? You have to use a keyword research tool. There are many out there that range from free tools to advanced keyword and competitor insight.

Audit Your Blog

Now that you know what you’re going to write, you created your content. Yay — go you! When you start regularly releasing content, it’s time to start auditing your blog.

In short, an audit is an examination of your performance. This is done to ensure what you’re doing is working. If your content isn’t showing results, an audit will help you find areas that need improvement.

Here are some aspects to look for in your audit.

  • Your titles are compelling
  • Your blog design is UX-friendly and your content is accessible
  • You have a compelling CTA
  • Is your blog up-to-date?
  • Does your content align with your audience?
  • Are your subscribers connecting with your content (sharing, commenting, etc.)?
  • Are your co