Content Creation: 4 Steps to Engage Your Audience and Move Them Through the Funnel

How to create content is a mystery to some. Unlike an artist staring at a blank canvas, digital content creation requires a mixture of creativity, data analysis and business sense. That is, content marketing is all about delivering results.

Specifically, content marketing should increase the profitability of a website.

In recent years, there’s been a massive growth in the popularity of content marketing because it delivers such incredible return on investment:

This works in two ways:

1. Reducing the cost of user acquisition,
   
2. Increasing your ability to convert users into customers.
   

At least, that’s the goal. With that in mind, let’s look at the four steps you can take to create content your customers will love.

Types of Content

Relevant content can take many forms beyond just blogging. Some key formats include:

• Social Media Posts – Shorter textual and visual content tailored to platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
  
• Videos – Engaging and informative videos ranging from quick tips to tutorials and webinars. Optimized for YouTube and social platforms.
  
• Infographics – Visual representations of data, processes, tips, and other concepts. Easy to digest and great for sharing.
  
• Email Newsletters – Regular emails that provide updates, curated content, promotions, and resources to subscribers.
  
• Research Reports – In-depth reports, ebooks, and whitepapers that establish thought leadership.
  
• Interactive Content – Things like quizzes, assessments, calculators, and polls to capture audience interest.
  

Optimizing Content for SEO

When creating content, incorporate SEO best practices:

• Include relevant target keywords in titles, headers, meta descriptions, and content.
  
• Optimize technical elements like URL structure, internal linking, alt text, and site speed.
  
• Format content for readability – headlines, spacing, bullet points.
  
• Follow Google’s E-A-T guidelines by providing expertise/authoritativeness.
  
• Leverage tools like SEMrush and Moz for keyword research and recommendations.
  
• Analyze competitor content and identify missing opportunities.
  

Repurposing and Automating Content

Work smarter by repurposing and automating content:

• Turn blog posts into videos and infographics by adapting the format.
• Segment long-form content like ebooks into smaller blog posts.
• Create an editorial calendar for social media that recycles and promotes existing content.
• Enhance content variety with an online paraphrasing tool to quickly refresh and repurpose existing materials.
• Use paid tools like Jasper and Jarvis to automate content drafting.
• Hire freelancers to help reformat and develop iterations of high-performing content.
  

4 Steps to Content Creation

1. Attract The Right Audience for your Content Marketing

Attracting the right audience to a website is incredibly important. Who are the right people, and how can they be reached? After all, happy leads become happy, loyal customers. Ideal customers or buyer personas are a description of what an ideal customer is.

This involves creating what are known as ideal customer personas. Essentially, this is a caricature of the person who’ll benefit from your products or services.

One element is their demographics, likes, dislikes, goals, dreams, etc. It is the person or the persona you created your products and services for. More importantly, you should understand their core problems and how your content or products can solve them.

Here are some common content creation tools to attract the right audience.

Blogging

A blog is the best way to attract new visitors to your website. A blog is a website with entries or posts similar to a daily journal. Blogs usually include links intended to increase user interactivity.

You must create educational, valuable content that speaks to your target audience so they can find you. Blog posts must be entertaining, consistent and current. Blogs can feature one writer or multiple writers, who may be named or anonymous.

Website Pages

A website is the face of your company and, often, a new customer’s first interaction with you.

So, like any first impression, spend time getting it right. Create an attractive, easy-to-navigate website that will appeal to your audience and make them want to stay, look around, and turn into customers.

Attractive graphics, page speed, well-designed links, current photos, easy-to-read fonts and engaging content are all components of a well-done website.

There are a few variables to consider when designing a website for content marketing. These are:

• Technical performance,
• UX/UI
• Conversion rate optimisation,
• Load speeds
• Design.

SEO

Search engine optimisation sounds scary, but what’s scary about it is that digital content creation doesn’t have it. When looking for something, a potential customer goes to their favourite search engines like Google or Chrome.

The descriptions you use for your company and products are keywords the search engine uses to help the user with their search. It is wise to gather your industry’s keywords and use them in all marketing content.

Sites like SEMRush will help research and fine-tune keywords.

Social Media Presence

Get social and stay social. Social media offers businesses a huge opportunity to reach current and potential customers with their digital content creation.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others are valuable platforms to share tips and trends about your industry, use links to your blogs and website, invite your followers to share your information with their friends and keep your presence in newsfeeds.

Knowing each platform and who is using them is important to the content you share. Consistency is also important.

2. Set SMART Goals for Your Content Marketing

Once you’ve established who you are marketing to, it’s important to understand how you can measure the return on investment of your content marketing efforts. This involves setting clear and actionable goals.

The SMART framework is the best way to do this. Let’s take a look at what this means.

Specific

First of all, it’s crucial to have a clear idea of what it is that you want to achieve. Create specific inbound marketing goals so the team works toward a common goal.

But what exactly is a specific goal?

Let’s take a step back and think about the overarching goal of content marketing. That is, to make more money. As we said before, there are essentially two levers you can pull to achieve: reducing the cost of acquisition or boosting your conversion rate.

Your goal is specific if you can attach a specific target figure to either or both.

Measurable

Luckily, measurability is pretty simple when it comes to content creation. That is, you should already measure your web traffic and the revenue your site generates.

Keep a record of what content was successful and what content wasn’t. Track the money and time spent on campaigns and then review it to see what worked and what didn’t. Specifically, you’re looking for users who enter your site through content pages and carry on to make a purchase.

Achievable

Set goals and expectations that are achievable based on your staff, budget and timeframes and celebrate when they are met. That is, if you have two members of staff and no budget, you probably can’t publish a new piece of content every day.

Instead, setting goals is an important chance to develop a realistic content calendar based on your current resources.

Relevant

Set goals that align with the entire company’s vision and are relevant to what is trending in the industry. Again, the ultimate objective is to make more money. As such, the key is to tie your SMART goals to this.

Timely

Finally, it’s important to have a clear picture of when you’d like to achieve your goals. Create goals around a specific time frame, keeping customers in mind the amount of time to reach the goals and complete the campaigns.

You can also set an ongoing review process to allow for constant and ongoing optimisation.

3. Get Responsive & Mobile Friendly

If your website isn’t mobile-friendly or readable and usable on all sizes of mobile devices, then make arrangements to get it done as soon as possible.

More people are using their mobile devices, smartphones and tablets to do business than ever before. Three reasons you must have a website with responsive design are:

You’re Losing Business

In a recent survey, 61 per cent of visitors to a website were likely to leave if a site wasn’t mobile-friendly. If you still use only a standard website that doesn’t feature responsive design, your customers are finding and buying from companies’ websites who are.

Customers, especially the younger millennial generation, are on their mobile devices for almost everything, and that may include searching for you.

Your Customers Expect It

Updating to a mobile-friendly website proves to your customers you are on trend and current. It doesn’t matter if you sell online or not.

Customers have certain expectations of companies they do business with. Since a website presence many times is their first impression of you, what your website looks like, what content it features and how easy it is to use can make or break converting a visitor to a customer.

Google Will Penalize You

As the world continues to go mobile and be everything on the go, and more and more of our daily activities rely on a handheld device, websites must be responsive to all different sizes of screens.

Google’s goal is to increase search traffic, and those with responsive websites will be rewarded by getting listed higher in searches. Those websites that aren’t will be ranked lower or not at all.

4. Use Creative Calls To Action

Call to action (CTA) buttons are one of the most important components of your website. A great CTA button can direct users, get them to take the desired action, improve conversion rates, and assist your website in achieving its objectives.

Visual cues are common in today’s marketing world, and the button needs to stand out.

It’s almost intuitive for them to recognize clearly marked action words (verbs) so they can easily navigate a website and get where they want to be.

Buttons with call-to-action verbs like “Call Now,” Click Here For a Free Recipe,” Sign Up for Our Emails and Save,” and Read Now to Learn More.” Here are a few questions when designing a call to action button.

• Text: Is the call to action clear, creates a sense of urgency, is short and to the point and communicates value?
  
• Size: Is the call to action button easy to find and recognizable as a call to action button, and is it mobile-friendly?
  
• Placement: Is the call to action button a place that makes sense for the visitor to take action?
  
• Colour: Does the call to action button stand out, have ample white space and feature a tried and true colour? Research indicates that green and orange get more clicks than other colours.
  

Developing a Content Strategy

A documented content strategy aligns creation with business goals. Elements include:

• Audience – Define target reader demographics and interests. Create buyer personas.
• Topics – Identify topics that resonate with your audience and map them to the customer journey.
• Content Types – Determine formats like social, video, and blogs based on resources and audience preferences.
• Distribution – Promotion channels like email, organic search, and social media.
• Resources – Budget, team roles, creation tools and processes.
• Goals – KPIs for traffic, engagement, and conversions that content will impact.

The Content Creation Process

Follow these steps for effective content creation:

• Ideation – Brainstorm topics using mindmaps, competitor research, surveys, and keyword tools.
• Outlining – Structure the content with headings and key points before writing.
• Drafting – Create a working draft expanding on the outline.
• Editing – Refine the draft for clarity, concision, and readability.
• Graphic Design – Insert images, designs, and logos into blogs, videos, and other visual content.
• Promotion – Share and distribute the published content across channels.
• Analytics – Track KPIs and metrics to optimize future content.

Example Content Formats

• Blog Post – 600-2,000 words, focused topic, keywords, headings, 2-3% CTR goal.
• Video – 2-3 minutes long, scene changes every 10 seconds, strong hook, end cards.
• Email Newsletter – Curated content, promotional offers, copy blocks under 250 words.
• Infographic – Visual statistics and information, minimal text, effective graphics.
• Social Post – 500 characters max, engaging photo/graphic, hashtags, tagging mentions.

Content Creation FAQs

Q: How much content should I create?

A: Aim for at least one new piece of content per week. Blogs can be 2x/month, but social posts should be daily.

Q: What skills do I need for content creation?

A: Strong writing skills are essential for other formats like video and graphics partnering with multimedia creators.

Q: How do I promote my content?

A: Share content across social channels. Use email lists—pitch guest posting opportunities. Promote through SEO.

Q: What tools should I use?

A: Grammarly, Hemingway Editor, Canva, SEMrush, Buffer, and Loom are some top options for creation and promotion.

Q: How do I measure content performance?

A: Track views, social shares, backlinks, conversions, and ROI through Google Analytics.

Q: What should my content focus on?

A: Develop content tailored to your audience’s needs and business goals. Mix evergreen and trending topics.

Content Creation Conclusion

Developing a diverse content library across formats tailored to your audience and goals is critical for modern businesses. With the right strategy, promotion, and analytics, compelling content can acquire customers and drive conversions across the customer journey.

If you have more questions about how to create content, or if you need help with your copywriting, content marketing or search engine optimisation – why not reach out to our digital agency team? We are well known for amazing web design and website development, but we are also a leading content marketing agency in Ireland.