When it comes to content creation, finding a place to start can be quite difficult. But when looking at what content creation really is, it’s easier to formulate an idea of what type of content to put out there. Neil Patel hashes out the complexities of content creation,
“One of the challenges you have as a content marketer is continually creating new content. You likely don’t have the luxury of running a content site like Huffington Post or Buzzfeed, where you’re free to write anything from cat memes to particle physics. You’re a content marketer, and you need to produce content that your audience (and customers) would search for and enjoy. You have to stay disciplined in your content, as you can only stay within a certain range of topics.”
With that in mind, we’ve all had moments of lull and blocks when it comes to content creation. That’s why in this blog, we’ll cover what content creation is, how to create content, and what types of tools and apps you can use to make your content creation journey easier.
To begin, let’s look at our first point:
1. What is content?
Simply, content is a conversation. It’s a host of ideas and concepts that are put together in such a way to try and communicate to an audience in hopes of resonating with whoever sees it. By opting to connect with an audience, content acts as the first impression, portraying your company or brand’s message.
Getting the messaging right is also important – you must ask yourself the ‘who?’, ‘why?’ and ‘what?’ questions in order to communicate simply to your audience. Without asking the core questions of the brand’s aim or intention, you’ll end up missing out on what’s relevant for any form of content.
- What is content creation?
This brings us to our next point – what is content creation? It is exactly what it sounds like. The fun part is where you create and curate your own content to be shared across platforms that are best suited to your brand. AhRefs describes content creation as, “The process of finding topics to attract your target audience, then planning, creating, and publishing content about those topics.”
In order to get content creation going, it’s good to sometimes look to peers and even competitors to get an idea of the types of content your target audience enjoys. But the best rule to go by is to give your brand its own identity and voice through your social media channels and use the content you create to further amplify that voice – giving your audience a sense of who your brand is and what it aims to achieve.
- The different types of content
A big part of understanding content creation is understanding that there are multiple types of content that you should create to gain the best results out of your work. Content can be trend-based, sales-based, entertainment-based and sometimes even just informational. The types of content that will fill these categories all depend on your content pillars.
Further, content pillars can extend to the forms of content you use such as videos, blogs, gifs, stills, animations, and much more (read more about that here). The platforms you choose to use to post your content will also depend on which type of content performs best per platform.
2. So, how do you create content?
Creating content is different for everyone depending on their specialisations and skillset. For social media managers, content creation is a full-scale job that includes creating copy, imagery, video and then scheduling it and managing the accounts after to ensure that the community and audience are interacting well.
Gather Content published a blog in which they describe how to best create content for your social channels. In their blog guide they discuss content pillars, strategy, and planning your content for the best outcome. Content creation in itself is a relatively “easy” thing to do if you have the right method and process. Following steps to help guide you will make your content creating flow so much better.
At DC Lab, we’ve adopted a process that works so efficiently that our content gets planned, executed, edited, approved, and scheduled at least one calendar month in advance. This type of content optimisation comes from having a team of specialists who work on specific tasks to ensure that things run smoothly. HubSpot has also put together a content creation process that is easily understood through the image illustrated below:
3. Tools you can use to make your content creation journey easier
When creating content, it’s good to use tools and apps that are suited to the formats and templates needed to fit the sizing of the platform you’ll be posting on. Remember that every platform performs differently and will require different image sizing, resolutions, video timing and even format-specific content altogether.
Here are websites, tools and apps that we love using:
1. Canva – for imagery and video creation.
2. HubSpot – to keep track of team tasks.
3. Buffer Scheduling – to schedule posts across platforms.
4. ClickUp – another team management tool.
5. ToggleTrack – a self-timer to ensure that tasks are being done within a given time frame.
Content creation is different for everyone. From the conceptualisation to the execution, not every person creates content the same way, follows the same rules, or adopts the same methods.
To learn more about how we can assist you with your content creation to support your business, contact us today on 083 564 8702 or email wendy@dclab.co.za.
