Before achieving great things, you need to be planned prepare, and spend enough time. So, if you’re reading my blog, you already understand the marketing value of an excellent content development process.
Maybe you have heard a famous sentence, “Content is King“, or inbound marketing. Have you thought about it what it means and why it is happening?
Because people did research and made their decisions based on authenticity, those days have gone by when over-inflated promises and lies work. What you can do is serve them the content they are looking for. It will help you to address the problems of your potential clients and increase your conversion rate.
Whether you are a content marketer, social media strategist, or marketing expert – you need strong content organized by an excellent content development strategy.
You will get the following benefits if you go with an optimized content development plan:
- Establishes visitors’ trust.
- Tailored content for different types of readers.
- Wider audience through higher organic promotion.
- Converts visitors into long-term and loyal customers.
- It helps generate unique, fresh, and competitive content before the deadlines.
Let’s start understanding the basics; then, we will proceed to the process, phases, and importance.
Table of Contents
What is Content Development?
Content development is a strategy in which people research, produce, and publish new and quality information to meet their strategic goals. Their goals can be of different types, but primarily content development is used to build a good connection with the targeted audience to increase the company sales.
Marketing experts recommend writing authoritative, unique, and well-written content and then its promotion on different channels to get long-term benefits. However, it is only possible if you develop the right strategy and plan before developing your content.
Content Development Process
If you’re looking for “Do it By Yourself”, then follow the steps given below:
Gather Information
First of all, collect complete information because the more information and stats, the better results.
It is better to compile information on:
- Main competitors
- Website historical performance
- Target demographics
- Business goals
- Unique information related to your brand/website
You can use Google Analytics and the Search Console to analyze your site data without any charge. But suppose you need to analyze more detailed factors. In that case, you can go with paid tools such as SEMRush for keyword analysis, Ahrefs for backlink analysis, and Moz is considered best for looking at domain authority.
Moreover, try to list down marketing goals, brand voice, expectations, and all other information that can be used for brand awareness, reputation, and marketing. The reason behind collecting as much as possible information helps to make data-driven decisions about the services you’re offering.
Finalize Topics
After gathering the possible information, you need to break it down into different actionable information. Mainly, we look at the organic traffic of top competitors’ pages according to the number of organic traffic. We will also check their backlinks, length, and quality to make a strategy to outrank the competition.
In the example given above, you can see I have entered the “site:thebalance.com” website URL into the content explorer. So, as you can see, content length is not enough, but it ranks on the top of the result because the domain rating is 89 out of 100, and 968 domains are referring to this page.
The higher domain authority is very high, so it is hard to outrank, but we will look for other opportunities. However, you can search topics by adopting alternative methods such as solution-centric keyword research, indirect competitor, and Quora topic analysis.
Make a Strategy
Make a solid content development strategy by building a content strategy and editorial calendar. The exact length of your content is based on the industry and growth goals but try to write two or more 2000-word articles each month.
When you start writing for a website with a good ranking and DA PA, you have to choose keywords with lower competition and search volume. However, you can choose the keywords having more than 50 searches and a difficulty score of 0-10.
But if you want to get more results with minimum effort, you can go with Ahrefs keyword difficulty 0-5 and a monthly search volume of 100+ per month. You will be ranked on the first page of Google by publishing these articles at the beginning.
Search volume and competition vary from industry to industry, but you should write your blogs on the lowest competition keywords and start getting domain authority and backlink profiles.
When you have a decent backlink profile, you can target high-search volume keywords with higher competition. It is also the best approach to start building your backlink profile to maximize the impact of content.
Write
Understand the writing techniques and complete your blogs with more effective and straightforward content according to your targeted audience. If you have a technical audience, you can use pure technical terms to understand the topics. Still, if your audience is not well-qualified or tech-savvy, you have to use more straightforward wording and avoid technical and challenging wording. If it is impossible to explain the concept without tech terms, it is recommended to define them first.
You can compete with the blogs that are ranked on the first page of Google by writing your content better than all other results. It is also recommended to go with visitor-friendly content instead of focusing on the keyword and other ranking factors.
You can be a good writer if you consider yourself a customer and try to answer all those questions a user might be thinking about or searching for while he starts reading your content. If you want perfection in your content, you have to adopt a writing style and facts that satisfy your search intent and force the reader to share on his social media channels.
Optimize & Publish
SEO and optimization are also must-have things like word count, readability, keyword difficulty level, and related keywords, and your content is more attractive for both people and search engines.
Write more compelling content, add proper meta tags and unique titles, and follow other on-page SEO tips to increase click-through rates. Don’t go with high-quality and heavy images because they will cause a slower loading speed and a destructive impact on the user. Use any caching plugins or upload fully optimized content, excluding extra code and resources.
Promote Your Content
You did an excellent job publishing content on your website, but think if no one reads your blogs, how can you achieve your business goals? There are several effective ways to promote your content, as I have explained 600+ advertising and marketing tips to help you achieve your desired results.
As you know, social media platforms have billions of active users, so first of all, start promoting your content to social media users and other community forums and submission websites. All these help you get more visitors to your website and good quality backlinks that help your website be ranked on the first page of Google.
Also Read: Content Marketing Strategies: Principles & Steps
Review & Update
Content development is a continuous process that can be effective if you provide updated information and make content marketing efforts regularly. During this phase, you will analyze your strategies, what worked and what didn’t to gather information, fix old gaps, and develop more effective and quality content.
The ideal content development process is continuous in which you keep an eye on the results and change the content accordingly. So, you can never say that I have published the content, and it is done perfectly; it can only be significantly done if you update from time to time.
Analytics & Reporting
Tracking and reporting the content performance is difficult and requires more time and effort than gaining the advantages of the business goals you have achieved and reconsidering the ones you have not. It consists of two cycles: auditing and updating existing or old content and forecasting and analyzing performance.
Content Development Phases
Define Content Goals
Ask these questions to yourself before writing:
- Which type of content are you going to publish? (Educational, problem-solving, entertaining)
- What is your targeted audience? (technical, experts, professionals, non-tech)
- Where will you post it? (onsite blog, social media, copywriting, guest posting)
- How can you differentiate your content from competitors? (innovative, unique)
- How will your audience contact you or interact with you? (platform or channel)
Research Your Audience
- Pay attention and value to valuable suggestions and customer feedback
- Try to understand the behavior and buying habits of your customers
- Familiarize yourself with valuable tools to attract your audience
Create a Content Calendar
Be proactive create a content development calendar and forget about missing your tight deadlines. You can mention everything about your content, like what content and when to publish. If you start your every task with proper planning, then you will get maximum results. You can easily centralize your content and track the process from all channels. However, it also helps you quickly visualize the content types you’re publishing this week, month, or year.
Improve Your Writing Process For More Efficiency And Performance
- Every proactive professional should design templates for blogs, infographics, charts, graphs, white papers, videos, press releases, and many more.
- Define some guidelines for your writers to make sure they submit their work quality as per your brand style.
- Try different content variations for a different type of audiences and test them to craft a solid content development strategy.
- Analyze the results and figure out which content is generating more visitors or conversions.
Analyze Your Competition
- Study your top competitors and try to find out their best strategies and practices.
- If you think they lack something, then try to avoid them.
- Be a problem solver and don’t give your visitors a reason to leave your website.
- Put value to the audience’s wish list and start writing what your visitors want.
Build a Solid Social Media Presence
- Make your business presence on all popular social media channels.
- Search the ideal publishing frequency and post accordingly.
- Share engaging and viral content
- Engage your customers and reply to them on time.
Adopt SEO Strategies
Search Engine Optimization is the key to effective digital marketing, so it will not be wrong. Follow the given fundamental SEO tips:
- Index your all website content.
- Use a single H1 heading per page and follow formatting rules.
- Keep page URLs as short as possible.
- Produce authoritative and unique content that should be prioritized and ranked by Google.
- Use Paid tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, or Moz and perform keyword research regularly.
Provide Free Content
There are many benefits of providing your content free of cost; in this way, you can convey your message to more audiences and teach them, so they feel empowered and grateful.
Here are the main reasons why should you provide content for free:
- If your visitors leave your website but have downloaded your PDF, they will revisit your PDF file.
- It will help you expand your work by providing downloadable content that will be easy to share.
If you are not getting the actual point, then here are the content types you can consider sharing on your social network and website: Blog articles, newsletters, memes or infographics, email templates, videos, courses, E-books, and others.
Why is Content Development Important?
Either you plan to make a successful content development strategy, or any other project requires you to streamline the processes to get your desired results. Once you can get your processes to line up and running, you will achieve your organizational goals. Well-structured content development models are the best techniques for creating high-quality content. In this way, you can focus on delivering adequate information and making sales.
Content development also stops you from missing your deadlines and eliminates delays and other interruptions that steal time away from making killer content.
Final Words
Finally, it is the best time to start creating your content development plan for your business website. Your business success is based on which type of strategy you have built, your business goal, your long-term vision, and the perfect calendar for a successful brand. If you need any help, write your question below in the comment section, and I will get back to you with accurate information.