Over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every single day, which approximately equates to 1.7MB of data created every second for every person on earth.
To put this in perspective, 90% of the world’s data has been created in the last two years! With this dramatic increase in online content every day, it is becoming more difficult for anyone’s message to be heard. If done right, however, effective content marketing can have significant returns for your business.
The key is creating the right content, in the right form, and presenting at the right time to your target audience. Here are SMART tips to create great content that your readers will love!
What Makes Great Content?
There are three main categories of online content:
- Aural: This is content that can be heard on your side like podcasts or songs
- Visual: This is content that can be viewed in the form of videos, infographics, and images
- Text: This is content that is in text format and is read by your readers
To create great content, you want to use a combination of these different categories. A blog post should have about 2000 words with the optimal number of visual images to support and complement your text. A good rule of thumb is having the right category mix ratio. The fewer words you use, the less audio and visual you will use and vice versa.
The reason 2000 words is an ideal number is so it is in-depth enough to offer value to your readers. Valuable content is more important than word count, however. Google’s search rankings put heavy emphasis on sites that deliver high-quality content. Google takes into account the user experience in determining search rankings.
The goal of any content you generate should be to give users the best experience possible. Ideally, Google looks for resources that help people solve a problem, get accurate information, buy products they need, and to find answers to questions they have.
Here are the goals that you should set in order to create great content for your readers
- Most importantly, create great content that resonates with your readers and provides value. Answer the public is a free tool that can help you hone in on exactly what readers want
- It should be well organized, free of grammatical errors, and in short, readable paragraphs
- Have the optimal combinations of content categories: text, audio, and visual
- Both external links to other sites that support your content and internal links to your other webpages
- Use quotes, memes, lists, statistics, facts, and other methods to keep your fresh and exciting for your audience
Think about the type and amount of content you are putting out now. With a few adjustments, you could easily generate a stronger content marketing strategy.
Listen to GaryVee talk about creating 50-100 pieces of content per day.
Ideas for Creating Great Content
Whether you’re an experienced blogger or just starting out, here are the top six ways to deliver your content to your readers.
1. Expert Roundups
If you have a specific topic in mind or you write in a niche area, look at reaching out to experts in your field. They can write a guest post, provide answers to FAQ, and provide valuable information to your readers.
This works in two ways:
- Your article will become a one-stop-shop for those searching for expert opinions and information.
- The experts are likely to link back to the content on your site, helping your SEO and search rankings.
2. Case Studies / White Papers
Case studies and white papers provide highly valuable content by going deep on a specific topic. It is educational and informative for the reader. You can create original content or collate information from other studies. The goal is to give your readers a lot of information on precisely what they’re looking for.
3. Reviews
Before you buy a product or do business with somebody, you go to Google and look for reviews. You could position yourself as an objective and unbiased reviewer providing valuable feedback and evaluations on certain products or services in your respective niche.
4. How-to Posts
How-to posts or tutorials, are one of the most popular posts that you find online. There are many people who have made a living out of showing people how and what to do on YouTube. You can combine video, audio, images, and text to provide a very well rounded how-to post for your readers.
5. Resource Guide
You can create a post with a list of resources and tools to tackle a certain problem or offer advice. These types of posts are helpful for SEO because they attract a lot of backlinks and shares. You can actually use a resource post in conjunction with any other type of post.
If you choose to create a resource guide, make sure you update it frequently since links to apps and tools and pricing are subject to change. When putting together resource lists, this is the ideal time to learn how to start affiliate marketing and get those lists generating income for you.
6. Lists
Lists are one of the best ways to create great content. Readers love lists because they are easy to digest and understand, we well as offer great value. The point is they are one of the most shareable types of content. They are perfect for commentary comments, tips, ideas, images, and even gifs.