Is your content mindful?
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Much like Mom and Dad, we can’t pick favorites.
The four stages of content creation—research, creation, distribution, and analysis—are equally important.
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you better do ‘em all.
In the marketing game, one thing’s for sure.
Making refined, lead-generating content takes a very specific set of skills.
Before we get rolling, what exactly is content creation?
At its core, content creation is about generating ideas, crafting content that resonates with your audience, and sharing it on the right platforms.
Last week, we wrote a blog about content creation and why it matters. For this newsletter, we’re going to go a little deeper into the four stages of content creation. Here we go:
1 - Research everything. Study your competitor’s strategies. Review your industry’s past several years and its future projections. You’ll need to know the person you’re trying to sell to better than you know your best friend, too. But keep from getting stuck here. Even the best of us have been struck by arrested development in the research stage (i.e., procrastinating by way of “looking into best practices”). Keep it focused—keep it moving.
2 - Creation—the fun part. Once you’ve done your homework and you know your audience’s needs, remember them. It’s easy to get lost in the sauce of perfecting a design or pontificating on your area of expertise in a thought-leadership piece, but for the love of all things decent, remain focused. Your content needs to align with the research you’ve done. Keep your target audience in mind, and create with one purpose: to provide value and solve problems, making your content indispensable to your audience.
3 - Distribution is key. Next you have to pick the right medium, platform, and channel for your content. Each has its own purpose. For example, to ensure people discover your website, a blog is essential. For building a connection with your audience and sharing your business journey, focus on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and TikTok. The same goes for Pinterest, Snapchat, the oh-so-wonderful Substack, and everyone else.
4 - Analyze and then analyze some more. Once your content is out in the world, you can pack it all up and go home. That was a lie, but it was a lie that brought momentary comfort, no? The work goes on. Is your content doing what you’d hoped? Driving traffic, generating leads, building a loyal audience, etc. Look for your content’s strengths and areas for improvement, then tweak your strategy based on that. Wash, rinse, and repeat from here.
And there you have it—research, creation, distribution, and analysis, the four stages of content creation.
Skipping any of these stages is like building a house with no foundation.
It might look pretty for a while, but it won’t stand the test of time.
Ready to learn more about the importance of content creation?
Of course you are. You’re still reading.
Lucky you, we’ve got all the ins and outs of content creation in our blog.
It’s worth the read—your content (and your KPIs) will thank you.
Before you bounce, share this post with someone who stays in the ideation of creation.