Content creation is an important aspect of inbound marketing. Without content, you’d be unable to market to a wide variety of potential and current customers. When you create content, you generate ideas that appeal to your ideal customers, creating written and visual content around those ideas and using it to promote your business.

Content creation is important if you want a robust digital marketing strategy because it allows you to attract potential customers and keep current customers engaged. Unfortunately, many businesses don’t know where to start when it comes to generating content. Of course, you’ll need someone in charge of producing this content and a strategy for how you’ll promote it to get more website visitors. But if you want to use content to grow your business, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s discuss where and how to start generating content.

Where to Start

Before generating content, think about where you’ll use the content. A few ideas include:

• Your business website
• Social media
• Email blasts

In addition, you must consider what types of content you need. It’s typically best to have a mix of blogs, videos, infographics, and videos. Generating content is easy if you can put together a team of professionals. In most cases, you only need a writer and a designer. Of course, if you plan to actually promote your content, it’s always best to have a digital marketing strategist involved in the process to ensure you can reach your target audience and your content has the intended effect.

If you don’t already have a blog on your website, you’ll need to consider how to design your blog and the types of topics you want to write about. In addition, you should have ideas for social media and email content that will bring people back to your website.

How to Start

Now that you understand what content is used for and the types of team members you need to start creating content, you can begin strategizing what types of content you want to produce. Some ideas include:

• Blogs

  
  Blogs are an important aspect of any inbound marketing strategy because, when done effectively, they can bring more people to your website. Blog posts educate, entertain, and provide value to potential customers. They’re also used to help your content appear on search engine results pages (SERPs) to boost your visibility online.Many marketers agree that blogging is worth it for every business, but it can be difficult to brainstorm topics and actually start writing. Not only should your website have opinion pieces written by important decision-makers, but it should also contain blogs with product announcements, press releases, and helpful content your audience needs to know about a specific topic.

  If you know your audience and products well, it may be easy to start brainstorming some ideas. However, you can also use the People Also Ask (PAA) section of Google SERPs to help you identify common questions users have about these topics.

  In addition, if you truly want to know what your customers are interested in learning about, talk to your customer service team. There, you’ll find common questions from real customers. Then, with a list of a few common questions, you can begin drafting blog content that answers those questions to ensure your blog is more than company news; it should be geared toward your customers.

• Videos

  
  Visual content can easily be shared across your marketing channels, including on your website, social media, and email marketing. Both short and long videos can be beneficial to your content strategy, so you should have ideas for both. Of course, you’ll also need a production team to create high-quality videos for you.

  Every business needs to utilize videos to communicate with customers quickly and effectively. Good video ideas may include overviews of your products and services, information about your business, or how to use your products.

  The great thing about videos is that you can repurpose your blog posts and turn them into videos with a voiceover or animation to attract your audience’s attention if they happen to miss a recent blog post. This media can also be broken up into shorter videos to help you attract more customers to your website.

• Graphics

  Graphics like infographics, photography, memes, and GIFs are another great way to attract more customers. Whether you sell clothing, pet supplies, or services, you can use graphics to entertain and inform your audience. If you’re not adept at using graphic design tools, you can hire a graphic designer to help you, ensuring all the content you put out looks professional.

• Offers

  Another type of content is offers, which are commonly used as lead-generation tools. If you’ve ever downloaded a template or e-guide, you’ve already had first-hand experience with this type of content. Offers are gated, which means your audience must fill out a form to gain access to them. Of course, your content must also be interesting enough so your website visitors will want to exchange their personal information.

Creating a Content Strategy

Your content must be part of an overarching strategy to reach your marketing goals. Your content strategy should include everything from your brand identity and how you’ll promote and repurpose the content. In addition, you should always keep your audience in mind and set clear SMART goals to help you measure the effectiveness of your content. Finally, depending on your marketing budget, you should add a comprehensive plan on how you’ll promote your content and how much you’ll spend to promote it. There are many ways to promote your content, including social media marketing, display ads, search ads, and email marketing. Of course, your content should be optimized for search engines to ensure it can be found online without the need for ad spending.

When creating content, you must have a process and a team to ensure everything runs smoothly. Since you’ll be putting out new content on a set schedule, having a content creation calendar will let everyone on the team know when their part is due and what to do next. When your content is published, you can continue to measure the results to determine which types of content perform best