12 Content Creation Suggestions to Start 2012 With a Bang!
Regardless of how long you’ve been creating content or blogging, there’s always room for improvement. The New Year is a great time to assess your writing and content creation to take it to the next level.
To help you achieve your 2012 content marketing and blogging goals, here are twelve content marketing resolutions.
- Plan ahead. Whether you’re maintaining your personal blog or your corporate communications, you need to be organized. When it comes to content creation, an editorial calendar is a must! This doesn’t mean giving lip service to an annual layout to support your marketing plans but rather having a detailed monthly outline that lays out the over-arching content themes incorporated with events and promotions.
- Read widely in your specific category as well as more generally. Fill your reader with high quality content across your category as well as from your direct and indirect competitors. What topics resonate with their readers? Do they have strong headlines? Are they covering areas that you’re not? Does it make sense to expand into these areas as well? Don’t just limit your reading to other blogs!
- Keep up with the hot trends and breaking news. As a marketer, it’s important to monitor what’s happening in the world and consider if there’s an angle for your organization and/or products. David Meerman Scott refers to this as newsjacking. Remember that this doesn’t mean a rehash of the latest news but rather a new approach that’s relevant to your audience to take advantage of the broader interest in the topic.
- Collect content ideas. Have a place where you can bookmark articles that are useful for new content creation. Jot down titles for potential articles and other related photographs and diagrams. The goal is to have content ready to write before you get to the computer.
- Gather other media for your content creation. Take photographs and bookmark interesting research, graphs and video to use in your content. Remember content marketing goes beyond creating original content. It includes curating and sharing information in which your social media connections are interested.
- Get help from others. When it comes to content marketing and blogging, it’s not necessary to do everything yourself. For corporate focused content, encourage others across disciplines to share the burden of creating an on-going stream of content. Alternatively, if you’re writing an individual blog, consider accepting guest posts.
- Practice writing. Regardless of what level writer you are, it’s important that writing become a habit. To this end, you must do writing warm ups or morning pages every day to keep your skills at their best.
- Streamline the post-content creation process. Whether your content’s distributed online or offline, it requires editing, related graphics and/or photographs, and technology enhancements. As you start the New Year, consider how you can facilitate the post creation process.
- Create related content at the same time. Before you finish the piece of content you’re currently working on, consider how you can extend the information to yield more than one piece of content. This will go a long way to help you relieve the pressure to continually create more and more content.
- Take breaks from your writing. Every one needs to get away. It’s critical to keep your body in peak form so take regular breaks from the computer or wherever you write.
- Exercise your body. While writing and creating content is largely a cerebral pursuit, it takes energy. It helps to be in good shape. Therefore use your breaks as an opportunity to stretch, walk around the block or go to the gym.
- Socialize your content. To help expand the distribution of your content, provide the means to help others share your content. Once a piece of content’s completed, consider where it can be used and/or distributed to ensure that you maximize its potential audience.
Content marketing and blogging don’t just happen. They take hard work and time. To this end, it’s important to create the environment where this process is encouraged.
Do you have any other suggestions for content marketing or blogging resolutions for 2012?
Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen
Note: This post’s title is from:
21 New Year Titles Guaranteed To Pull Readers In
Here are some related articles of interest.
- How to Make Your Content Marketing Best-in-Class [Research]
- Do you know these 5 compelling content secrets?
- Are you a content marketing rock star?
- Content Marketing ABCs
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/garlandcannon/5469279357/
