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Content Creation Process 101: Tools and Strategies for 2024

Creating great content takes time. You need to get the writing and formatting just right, and wait for traffic to start coming in and engaging with your work. Despite that, quality content remains the best tool you have to bring in new users and to keep them around.

The approach to creating content varies across different websites and largely depends on your personal preferences and target audience. Nonetheless, there are certain recommended techniques that you should bear in mind whenever you are developing new content, irrespective of whether it’s in the form of text, audio, infographics, or any other medium. By adopting a few simple strategies, you can increase the likelihood that your content will perform well.

In this article, we’re going to walk you through some of the best tools and techniques for content creation in 2024. Let’s get right to it!

📚 Table of contents:

  1. Identify your site’s audience
  2. Choose the right keywords
  3. Plan a content schedule

1. Identify your site’s audience 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

First and foremost, you need to have a clear idea of who your site’s main audience is. By “main audience”, we mean people who meet the following criteria:

  1. They’re interested in your site’s niche.
  2. They want to keep updated about what’s going on in that niche.
  3. They want to connect with others who share similar interests.

The more targeted your content is, the more traffic and engagement it should bring in. If you create content without a specific target in mind, you run the risk of putting effort into articles, videos, or other pieces that no one will want to see.

To ensure that your site’s target audience is crystal clear, we recommend that you build “personas”. Those are imaginary profiles of your ideal users, including details about their interests and demographics. This enables you to create content designed specifically to fit their needs.

If you’re not sure who your target demographic is, one great place to start is with analytics. You can sign up for a service such as Google Analytics, and use it to collect information about who your visitors are. Analytics tools will reveal valuable data about ages, locations, and interests that you can use to zero in on a target audience.


2. Choose the right keywords 🎹

When it comes to keyword research, one common mistake users make is focusing on the most popular search terms. Doing this can mean your content is too generic, and ends up lost in a vast sea of competition.

Instead of simply opting for the searches with the highest traffic, here’s what you should be on the lookout for:

  1. Searches and questions that are relevant to your audience
  2. Queries that bring in decent traffic, but aren’t overly competitive
  3. Searches related to keywords that you’re already targeting

There are plenty of tools you can use to see what people are searching for across the world. One great place to start is with Google’s Keyword Planner (which is free and beginner-friendly).

When you log into Keyword Planner, you’ll see options to discover new keywords and get search volume metrics. Click on Discover new keywords:

Using Google Keyword Planner to discover new keywords

On the next screen, enter a search query that you want to use as a “seed”. Keyword Planner will take that query and help you identify related keywords. Make sure to specify the proper language and audience location here as well:

Discovering new keywords with Keyword Planner

Afterward, Keyword Planner will return a list of related terms, including search volume and competition estimates. For relatively new blogs, we recommend focusing on low-competition keywords:

A list of keyword ideas from Google Keyword Planner

From here, your goal is to identify the keywords that will resonate most with your audience. Also, keep in mind that Google Keyword Planner is not the only tool you can use for this type of research.

Other platforms, such as Semrush and Ahrefs, tend to provide more in-depth traffic volume numbers and competition information. However, most keyword planning tools require a premium license, and they tend to be rather expensive (for example, a basic Ahrefs license starts at $99 per month).

One notable exception to this is LowFruits, which not only has relatively affordable monthly pricing, but also offers pay-as-you-go plans. These are a great option if you are on a budget and don’t need to research massive volumes of keywords. It’s a great keyword research tool that is worth your consideration.


3. Plan a content schedule 📅

A few hours spent using keyword research tools often translates to dozens of potential keywords and content ideas. Focusing on only one of those ideas is a wasted opportunity.

What you should be doing is making a list of all the keywords you’d like to target, and using that to come up with content ideas. The next step is to take those ideas and put them into a content calendar. This can be something as simple as:

  • March 21st: Publish a post on how to repair bikes (Keyword: How to repair a bike)
  • March 28th: Publish a post on bike maintenance tips (Keyword: top bike maintenance tips)
  • April 4th: Publish a roundup on bike maintenance tools (Keyword: top bike maintenance tools)

The goal of a content calendar is to help you put your house in order. By planning ahead, you can begin researching and writing well ahead of time. Plus, laying out all of your content in a calendar will help you identify ideas you might have missed.

In terms of frequency, publishing content often is best. However, unless you have dedicated content creators, publishing blog posts more often than once a week means you’ll need to dedicate a lot of time to the process.

It’s far better to stick with a doable schedule, such as one blog post each week or bi-weekly, rather than to be inconsistent. A consistent schedule means that visitors will know when to check back for new content, and won’t worry that your blog is dead.


Conclusion 🧐

A structured content creation process will help you publish posts, videos, or even podcasts more efficiently, and will result in an overall better content offering for your readers. Making a clear plan and sticking to it can also yield more favorable engagement and help your website grow faster.

⚙️ Here’s the basic content creation process we recommend for blogs in 2024:

  1. Identify your site’s audience.
  2. Choose the right keywords.
  3. Plan a content schedule.

Do you have any questions about how to build your content creation process? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!

John Hughes

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