Steal Our 7 Step Content Creation Process & Copywriting Formulae
This is a comprehensive guide to learn how to scale content creation.
The best part?
I will teach you how to write epic blog posts that drive long-term revenue with minimal marketing, no connections and limited hours.
If you’re looking to increase awareness of your business, generate leads or build a brand using content, then this guide is for you.
Ready to dive in? Let’s start.
Table of Contents
What is Content Creation?
Content creation is the process of creating new content as well as maintaining and updating existing content. Typical forms of content creation on the web include blog posts, website copy, images, video, emails and other kinds of written content.
Initially, content creation was merely about SEO writing. As long as your content had the desired keywords, ranking in Google was easy.
Over time, competition on the internet has grown. There are millions of blog posts that get published daily.
Writing your next hit content marketing piece requires you to have a plan and process to follow.
The content creation process for websites includes:
- identifying popular topic ideas that appeal to your buyer persona.
- determining your strategy including keyword.
- deciding which form of content best suits the user’s intent.
- creating content that moves the prospect closer to buying.
- publishing the content making it accessible to your audience.
Once you have a well-established process, you’ll want skills such as writing attention-grabbing headlines, copywriting techniques, adding high-quality images and illustrations, to backing the claims in your piece with well-researched data-points.
Even then, your content might fail to cut through the noise in the market. That’s why it is important to understand the type of content you should create for your business.
The Purpose of Content
Before you start producing any content for your business, it is essential to understand why you need content for your business. Simply put – you need content to create influence.
And it is marketing that converts this influence into action.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen with 1 blog post but by creating a flow of content that subtly inspires your prospects down the path of your sales funnel.
Is it hard?
Yes, but it works.
If you’re able to:
- master creating content at scale that generates influence.
- follow it up with marketing that converts influence to action.
- course-correct your content strategy in time for future success.
Then you’ve built yourself a money-making machine that converts prospects to customers on autopilot.
How To Do Epic Content Creation At Scale
A content creation machine only makes sense if you’re able to produce content that creates influence, content that I refer to as “epic”.
How do you write epic content? Using a copywriting formula.
Introducing AIDA.
This stands for:
Attention
Interest
Desire
Action
If you look closely at the start of this post itself, you can see AIDA in action.
AIDA isn’t the only copywriting formula you can use. There are others like:
- PAS – Problem, Agitation, Solution
- AIDAS – Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action, Satisfaction
- TIREA – Thought, Interest, Risk, Engagement, Action
- REAN – Reach, Engage, Activate, Nurture
- NAITDASE – Need, Attention, Interest, Trust, Desire, Action, Satisfaction, Evaluation
- PPPP: Promise, Picture, Proof, Push
There are many such copywriting formulae that you can see at play from top writers on the internet – Seth Godin is one I learned a lot from.
We will dedicate a post specifically to cover copywriting techniques in the future.
Coming back to building your content machine, here’s my step-by-step approach.
1. Instead of planning content one by one, plan a series of content pieces together.
Eg. If you’re trying to attract prospects who are interested in ‘content marketing’, you’ll plan your content for each stage of the funnel.
Awareness ~ Prospect looks for educational content.
Eg. What is content marketing?
Consideration ~ Prospect looks for solutions.
Eg. How to do content marketing?
Decision ~ Prospect looks for content that sells a product/service.
Eg. 10 traits of a good content marketing agency
2. Create an outline of your content before you start writing the post.
The right information architecture makes or breaks your content. A series of thoughts in the right order can turn a not-so-appealing content piece into something enticing.
Eg.
The information architecture I used in my “good example” is:
What it is?
(This is Bob. Bob has a girlfriend.)
What it does?
(Bob doesn’t cheat on her. Bob loves her. Bob is loyal.)
What to do?
(Be like Bob.)
The key takeaway here is to ensure that the flow of your content follows a logical order. That’s why creating an outline always helps.
So plan your story before you start writing.
a. Introduction
Keep it short. Max 100-120 words. Use your target keywords in the first few sentences.
b. Body
Make it easy to skim with clear bullets and numbering.
c. Conclusion
This section is meant for your TL:DR; (too long, didn’t read) visitors. Make sure you summarize the key takeaways from your post.
d. Your Cliffhanger
Make sure you call out your next piece of content at the end. This preps your readers on what you’re going to cover next. This works like a teaser and keeps your readers waiting in excitement for your next blog post.
3. Find your influence triggers.
The purpose of your content is to generate influence. Once you’re done with the outline, it is time to figure out the triggers that can help you build influence.
There are millions of blog posts published daily. In order to cut through the noise, you have put across something that adds a differential value instead of just delivering value.
Good isn’t good enough anymore. Find a unique angle and strive to be GREAT.
Here are some buckets to help you figure out your unique value proposition to build influence in your next blog post:
Be The Showman
Tell less. Show more. A real case-study always helps.
Think Novelty
Find something new on the topic.
Build Authority
Interview authorities in your niche or take permission to use their “quote” in your blog post.
Cover Scarcity
Use the information asymmetry in your niche to your advantage. When you share information that others would normally charge for, your prospects begin to see you as a thought-leader in the industry.
Gather Social Proof
Before making your post public to everyone, it is smart to send it to the people you trust first and ask them to write a few comments and spark a dialog in the comments section. This encourages the readers who follow to participate in the discussion and that translates to more social proof for you.
4. Learn pro-level editing tips.
Master the use of power words.
Words that create a visual in your mind or say something more desirable.
Example 1:
Plain Title: How to Easily Improve your Website Loading Speed?
Better Title: 27 Hacks To Make Your Website Load Like Lightning
Lightning creates a visual.
Example 2:
Plain Title: Why Virtual Summits Are So Powerful?
Better Title: Why Virtual Summits Are Going To Be A Game-Changer For Your Business?
Game-changer is more desirable.
Write shorter sentences and remove words that create noise noisy words.
Example 1:
Bad: It’s fun to edit.
Good: Editing is fun.
Example 2:
Bad: Smoking is the cause of cancer.
Good: Smoking causes cancer.
Want more examples? Here is a masterful post on editing tips by Shane Arthur
5. Become an expert in on-page SEO
- Use your target keyword in the first 100 words.This post itself is one such example.
- Use Images, GIFs and Videos to enhance your content wherever possible
Add the ALT tag to images. Use the ‘Captions’ field to add ‘Image Credits’. And use ‘Image Title’ to add meaningful context to your image that shows up on a mouse hover.
By default, search engines like to rank multimedia content.
– Headline generates interest.
– Image captures attention.
– Video holds the user.
This helps boost user signals by increasing ‘Time on Site’ and reducing ‘Bounce Rate’. - Follow DRY framework (Don’t Repeat Yourself)
Optimize the Headline / Title for better copy while you optimize the URL slug for better SEO.
Title: How to buy the perfect pair of jeans? (Optimized for copy)
URL: /jeans-for-different-body-type (Optimized for keyword) - Use Tables
Using tables in your content includes the <table> tags in your html which improves the overall quality signals of your content.
<table>
<td>
<tr></tr>
</td>
</table> - Link to authoritative sites from your content
- Use your target keyword in the first 100 words.This post itself is one such example.
Maintain a quality backlink profile with diversified anchor texts which will help you get over your competitors fast. Tools like Linkio will help in monitoring the backlinks and optimize the anchor texts for maximum benefits and stay neutral.
- Use a “Table of Contents” like Wikipedia. This divides your content into various sections and shows extra site links on your search listings.
- Write long-form content
The right article length may vary depending on your niche. You can check the top ranking results in your niche to get the idea on the right length of the post.
However, it usually pays to write longer 2,000+ words for better SEO. This is one of the key tactics shared by experts at our Content Marketing Success Summit. Register for your free ticket.
6. Use pro-level writing and SEO tools to improve your odds of success
Grammarly – It is an AI-powered writing assistant that helps correct the spelling and grammar in your posts. You can download the free Chrome extension to get started.
AnswerThePublic – Just enter your keyword and it will suggest content ideas in seconds.
Ahrefs – Study your competitors to find content gaps to fill.
7.Use a robust process to track your content production and keep all the writers on the same page.
To stay at the top of your game, you must follow a robust process.
We use the Content Production Tracking Sheet at Entrepreneurs HQ to manage our own content creation.
Content Promotion via Minimal Marketing
If the content creation is out of the way, then give your content a boost with minimal marketing.
- Facebook AdsSince the organic reach of your Facebook page has considerably reduced with the feed algorithm changes, hence, it is smarter to support your content with a small budget to give it a slight push.Create a specific target audience on Facebook (Not too specific nor too broad) and then just boost your post with $5 USD.If the post resonates with your audience then you’ll keep getting organic reach to your Facebook post even after your Facebook Ad budget runs out.
- Use Facebook Instant ArticlesThis is a one-step setup and will enhance the experience of Facebook Users consuming your content as it loads blazing fast.If you’re using WordPress, you can install a free WordPress plugin – Instant Articles for WP and follow the instructions there to quickly setup Facebook Instant Articles.
- Use Push NotificationsOnesignal offers a free plan for web-push notifications. Beginner bloggers can get started with a free plan and use a paid plan later as their audience grows to send more customized and frequent notifications.
- Email Opt-in FormsOpt-in forms allow your prospects to sign-up for new updates on your website. For instance, you can use scroll triggered opt-in forms that show up when the reader has scrolled at-least 50% of your content.
Tracking Content Success In The Future
How do you determine the success of your content?
Common business logic says that it is your content’s ability to drive revenue.
So publish content that makes money and track revenue per visitor to determine the success of your content marketing.
As it turns out though, this conventional wisdom is wrong.
It took me years to figure out that any success metric that relates to revenue is a trailing indicator. By the time you measure it, it is too late to do anything about it.
It’s not page views, unique visitors, social media likes and share counts, or even ranking your content on the top of Google search.
They are all good, but mostly vanity metrics.
Then, what is the right metric to track?
Is there a number that you can measure and track daily that tells you whether the content you’re doing right now will help produce revenue for you in future?
Yes.
It is the ability of your content to inspire the reader to take action – drive the prospect to the next stage in your sales funnel.
Therefore, it is wiser to track the actions that users take after reading your content than the end-metric itself.
So remember to measure the success or failure of your content by its ability to get the prospect to take the next step.
If the process breaks somewhere, as it certainly will, improve the content and marketing in the corresponding funnel stage until you can get the prospect to take action.
There are so many more variables that I could have touched upon around scaling content creation such as how to hire better content writers, how to pay your writers so that they get incentivized to continually create better content, and maybe more.
I will touch upon these in my future posts. You can sign-up here to get notified.
And I would conclude by saying that it is your content that creates a connection with your customer segment.
Epic content will create better connections!
