11 Steps to creating content that performs for your business

It’s beyond obvious to state that if you run a business today, it’s absolutely necessary to have a blog.

Beyond just being one of the most effective & efficient methods of marketing in helping to build relationships through delivering value, writing content for blog posts can amplify the SEO score.

Which brings us to the topic of the day. You’ve decided to write a blog for your business — but where do you start? You may be surprised to know that writing content is actually just one step in a process to write an effective blog piece. Which is why, we’ve put together a detailed step-by-step process that’s easy to follow and to make sure your content piece is comprehensive and performs optimally as well.

Step1: Content Ideation

The first step in writing your content piece is actually knowing what to write. Content you publish on your blog should never be purposeless. Blog posts should ideally be created on topics that are relevant to your audience, or that they need help with. This helps to get those valuable SEO clicks and build relevance for your business among your audience.

If you don’t already have content topics in mind, you can begin by jotting down your business services and brainstorming common queries you may often come across, and use these as topics to write a blog about. Say for example you run a hairdressing salon and you offer haircuts and perming, your obvious topics would be ‘Types of haircuts’, ‘Our signature haircut process’, or
‘What does perming mean?’

If you need some help in generating ideas, you can also try using the oldest, most reliable and free tool — Google. Start by using the Google Auto-fill function. Simply begin typing something like your service into the search bar and check out the suggestions that pop up. You can also hit enter and scroll to the bottom of the page for the ‘Related Searches’ for suggestions based on
popular searches online.

If that isn’t enough, try answerthepublic.com where you can type in your query and you‘ll find literally hundreds of suggestions based on the how, what, why and other searches related to your query.

Which brings us to the topic of the day. You’ve decided to write a blog for your business — but where do you start? You may be surprised to know that writing content is actually just one step in a process to write an effective blog piece. Which is why, we’ve put together a detailed step-by-step process that’s easy to follow and to make sure your content piece is comprehensive and performs optimally as well.

Step 2: Define your audience

Now that you’ve locked in on a single idea for a blog piece, it’s time to chisel out a definite audience for it.
While it’s easy to imagine a vague audience for blog content (for your hairdressing business, is your audience just about anyone with hair?), it’s more beneficial to zone in on a specific segment. For example, your audience for haircuts could be working women under 30 who are just beginning their careers. Knowing ‘who’ you are talking to gives you a better idea of ‘how‘ to talk to them, and ‘what’ you need to say to them. Define your audience by writing down the characteristics that pertain to the idea you’ve chosen. Common characteristics you might want to note are age range, location, occupation and hobbies.

Step 3: Define the purpose of the content

It‘s time to ask yourself the big question — “Why are you writing this content piece?”. Now this isn‘t to keep you second-guessing yourself, but to make sure your content isn’t just a bunch of words, but an effective tool that generates results. Be sure to ‘begin with the end in mind’ — how do you want your audience to act at the conclusion of the piece? Do you want them to click on a link , or fill up a form , or simply know more about your business? Knowing how your content piece ends is like taking an Uber — once you know the destination, you can figure out the best route to get there.

Step 4: Research topic & keywords

Did you know that people don’t really ‘read’ content at the first glance? On visiting a blog piece, people initially ‘scan’ the page to check for thoroughness and whether it solves their need. This scanning involves checking for relevant words, and how comprehensive the information within the piece is.

Which is where research comes in. Research can make sure you hit all the necessary pointers that would get your reader’s attention, in addition to also making your blog post something that actually contains value, instead of just fluff. Research adds knowledge to your topic, and builds credibility in your favour.

We do our research in the same way most of the world searches — through Google. But what we do differently is in what we search for. We look for credible sources of information to feed facts into your blog post — famous news websites, research consultancy publications, and whitepapers. Our go-tos that cover a wide variety of topics are Forbes, Economist, Forrester, WSG as well as the
insights published by PWC, Ernst & Young, and Deloitte.

Not to mention Google Scholar, that is a rich source of literature and whitepapers by veritable sources. Of course, it needs to be said that Wikipedia should not be considered a direct source — but only after verifying the sources in the articles. Happy hunting!

Step 5: Structuring your content piece

Now that you have the raw information, you would want to put it into a format that’s effective for the purpose intended and that makes for easier reading for your audience.
Structure may be a tricky concept to grasp — but a good understanding can help you create content articles that stand out. Think of structure as the blueprint of your article — what form will it take? Will this form be the most optimised form for your audience to read? Let‘s go through a few popular structures of content articles.

AIDA: Attention-Interest-Desire-Action. Starts off with a hook —a bombastic headline, claim, question or opening to get audience ‘attention’. Then comes ‘interest’ — A realistic piece of information that the audience can visualise and that draws them towards ‘desire’ — that makes them want it. Lastly of course ‘action’ is an effective Call-to-Action that activates interest into a conversion.

Instructional: Step-by-step  instructional articles help audiences tackle problems they might face. Guides that are well-structured and comprehensive can work incredibly effectively to attract organic search clicks to websites.

Listicles: Collections of resources, or of items. Listicles are infinitely useful for almost every category — you’ve definitely seen some around. In the form of ‘Top 10 most essential tools for woodworkers’, or ‘5 favourite hangouts’. Now that you have a structure in mind for your content piece, it’s time to pour the raw material you’ve gathered into the mould of the structure. Begin by jotting down pointers — short fragments of sentences into the form you want it to take. Think through each point and make sure one point flows to the next in a logical manner that would appeal to your reader.

Step 6: Write your content

If the outline is the skeleton of your content piece, writing is putting the flesh on it. Write out your pointers in full-form, elaborating where necessary and including your keywords. Even though this is just a single step in the process, this can take the bulk of the time. But if well done, it pays off. Put in the work.

Step 7: Using Citations & Internal Links

Link in your resources (the reputed ones!) to your content as citations to show search engines that your content piece is reliable, and that it would be useful to your audiences.

Another power move is to build strong internal links within your content that creates hierarchy within your content — distributes authority and rank, as well as helps your audience dive deeper into your brand. Which helps to establish your brand as a credible source of information, and an authority in your service or product.

In both your citations and internal links, be sure to use anchor text that is relevant as web crawlers can rate your content to see if the links are relevant, or to misleading websites.

Step 8: Create a strong Call-To-Action

Now that you’re nearly done with the main body of your content, you want it to have an edge — to be able to incite some action from your audience. That’s what a good Call-To-Action (or CTA) does — leading your audience to take an action whether it’s subscribing to your email list, clicking on a product page or anything else you would want.

Make sure your CTA doesn’t ‘over-ask’ —an effective CTA after a piece of helpful content should not transform into completely salesperson mode. Remember that content writing aims at building relationships with consumers (unlike copywriting). Overtly demanding CTAs run the risk of losing the relationship (think of it like if a new friend suddenly tried to sell you insurance!)

Next you want your CTA to be simple to understand, easy to action and compelling. Which means you should limit your CTA to anywhere between 2 to 8 words and should be self-explanatory to your audience. Think of it as anything from ‘Click here’ to ‘Get your free copy of our e-book now‘.

Another power move is to build strong internal links within your content that creates hierarchy within your content — distributes authority and rank, as well as helps your audience dive deeper into your brand. Which helps to establish your brand as a credible source of information, and an authority in your service or product.

In both your citations and internal links, be sure to use anchor text that is relevant as web crawlers can rate your content to see if the links are relevant, or to misleading websites.

Step 9: Craft Your Headline

Now that you’ve built the entire body of text — you just need to build an irresistible entry point to it. Your headline works to draw in clicks whether om search or from social shares and turn those clicks into conversions. There’s a few simple guidelines for writing attractive headlines for your content piece. (Note: Headline writing for copywriting is a completely different story!)

Use numbers in your headline: It’s a psychology hack, but using numbers can create intrigue and attract clicks.

Use the active voice & a succinct form: Write headlines that denote action, not that are passive. Also be sure to not make your headline long and winding, or else you could lose your audience interest.

Make it believable with a clear benefit: Never make your headline ‘clickbait-ey’. Let your headline create an image of how the reader can benefit, e.g. 9 tips to get your baby to enjoy learning time.

Step 10: Proofread

The last step — quality control. Proofread your entire content piece to fix spelling mistakes and syntax errors (known as typos) or any missed-out details. Here‘s a trick: To proofread your content for quality — read it in your brand voice — even aloud helps. As for typos, try reading it backwards letter by letter — or simply use spellcheck or a tool like Grammarly. Boom. You’re done!

Bonus Step: Publish & Promote

Although not really a part of content writing — it’s an important step in the process of content creation. Publish your content and make sure the formatting is pleasing to the eye. So that it’s evenly spaced out with appropriate H1, H2 and H3 titles marked out for SEO optimisation, and with moderately lengthy paragraphs.

Then once it’s posted — don’t just sit there and wait. Promote your content yourself on social media across your company pages, industry groups, forums and if possible promoted posts. Self-promotion helps gain clicks that get search crawlers to notice your content and launch it into front- page search results.