How to Plan for a Content Creation Strategy

There are many content marketers who struggle with content creation. This is usually due to a lack of strategy or knowledge about content marketing in general. The best way to improve content marketing is by planning ahead. By creating a content plan, you can ensure that your content will meet the needs of your target audience and accomplish your business goals.

There are many content creation strategies that can be used to help grow a business. There is no “one size fits all” strategy, but here are some general guidelines for content marketing success:

Decide on the content type you want to produce (e.g., blog posts, infographics) and the topics you will cover
Consider what your target audience wants
Establish content frequency (e.g., weekly or monthly)
Create an editorial calendar with specific content ideas mapped out in advance.

In this blog post, let’s explore the importance of planning as well as what steps need to be taken when planning content from a content creation perspective.

B2B Marketing News: Influencer Marketing Climbs 42%, B2B Purchase Study, LinkedIn’s Group Identity for B2B, & Record Ad Expansion On Tap

LinkedIn Shares 2022 Predictions on B-to-B Marketing, Sales Intent
Signals of buyer intent will form a new form of currency even — or perhaps especially — in uncertain times, and the importance of zero-party data has increased — two of several insights contained in recently-released B2B marketing prediction data from LinkedIn (client) of interest to digital marketers. Adweek

Budgeting for 2022: Marketers’ Email Spend Plans
Some 37 percent of marketing professionals expect to spend more in 2022 for email marketing efforts, with seven percent planning to boost spending by more than 15 percent next year — two of several statistics of interest to online marketers contained in recently-released survey data. MarketingProfs

How to remove bias from AI models [Forrester Report]
Knowing where and when to rely on artificial intelligence and recognizing when the technology isn’t appropriate are more important and nuanced judgements than ever, according to newly-released Forrester report data examining bias in AI. Tech Republic

https://www.toprankblog.com/2021/12/b2b-marketing-news-121021/

Best of Whiteboard Friday 2021: How to Explain Domain Authority to a Non-SEO

Search ranking factors

Someone searches. They type something into a search engine. They see search results. Why do they see these search results instead of something else? The reason is: search ranking factors determined that these were going to be the top search results for that query or that keyword or that search phrase.

Relevance

There are two main search ranking factors, in the end two reasons why any web page ranks or doesn’t rank for any phrase. Those two main factors are, first of all, the page itself, the words, the content, the keywords, the relevance.

Links

It’s links. Do these pages have links to them? Are they trusted by other websites? Have other websites kind of voted for them based on their content? Have they referred back to it, cited it? Have they linked to these pages and these websites? That is called authority.

Link quality

Also important is the quality of those links. Links from sites that they themselves have many links to them are worth much more. So links from authoritative websites are more valuable than just any other link. It’s the quantity and the quality of links to your website or links to your page that has a lot to do with whether or not you rank when people search for a related key phrase.

https://moz.com/blog/how-to-explain-domain-authority

Google Shares New Guide to User-Generated Content Considerations for Google Advertisers [Infographic]

Google has published a new overview of Google Advertiser requirements for user-generated content, which relates to the types of UGC that advertisers need to consider on any platform where they run Google Ads.

As explained by Google:

“User comments are a great way to drive discussion and engagement around articles. But if a publisher wants to run ads on pages where user comments appear, all of the content on those pages – including comments – must follow our Publisher Policies. Publishers are responsible for ensuring that comment sections, forums, social media postings or anything else that users generate on their site or app are compliant with our Program Policies. This content is also subject to our Publisher Restrictions.”

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/google-shares-new-guide-to-user-generated-content-considerations-for-google/611206/

Stop Juggling Content Creation – Follow This 5-Step Planning Process

1. Development

Using your messaging architecture or value propositions, figure out the right content or stories you want to tell. Remember, don’t think containers or channels. Think ideas – bigger ideas and stories.

For example, a financial services business wants to be a thought leader to owners of small- to medium-size businesses. A suggested strategic idea is developing content for a blog post about why SMBs need or should partner with other SMBs or to offer up easy-to-understand ways to get knowledge on financial and other sophisticated concepts.

2. Creation and production

When content creation and production get underway, you must have a planning process to manage that work. Using the calendar, assign resources (including the team) to create the content and produce all the related designs and outputs.

Remember, you’ve already planned the multiple outputs coming from the central content. In the example, you know the core and secondary content that need to be created. Now, you’re planning the specifics around that content creation – the writing of a script for the video series, developing the visual content to be repurposed for social posts, scheduling the industry influencers for interviews that could be used for the video series and subsequent blog posts, etc.

3. Merchandise

Think of this step as the internal distribution of the content produced. If you have planned well, you are creating lots of assets from big ideas, and your publishing schedule looks forward. In other words, because you’ve been planning, you are likely completing assets that may not be published for weeks or even months.

4. Activation

There’s an optimal order to putting your content into the market. It ensures that you not only publish the core piece but also update any relevant content that’s part of it. You schedule the organic promotion of that content with other promotional content. You can align with other groups that may be doing the same thing. Put simply: You need to make decisions about what, where, and why things will be promoted.

5. Measurement

In this content planning process, you determine the decision-making process for how you will determine measurement. It’s about creating the planning process – who is responsible for tracking the metrics, who is accountable for getting the numbers, who will be consulted, and who needs to be informed of them.

https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2021/12/content-creation-planning-process/

Google Updates Search Results For News Stories On Desktop

Google changes how search results for news stories are presented on desktop by grouping together multiple results for the same story.

This update is now in effect, which brings news results on desktop in line with how they’re presented in Google Search on mobile devices.

In an announcement on Twitter, the official @GoogleNews account states:

“Now, when there are multiple stories related to your search, we’ll organize results by story so it’s easier to understand what’s most relevant and you can make a more informed decision on which specific articles to explore.”

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-updates-search-results-for-news-stories-on-desktop/429500/

Three Top Tips to Ensure Your Website Can Handle More Traffic

1. Website Hosting

Shared hosting plans may also come with strict rules about your allotment of the shared server capacity. Instead, consider a virtual private server, also known as a VPS. While more expensive, these are dedicated servers, which are better suited to handle high-traffic websites without compromising performance.

2. Site Speed

First impressions count, and if your website doesn’t load quickly, they will quickly move onto a competitor. Your authority, trust, and reputation will in turn suffer. Make sure you optimize and compress any large files and images, and run a site crawl to check for elements of your website that are not efficient. You may also consider hiring a website developer to help you optimize your site for performance.

3. Security

Securing your website will not only increase the trust your consumers have for your business, but will also help prevent any malicious attacks on your website which can have severe consequences for your business. With more users coming to your website, you face increased risk of falling prey to a cyber attack.