How to Create an Effective Content Creation System

Establishing a great foundation for your content creation is key to getting your content seen by the most potential customers possible. 

Content creation has become one of the most time consuming and demanding functions inside many organizations, and many marketers and content experts have made content creation about the wrong thing – it’s not about quantity – it’s a tool for intentionally generating awareness, building trust, educating and converting. It’s not about creating more demand by creating more content – it’s about creating content with the intention of it to address business objectives.

Below are four core activities that every useful content creation system must contain and some of the tools I recommend to power your content creation system.

1) Develop a content calendar based on keyword research – Keyword research is probably one of the most underutilized tools of the content creation system. If you want to draw targeted traffic to your content you need to know what terms and phrases your target market is using to find businesses, products, and services like yours when they surf and search. 

The following online tools are very useful to help you create and refine your keyword research. Here's a nice list of keyword research tools here.

• Good Keywords free software
• WordTracker free lite version
• WordTracker Pro version subscription-based and very powerful keyword tool
• Yahoo! Search Term Suggestion Tool -free tool that shows search terms from the Yahoo search advertising system
• Google AdWords Keyword Tool search suggestion tool 
• Keyword Discovery – an entire suite of search and keyword tools getting lots of praise

2) Create monthly themes based on keywords – Develop a list of core topics and assign one to each month for the next 3-6 months.

Each topic should be related to your business or industry and represent an important keyword search term or problem that needs solving. Think about your content strategy as if you're creating a magazine. Each month represents a hot topic in what will become a body of work at the end of each quarter or year. 

Here’s an example of a marketing firm focused on small businesses content creation strategy:

• January – Low-Cost Lead Generation
• February – Hiring First Marketing Employee
• March –  Outsourcing Marketing
• April – Marketing As a Process
• May – Getting Found Online
• June – Brand Awareness

3) Create a list of all the types of content you would like to create, and how many pieces on each theme – In this step, simply understand that the body of work above can turn into an asset that serves your organization in the form of lead generating:

• ebooks
• worksheets
• tip sheets
• guides
• special reports
• presentations
• video
• article
• infographic

4) Come up with a plan for repurposing content focused on your monthly themes – To repurpose content is to give it a new life, gain exposure to new audiences and to save you time (which we all know is money).

• Write a blog post on your core topic. For example, 7 Components of a Successful Marketing Plan
• Create an image for each of the 7 Steps and share one tip per day on social channels
• Expand the blog post into 7 separate blog posts – one on each topic
• Combine the posts and add an introduction. Send off to a designer and have it turned into an eBook
• Take the eBook and translate it to slides. You know have your hour presentation.
• Go even deeper and turn the hour presentation into a 1/2 workshop by adding action steps and worksheets to support your presentation.

You now have 8 blog posts, 7 social media posts, an eBook, an hour presentation and a 1/2 day workshop – from one core piece of content.

The best way to make content creation pay is to think very seriously about the value you deliver across the customer journey.