Having a repeatable structure for content development is crucial in achieving optimal results while minimizing wasted time, money, and effort.
In this comprehensive guide, you’ll find a wealth of resources and templates to assist you in creating an effective content development process.
Whether you are a seasoned
professional or new to the field, greece whatsapp number data this resource will help you understand and implement strategies that drive successful content creation in 2024.
What is Content Development?
Content development is the process of turning a creative idea into a published content marketing asset. Be it a blog post, eBook, landing page, or news article.
It’s a repeatable checklist of steps and content development teams religiously.
Content development is the key element of a wider content marketing strategy – a documented overview of your content marketing plans pegged to specific business goals.
A standard content development process includes ideation, topic research, content writing, editing, optimization, and publishing, among other steps.
That’s a lot of work. Yet, 58% of marketers have a giant is a good example small (or one-person) content team to serve the entire organization. Most create content for different stakeholders — and need to do it fast.
Without a strong content development process, this goal is impossible to achieve.
6 Steps of a Content Development Process
Content development is a system. As such, it must be repeatable and easy to scale. If this doesn’t sound like your existing content development process, time to change that.
Here are the six main steps of the content development process high-performing content teams use:
- Ideation and topic research
- Editorial planning
- Content creation
- Editing and content staging
- Content promotion
- Content repurposing
This step-by-step guide breaks down each.
1. Ideation and Topic Research
76% of B2B marketers use blogs to distribute new content.
Then, there are media organizations churning industry content at break-neck speed. And professional bloggers running their own (micro)media empires.
What does it mean?
There’s a ton of content on the Internet. Some is good, and some is bad.
As part of your content strategy, you need to figure out which:
- Topics interest your buyers
- Story angles can add to existing conversations
- Content formats help nurture relationships
- Keywords you can easily rank for
In the words of Joe Lazauskas of Contently, you need to identify your content pillars:
“Pillars are the big, overarching topics you want to own.”
Content pillars emerge at the intersection of your audience’s interests and pain points – things they feel strongly about – and your company’s value proposition.
For example, for Best Writing, our pillar topics are high-quality content, search engine optimization, content development, and content marketing.
For your business, it could be financial literacy, Android app development, or adventurous travel.
Once you’ve identified your main content pillars (content verticals), break these into specific topic clusters.
How to Create Topic Clusters
Classify all content ideas as TOFU-MOFU-BOFU.
Top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) content ideas and formats lift brand/solution awareness and introduce different solutions to readers. These include SEO-friendly blog posts, brand-building social media marketing assets, educational video content, etc.
Middle-of-the-funnel (MOFU) assets help move buyers at the consideration stage by addressing their concerns and pain points. MOFU content includes webinars, eBooks, interviews with industry experts, comparison tools, etc.
Bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) content helps seal the deal at the decision-making stages. BOFU content includes case studies, product demos, calculators, personalized sales presentations, etc.
Concentrate most of your content development efforts on TOFU content, which drives organic traffic you can convert into leads. The average conversion rates for blogs in B2B industries stand at 0.5%-1.5%. In B2C, they are marginally higher.
To meet your content marketing goals, you need to harness every organic search traffic opportunity out there, plus supplement it with paid advertising strategies (especially for content promotion).
To find those sweet traffic-generating opportunities, do extensive keyword research.
Keyword Research
On-page search engine optimization (SEO) is a key part of successful content development.
You need to find relevant keywords for your content liechtenstein number pillars. Then augment them with related keywords to increase organic search traffic for your website.
To get started, select a general “parent” keyword.
For example: “content development.” Then use a keyword research tool like Ahrefs to get more keyword suggestions:
Understand the search intent of users by analyzing different keyword ideas, questions, related keywords, and competing articles.
In our case, most people want to get educated on the topic and receive some instructions (so this guide provides just that!).
Some topics might be broader and more ambiguous.
For example, if you want to talk about “third-party cookies,” you can select different editorial angles:
- Write a general explainer without digging into the topic
- Aggravate the invasive and privacy-breathing nature of 3P cookies
- Provide how-to tips for minimizing 3P tracking
- Explain why third-party cookies are being deprecated
- Talk about third-party cookies alternatives for AdTech companies
The editorial angle you select should match your target audience’s interests. And it should drive your choice of related keywords to use in the copy.
For example, if your product is ad-blocking software, you’ll want to make long-form content talk more about blocking third-party cookie tracking and privacy protection.