5 Best practices to make sure your content NEVER sucks again.

Content is KING. (or is it?)

I’m sure you’ve heard (or read) this cliche phrase multiple times. It’s what everybody says.

But, in my experience, this is not always the case.

Content doesn’t always equal greatness. Especially, if the content is downright crap.

From the beginning of my content creation career, I’ve seen an insane amount of content, that didn’t serve any purpose, except wasting space.

So today, I’ll tell you about 5 best practices to follow, when creating content for your business or brand.

1. Always keep your reader in mind. ALWAYS.

In other words, don’t be selfish when creating content.

First, find out what your audience wants. What problems do they have, that you can solve? What value(s) can you add to their lives?

You can do this by either ‘putting yourself in your customers’ shoes’ — aka thinking like them — and/or just performing surveys and social experiments.

The best way to do this is by DMing and emailing people, and asking them. It’s not rocket science.

Be 100% helpful and generous within your words; be it written, audio, or video.

2. SEO isn’t everything.

Sure. SEO used to be the deciding factor for search engine rankings.

Which is why anyone could’ve stuffed keywords into a webpage or an article, and get the website ranked higher on Google.

That’s why guidelines for content writers specifically highlight to not to stuff keywords into the articles.

But times have changed now.

Google doesn’t care much about technicalities like SEO anymore. Instead, they care about what users (aka real people) think of your website and content.

Because in the end of the day, that’s what really matters.

So, don’t fret over SEO and overdo it.

Just focus on delivering value to your audience.

3. Headline matter more than you realize.

We have a very short attention span today. If your words don’t grab people’s attention right away, your content doesn’t stand a chance. No matter how great it is.

That’s why you should pay more attention to your headlines.

Whenever you see a headline that grabs your attention, save it in the headlines section in your swipe file. Whenever you have to create a headline, refer all of those saved headlines. You’ll be able to create the best one.

This is a tactic that’s used by even the best creators.

4. Implement quality standards.

This is a rather simple, but often overlooked concept.

Your visitors may make it to your webpage, but they won’t stick around, if your content has errors like misspellings, broken links, outdated information, etc.

And don’t forget the speed of your website either.

Also, if the content is presented in a sloppy way, you wouldn’t be able to get your message across to your audience.

5. Publish content frequently and consistently.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, most successful B2B content marketers deliver content frequently, while the least successful ones do it less often.

Here’s the deal.

It’s very easy to be forgotten in this world, with all the noise. If you’re not putting your face and brand name in front of your followers, you’ll be forgotten.

Constantly creating content helps you to retain — and increase — the attention you have, by giving your audience something they value; be it advice, information, actionable info, etc.

When it comes to marketing, nothing is set in stone. See how companies update their brand identity from time to time, even when nothing seems wrong. Evolution is necessary. Businesses fail when they fail to evolve. Watch out for the latest trends in content marketing. Find fresh ways to tell your stories and keep experimenting through split and A/B testing.