Creating digital content is easy. Anyone can send stuff out into the world with just a few clicks. But at a time when people are exposed to anywhere from 76 to 10,000 ads per day (depending on where you look), creating content that actually reaches and resonates with your audience calls for a lot more consideration.
In this article, I’ll take you through all the essential tips, tools, and things to avoid when creating digital content in 2024.
But before we get stuck into the nitty-gritty, let’s take a quick look at what digital content is and why it’s a must for your business’ success.
What is digital content, exactly?
Digital content is an umbrella term for any information that’s created and shared in a digital format. That means if you’re listening, watching, playing, or reading something online, it can be considered a piece of digital content.
Some examples of digital content include:
- E-Books, blogs, articles, and newsletters
- Podcasts, music, and audiobooks
- Short videos, movies, TV shows, and live streams
- Games, apps, and software
- Social media posts, comments, and messages
- Websites, landing pages, and ads
If you really want to set up an effective marketing strategy, you should aim to create a diverse selection of digital content that fits with your target audience’s online behavior.
Why you should create content for your business
Great digital content creation can help you drive brand awareness, connect with a global audience, and convert those connections into sales. To put that into perspective, digital content generates roughly three times as many leads as traditional marketing methods like TV and out of home!
Here are just some of the other factors that make digital content creation important for businesses.
Trust and authority
Sharing consistent, high-value content online positions your brand as a reliable source of information in your industry. This builds trust with your audience and encourages them to consider your products or services in the future.
A more meaningful connection
Creating helpful, educational content for your audience shows them that you understand and care about their needs. This can help build a stronger relationship that sets the stage for long-term customer loyalty.
Memorability
We spend more time online than ever before. So, dropping great content into your audience’s social feeds and email inbox can keep your brand or business top of mind for the next time they need to make a purchase.
Five ways to make sure your digital content performs
So you know digital content is a big deal for your business. Now you probably want to figure out how to build a strategy and master your content creation process.
1. Put your audience first
Before you even begin to think about tools and techniques for content creation, you need to know who you’re talking to and where to find them.
Taking the time to understand your audience’s behavior, thoughts, and needs will help you produce and share content that truly makes them tick.
After you’ve done some market research, you can use a buyer persona template to bring your findings together and paint a clear picture for your content team.
2. Get your content seen
Content creation is a competitive game. So simply hitting ‘post’ and hoping for the best probably won’t bring brilliant results for your business. You need to take some extra steps to make sure your content is visible to potential customers.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of researching relevant topics and keywords to use in your digital marketing. This will make sure you show up at the top of people’s search results when they’re looking for information related to a product or service like yours.
There are lots of great SEO optimization tools you can use to help you create content seen by more people. I’ll tell you about my favorite one a little later in this article.
3. Stay consistent
Being consistent in the online world requires your brand to post regularly and create content in a consistent style and tone that sticks to your brand guidelines.
When your audience can easily identify your content across different platforms, it reinforces your brand image in their minds for better recognition. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t break the rules once in a while when you see fit.
Here are some simple tips that will help you keep your content on track:
- Create a content calendar – This is a practical way to plan and schedule when and what to share on each channel.
- Have a trusty set of guidelines to hand – Be mindful of things like tone of voice, color palette, fonts, and design elements for a recognizable online presence.
- Interact with your audience – Social media sites are the place for conversations with customers. Make the most of this opportunity by responding to messages and comments as promptly as possible.
4. Choose the right kind of content
Your brand and your target audience should inform the kind of content you create.
Let’s say your target demographic leans towards visual content. Then it’s a good idea to invest in eye-catching graphics or videos. Or if you know your customers would benefit from more in-depth information, prioritize blog posts or e-books. These are just a couple of examples, but tailoring your content to align with your brand’s personality and values is absolutely essential if you want to be authentic.
Digital content is a category that never stops growing. Stay clued-up on emerging content trends and regularly assess the performance of different content.
5. Make sure your approval process is on point
Digital content creation is often a collaborative process. And with more and more teams working remotely, it’s super important that everyone’s on the same page to get your ideas and executions approved and out the door as soon as possible.
Filestage is a review and approval platform that can help streamline your creation process with a solid content approval workflow. You can use Filestage to get speedy approval on all kinds of content including documents, photos, web banners, videos, audio files, social media assets, and more. This makes it a great sidekick to help you create a successful marketing campaign.
Here’s how to get fast approval on your content with Filestage:
- Sign up to Filestage for free and create a project
- Set up reviewer groups and invite reviewers
- Upload your content files and set due dates
- Collect feedback from reviewers
- Collaborate until you get approval
- Repeat for remaining reviewer groups
Approve all your content in one place
Get quick and clear feedback right on top of your content with Filestage.
Top tools for digital content creation
Creating quality content is a process with quite a few fast-moving parts. Thankfully, there are lots of great tools that can help you create fresh and reactive marketing that catches attention.
Whether you want to effortlessly automate your social posts or speed up your SEO with keyword ideas, here’s a look at some of the best software to help you get the job done!
1. Ahrefs – best tool for SEO
Ahrefs is a clever little SEO tool that makes sure the content you’ve created gets seen by the right people. This tool is kitted out with a range of keyword research features that let you identify high-performing keywords, analyze competitors, and optimize your content for those all-important search engines, like Google Search.
With its user-friendly interface and real-time data, Ahrefs is a valuable asset that will help improve your brand’s online visibility to outperform competitors.
2. Drip – best digital content tool for email marketing
If email marketing is part of your digital content creation process, Drip’s automation platform could help shape and streamline your workflow.
Here are some of Drip’s key features that could come in handy for your next email marketing campaign:
- Automation – Drip allows users to create automated workflows or campaigns triggered by specific actions, such as website visits, clicks, or purchases.
- Segmentation – Users can segment their audience based on various criteria, ensuring that emails are tailored to specific groups or individuals.
- Personalization – Drip enables personalized content and messaging, enhancing the relevance and engagement of email campaigns.
- Lead scoring – Businesses can assign scores to leads based on their interactions, helping prioritize and target high-value prospects.
- Analytics – Drip provides detailed analytics to track the performance of email campaigns, allowing users to make data-driven decisions.
3. Loomly – best digital tool for social media management
Social media content creation will likely make up a good chunk of your digital marketing strategy. It’s also the most time-sensitive type of content for many brands and businesses, due to its trend-driven nature.
With Loomly, you can create, publish, and analyze marketing content across multiple social media channels for the most efficient social media workflow.
The social media content creation platform even integrates with popular platforms like Slack, Gmail, and Microsoft Teams. This allows you to set up notifications for whenever a teammate makes comments on your content.
4. Readable – best digital content tool for checking accessibility
Communicating in a way your audience can quickly understand is an important part of content creation.
Readable can help your team produce accessible, engaging content marketing with features like readability scores, suggestions, and multilingual support for effective marketing translations.
I’d really recommend putting every piece of written content through a platform like Readable before it goes live. It can be easy to get too close to the work and forget the fact that attention spans are low when they’re online.
5. Canva – best digital content tool for design
Canva is a free and user-friendly design tool that lets you create content and make eye-catching visuals without the need for any design skills.
From snazzy social media graphics to sleek email templates, Canva can trim a lot of time off your visual content creation process without sacrificing on style or quality.
This tool comes with an impressive supply of templates, fonts, and photos, as well as a drag-and-drop editor to help bring all your creations to life.
Ideas to inspire your next piece of digital content
Before we wrap up this article about the essentials of digital content creation, here’s some inspiration to get the creative content juices flowing for your next piece of written or visual content.
Spotlight your customers
All your content should be customer-centric.
Create digital content that features testimonials and success stories. Share user generated content or simply a custom hashtag to highlight the cool things your followers or customers are doing. Putting your target audience front and center not only acknowledges their support, it also rustles up a sense of community around your brand. In the long run, this will also work to increase customer loyalty.
Polls and quizzes
Interactive content marketing is another great way to boost brand engagement and maybe even gather some useful insights on how your target audience thinks.
You could ask your audience for their thoughts on trending topics related to your industry, or start a conversation around some of your most popular products and services. Get together with your team to see what you can come up with!
Hacks and tips
Serving up snackable everyday ideas is a great way to offer value for customers while positioning your brand as an industry expert.
You can use infographics, short videos, or carousel posts to share regular professional tips. And encourage audience participation and user generated content by inviting them to share their own hacks. This can foster a greater sense of community within your customer base and support brand loyalty.
Final thoughts
Nailing digital content creation takes some careful consideration but it can be a fun and rewarding process when done right.
Hopefully this article has left you feeling excited to crack on with your brand or business’ digital content creation. And if you’d like to see how Filestage can help you review and approve your next project, start your free trial today.
