You've heard that content is the undisputed king of marketing and that's the sheer truth. So if that's the truth, then the development of the said content is what makes the content a king.
Sadly, most businesses just create content randomly without going through the process of developing it from start to finish.
Planning is everything and content development entails planning the content from the ground up and down to promotion.
Skipping any of the development stages of the contents designated for your website is one risk you are not willing to take as it can hamper the success of the content.
Here are the stages of content development you must never skip.
List of Steps
TOPIC ANALYSIS
The title of the content is foremost and always the first to be considered. It's the first thing potential readers will see and how it's structured can trigger them to click and devour the information inside or just pass.
Analyzing the topic entails gathering a handful of keywords related to it and testing them using tools like the Google Adword Keyword Planner, Google Analytics, or SEMRush.
These tools will show you how some topics with the keywords you used are faring online. If they are getting more engagement, you can use them but you have to improve the quality and add more value.
The aim is to beat every similar content on the web. This helps you rank better on search engines.
INFORMATION SOURCING
Now that you have decided on a particular topic with the right keywords for traffic, it's time to source information.
In doing this, you have to gather as much information as possible. Browse through numerous sites and sources.
Check reviews if you are writing about products, check for videos, podcasts, images, and virtually anywhere you can lay your hands to source for information.
The goal is to develop contents that will be the best out there with substantial information. So explore every available research trick up your sleeves in search of content about what you are going to write.
start writing
With a depot of information available, you can start creating the content while imbibing best writing practices.
It’s time to produce the best content out there with the information available. Get facts and statistics to be incorporated into the text.
This is to ensure your readers see you as a credible source and a valid authority in the field.
The longer the content, the higher its chances of ranking high and attracting more backlinks. So make your content at least 2, 000 words to improve its chances of ranking high.
And finally, provide immense value through your content. That's what every reader is looking at getting, so serve your readers this value on a platter.
4. Proofread and Edit
Now you are done with the writing, it’s time to proofread and edit. This is to ensure you present impeccable quality content to your audience.
Consequently, you need to look at the content you’ve written with a fresh pair of eyes to fish out the errors.
You can hand it over to a copy editor for a thorough job or leave it for a few days and come back to it.
Returning to it after a few days will help you look at the content differently and you might discover that you need to do a lot of editing.
You are now armed with a fresh pair of eyes and you see things differently so you can rewrite the content better.
5. Optimize and Publish
You’ve gotten to a very critical stage that has to do with optimizing the content to be visible in search engines. It’s all about SEO here and you can’t be too careful.
In optimizing your content, you need to scan the content and see if the right keywords were used sparingly or superfluously.
Reduce the excessive use of keywords to avoid being flagged by Google, increase the word count to rank higher, and make the keywords appear naturally.
SEO is broad and it’s alright if you hand it over to an SEO expert to handle the intricate technical aspect. When this phase is settled, you can then publish your content.
6. Promote
After publishing, it’s time to promote your content across all available social media channels to drive engagement to your content.
More importantly, you get some backlinks to your site and improve its performance on Google rankings.
Promotion is as important as writing, and you can’t afford to skip this step. What’s the point of writing content that people don’t get to see?
That’s why promotion is necessary and social media is your major weapon.
Summary
Content development comes in stages or series of steps, and any step you skip can jeopardize the entire content mission.
From topic analysis to sourcing information and down to promotion, every step is important and leads to the overall success of the content wherever it is presented.