With content marketing becoming an increasingly popular tool to interact with and attract customers and clients, it is vital that you can provide them with not only interesting but genuinely valuable content and here are four ways you can improve your content marketing.
Focus On Being Productive
Being productive may not always be the easiest task – but the rewards of investing sufficient time in valuable content more than justify the investment. It is quite simple, the more insightful content you can commit to creating on a consistent basis, the more rewards you will be able to reap.
To help you become more productive and boost your output of quality content, we suggest the following:
- Form a strategy. Productivity is predicated on routine and solid foundations so make sure you have a clear and defined strategy and plan. Try not to jump straight in committing to a certain amount of blogs prior to getting a feel for your own writing rhythm, the time it takes you to research and even the time it takes to proof-read and edit your content.
- Prevent Prevention. Try to identify why certain stimuli are distracting you or contributing to your procrastination and, where possible, move swiftly to remove them. This will have profound impacts on your concentration, impacts that mirror the effects of the routine on productivity also – a theme covered below.
Follow a Routine / Follow a Schedule
Whilst you might be led to believe that a routine is counterproductive to the development of “eureka moment” creativity, this is a common misconception – great ideas and creativity are the result of discipline and a deductive process. As a result, a routine can be just the foundation you need to get your creative juices flowing and start churning out great quality content.
After all, routine can be a trigger, it tells your mind that now is the time to become more creative. This idea is often mirrored by the thoughts of many others including consulting and productivity blog 99U: “the most extraordinary works of imagination are often created by people working to predictable daily routines.”
Well known writers are further testament to the benefits of routine, for instance, many such as John Grisham have their very own unique routine that they use to prepare them for writing. Whether your unique routine involves coffee, food, physical exercise, or none of the above – it all comes down to how you are as an individual and what can best prepare you for optimum output.
If you find you are still struggling to create your unique routine, we suggest you remember the following.
- It needs to be easily achievable: No matter how seemingly difficult the task of writing a specific piece of content, the task is like any other and can hence be broken down into its smaller, easily-actionable constituent parts. Apply the same approach to your routine, it should be an automatic, ritual like process that prepares you, not hinders your ability to write.
- Consistency is key. Just like at school, repetition aids learning and hence the consistent use of routines increases their ability to optimise your output.
Understand Your Best Times For Creativity And Productivity
This can be tricky – if you’ve established your routine, then you should have already discovered to some degree, when you are most creative and productive.
Fortunately, (generally speaking) there are no negative aspects to whether you write within the morning or the evening, it is just a case of managing your routine around this specific time. If writing content is relatively new to you and you don’t yet have an appreciation for when you are most able to craft compelling content, the below table should provide you with an overview of potential benefits for writing at differing times of the day.
| Morning | Evening |
| We have more willpower in the morning and, given willpower is a limited resource, as the day progresses we become subject to ever-increasing commitments and pressures that may hinder our ability to dedicate sufficient time and effort to writing quality content. | Generally speaking, there are less distractions after traditional work hours, meaning you can better focus on writing great content. |
| Research suggests people are usually in better moods throughout the day, hence it is likely that you will be able to write throughout the day without the burden of lowered morale. | Your day may have filled you with inspiration and abstract angles that you might not have considered whilst battling with day-time commitments. Ironically, all experiences you’ve had during the working day could help inspire better content. |
Take In Your Audience’s Responses and Feedback
Blogging is a conversation, not a monologue. The aim is to engage with your audience, so ensure you reach out to them throughout the blog and address their concerns . If possible, sync and connect your social accounts with your blog – this way you can gain feedback via social media channels also.
The author of the blog should always take into consideration what its readers have to say, after all, you did write it for them. Interact, listen and learn from them as any constructive criticisms or feedback can be used to help you create more compelling content that your ideal clients and customers actually want to read.
The ultimate aim content is generate leads that can be converted into clients – at Manifest, this is our forte so if you’d like to find out more download our ONE PAGER.
