These 14 ways to create fast, great marketing content

Creating great content that converts your website visitors into qualified leads. It's every marketer's dream. But time, time, time!!! Here are 14 ways to create fast, very solid content.

1. Do a content audit: what's already there? What's still missing?

A misconception is that you have to start with content marketing "from scratch. It is often overlooked that very valuable content is already present in the organization. Think of website content, old newsletters or articles, internal documentation or reports and tools that sales shares with prospects or customers.

It is therefore advisable to always start with a content audit. The content audit provides insight into:

• What valuable content is or is not present in the organization
• Which personas (people within the decision making unit) you do or do not address
• At what stage of the buying journey you address these personas (a potential customer has different knowledge needs at different stages of the buyer journey )

Choose some people in the organization (especially in sales and support departments) with whom you will do the content audit.

2. Existing content, new persona

You may already be in the process of creating personas. These personas are often part of a decision making unit, and help you understand for whom you are writing the content.

During the content audit (point 1) you indicate for whom what content is written. For example, specifications of a technical product are valuable to an engineer or buyer, while case studies or testimonials may be of value to a CEO or manager. See what existing content you can rewrite for other personas to help them further along the buying journey.

3. Content creation, you can't always escape it

You probably won't escape creating new content either. But you yourself have limited time, and it's not always easy to get other people in the organization to pick up the pen. For this you need support and trust from your colleagues that content marketing will actually generate more traffic, more leads and (eventually even) more customers.

One way to create content reasonably 'quickly' is to interview a specialist. This could be a sales colleague or a thought leader from your industry. You quickly gather the necessary information and all you have to do is turn it into a good running story.

4. Repurpose popular content

What website page, blog, article or report was well received in the past or still attracts readers today? You could be sitting on a gold mine!

Dive into these audience pulls and analyze why exactly this piece of content (has) worked so well. You can share the content again via social media, offer the report again via a targeted E-mail campaign or update and republish the blog. A real quick win!

5. It's all about the rank: rewriting for Google

Sometimes you have beautiful articles or pages on your site, but it is just missing those crucial SEO points that make the page rank higher in Google.

Do you want to be found on Google with a number of important, already existing pages? Select a manageable number of pages and take a critical SEO look at them. Who knows, maybe you can still get great results with little "effort.

6. Video is King: Tell it in a webinar

Good scoring blogs, reports, sales pitches or knowledge sessions are worth sharing with a larger audience! See if you can find a specialist in the organization willing to tell it on camera.

When the webinar is made accessible by asking the viewer to leave some simple data, you work on scoring more valuable leads at the same time.

7. Turn multiple blog posts/articles into a report/E-book/whitepaper, and....

Speaking of leads, your ultimate goal is to turn website visitors into qualified leads. Whitepapers and E-books are excellent "exchange tools" to retrieve some data about the site visitor. Valuable customer knowledge in exchange for data!

Often when you think of a white paper, you think of a 30-page report and many hours of work, but nothing could be further from the truth. Finally, it's about quality, not quantity. See if you can tie together valuable, existing content (see point 4) - appealing to the same persona - into a beautiful document.

8. ... Turn one report/E-book/whitepaper into multiple blog posts

The exact same applies the other way around, of course! Sometimes you have a very nice report or E-book, but lack blog posts. The chapters of the report can make excellent blog posts. Their purpose can be to highlight the document in question.

9. Curate existing content

Especially when you're just starting out in content creation, it's not always easy to pick up the pen yourself. Get familiar with writing by curating good, existing content. When you largely copy the existing source, you do well to neatly cite the original source. Frankwatching wrote a good blog about the do's and don'ts of content curation.

10. FAQ - answer the most pressing questions

What questions are asked every day to your colleagues in the service/support or sales department? These are the questions that prospects and customers can't find answers to online. Get the best answers together with those same colleagues and turn them into an FAQ or series of blog posts.

12. Turn slideshow into infographic

Do your sales colleagues use interesting slideshows or powerpoint presentations during their sales pitches and customer appointments? Often there is great visual content in between that you can repackage as an infographic. Infographics are a valuable form of content because you can scan the content, and the reader can absorb information quickly.

13. Share facts and figures as social media posts

That one customer satisfaction survey or interesting benchmark is an endless source of good social media posts. Grab the attention of your prospects by sharing the most compelling facts and figures in a series of social media posts.

Think carefully about what is waiting for the reader "behind the click": a social media post is never an end in itself.

14. Bring in an outside party: strategic partner or extra hands?

You have a busy job. Even though you see the importance of content marketing, you simply can't find the time to create or repurpose valuable content. In this case, you would do well to scrutinize a number of parties who can help you in this regard.

Before you haphazardly start writing to marketing agencies or copywriters in the area, you would do well to first consider the goals you want to achieve. To what extent should marketing contribute to the growth of the organization?

Do you only want 'extra hands' or are you looking for a party that thinks along on a strategic level about your digital marketing (and sales)?

After all, content marketing is more than just writing a nice article. The whole must contribute consistently to more traffic, leads and customers.

If you opt for the latter, we can help you. For example, contact Thijs van Rosmalen (thijs@webs.nl), our inbound marketing specialist. Or block a moment in his calendar. Thijs helps you with a review of your current marketing activities and setting strategic goals. That will get you more than just great blog posts....

Good luck with creating solid content!