Here is a Great Content Recipe for DTC businesses

Writing good content is as difficult as drawing a good sketch, or composing a musical tune. It demands a thorough understanding of the theme, in-depth research, analyzing the target audience's behavior and needs. While many business houses prefer having an in-house content team to write fascinating content that can add value to their brand, a good number of firms outsource this task to competent organizations.

Your content should focus on a certain theme. Whether it's a 140 character tweet or a 2000 word blog post, the pre-production work matters. The more a writer knows about a certain subject, the more likely he is to render good content.

Regardless of whether you have an in-house team or an outsourced one, you will want your web pages filled with great content. Not just good but great. What are the barriers that stop you from getting that great content?

And how can we solve those issues so that you get the best return on investment? Let's check out right here.

Choosing The Right Theme/Topic

You might have written very good content but if that is outdated and not relevant to the user's search, the content might not rank high. Having an estimate of what the audience wants to read will help to create better content. Content creation demands that you know what topics are trending in the news and search engines.

Also, it is important that you analyze what your audience might want to read. Knowing customer preference is a crucial aspect of formulating a successful content marketing strategy. To find out the context and environment of your online visitors through a proper analytic tool (Google Analytics is a great one for that!).

You will be surprised to know that it is quite easy to find out about current trends. Just use any web analytics tool to get an idea of what type of content is drawing more audience in a given time frame. While some web analytics tools charge you a nominal amount, tools like Google Trends are free, besides being more handy and efficient.

So that you choose the most relevant and evergreen topic for your blogs, you would like to consider thinking about the following key points:

1. Is the topic trending?

As a subject matter expert, you can add more value and information to the trending topic and provide useful content to your followers and readers.

2. Is the topic going to have a long-term effect?

Some topics stay relevant only for a specific time frame. For example, a post about some new update will be valuable only until the next update doesn't come up. On the contrary, thought-provoking posts can stay alive and appealing for a longer span of time.

Many contents in the form of blogs and videos etc. have shown remarkable success after a while they have been published, the time ranging from six months to two to three years.

Similarly, your content can rule the blog world and, therefore, elevate your website's popularity in due time.

3. Is the topic too generic or ambiguous?

Avoid such topics, because, in spite of providing a framework to an idea, such topics often lose their impact because of the competition around them. The reader is more interested in knowing the specific details rather than meditating on the general model of your concept. So stick to some specific context and then elaborate on it so that you can address the particulars of the pain points that your audience is dealing with.

Create Content in Coherence With Set Goals

Content marketing is a changing field. Having relevance to the context and timing, helps the marketing firms to sustain and grow. Giants like Huffington Post and Moz have attained heights because they understand their goals perfectly well. So whether you intend to promote your brand or want to generate more customer leads, your content should focus on that.

It should not be incoherent or utterly diverting from the goals. If you are someone who hires a content writer, you should clearly state what you want to achieve through the content.

Do you wish to drive more traffic to your sites? And get a high customer engagement too? Then let the content go by that.

Versatile Content Wins The Race

Writing long and flawless content is good but not enough. What we need to have is content that appeals to the audience. Content is good and valuable when it can be developed and propagated through various channels. Create content that can be transmuted or repurposed in different formats as well. You can consider creating your content in the form of Infographics, PowerPoint presentations, animated videos, and other formats.

The main advantage of having your content in different formats is that it exponentially increases your audience domains. Because of the variety of audience groups and their expectations from your brand, they will have different contexts in which they arrive at your blogs.

It is crucial to understand that every set of the audience has unique features, in terms of their age, gender, interests, and goals. So, having your content in different formats can cater to a larger audience group.

For instance, it is a well-known fact that the younger generation prefers to use graphically sound platforms like Pinterest and Instagram. If your content is only in textual format, it might miss your younger audience; but if instead, you provide them with a suitable infographic or just a simple flowchart, your task is done.

Not only does that adds value to their time and effort, but it will also help your content is getting more attention, specifically in terms of social shares and user engagement.

Measuring The Quality of The Content

Content is more of a qualitative commodity than a quantitative thing. But that does not mean you can't measure the success of your content. Measuring the quality of work is essential to figure out the areas of improvement.

Apart from checking the grammar and semantics qualities, you can consider the data from sales lead quality, conversion rates, SEO ranking, bounce rates, subscriber growth, and reader's feedback to measure your content. And then you can have a better idea about how to improve the quality of your content.

About writing, Faulkner has quoted, "Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error". The rule set up by this Nobel Prize Laureate is valid for all forms of writing and content creation. It is apt that you experiment with your writing styles and keep a track of how each of your contents performs among your audience group.

Content creation is not a passive or mechanical task; instead, it is very much alive and interactive. Because you write to engage living people who have the capacity to think and respond, you can focus on producing content that actually adds value to the reader's thought-process and encourages some activity from his/her end.