Content Creation Checklist (Blogs, Videos etc)

Content is king in today's digital landscape.

Regardless of what business you are in - online or offline, product, service or a combination of all of those - in order to get a consistent flow of targeted leads for your business on autopilot you need a content marketing strategy.

Why?

People are searching online every second of everyday for solutions to their specific problems. Google will tell you that billions of searches are going on at any one time and if you are not creating content to answer what your customer is searching for then you are leaving a ton of opportunity and money on the table !

But, the challenge with content marketing is that the business needs a consistent and regular flow of great content to feed the marketing machine. In essence, content creation needs to be streamlined. 

So how can a Virtual Angel help the business with this without creating content? (We do not want our Virtual Angels to get into content creation as it is not their skill set)

With Content Marketing - 20% of the job is the actual content creation while 80% of the job is content idea creation, content publishing, content promotion and repurposing. 

Your Virtual Angel can do the 80% part of the job:

1) Feed you with effective content ideas that will actually get traffic online for you.

2) Manage the publishing, promotion and repurposing of content once it is created. 

Most people treat their content strategy like this:

Step 1: Panic !! - I need a blog post

Step 2: Throw a badly written idea together

Step 3: Whack it up on your site

Step 4: Never look at it again ! 

Reality Check:

This is a TOTAL WASTE OF TIME. You may as well not bother at all (usually).

Instead, work with your Virtual Angel to develop a list of impactful content ideas that will actually get you traffic, leads and ultimately sales !

Step 1) Your Virtual Angel can Conduct some keyword research for the business using your chosen business topics and categories.

Then take a look at the keywords people are searching for in that niche and create blog post ideas incorporating those keywords - use the 'long tail keywords'. This means the business has the opportunity to come up in Google when people search for that phrase. 

If you want to understand more about general keywords versus longtail keywords then please google it. It is vital that you don't make up your own keywords and get caught up in the trap of using words that are too general and competitive in search. 

Example: 

Long tail key word is 'Dynamic Tennis Player' (Tennis or Tennis player is too general)

Blog post / Video idea: How to Become a Dynamic Tennis Player that Wins Every Time !

OR for a more local business: How to Become a Dynamic Tennis Player that Wins in the Competitive Sydney Tennis Scene.

Step 2) Research the competitor blogs and sites for the business - especially the high traffic, bigger sites in the niche. Then it's time to find the blog posts / content pieces that those sites produced that did really well in terms of traffic, social shares and engagement. 

To do this simply:

Put in your competitor’s blog URL into this Quick Sprout Analyzer, and you’ll get a list of results that looks something like this:

NOTE: You can also use Buzzsumo for this. 

This example is from the Copyblogger site - a site that gets massive traffic and is in the content marketing niche. Anyone in the content marketing niche would view this as a competitor site to watch.

Obviously if this in not the niche of the business you are working with you wouldn't use this example. This is being used for illustrative purposes only here. 

If you look at the image above, you’ll see a list of all the blog posts on Copyblogger. The Quick Sprout tool organises the list based on social shares, putting the most popular posts at the top.

One of Copyblogger’s most popular posts happens to be http://www.copyblogger.com/ingredients. 

Next we need to look into that post to see what the full title was so we can try to develop our own similar but slightly different titles that might also get such traffic.

To find out the title of the post, type that URL into your browser. You will see the full title of the post was “11 Essential Ingredients Every Blog Post Needs [Infographic].”

When you find competitors that have similar audiences to the businesses you are working with,  you can suggest writing blog posts on the same topic with a different slant and it will likely do quite well also.

NOTE:  You cannot just copy people – you don’t want the business to inherit the bad name of being a blog that regurgitates the same old information and is a copycat !

Instead, you want to take this title and suggest to the person who has been identified as the content creator (either the writer or business person) to put a different spin on it.

Using the example of Copyblogger here again - if your niche was a content marketing blog and you were trying to re spin the article that did well for Copyblogger -  here’s how you could potentially spin “11 Essential Ingredients Every Blog Post Needs [Infographic]”:

• 11 Essential Ingredients Every Landing Page Needs [Infographic]
• 11 Essential Ingredients Every Landing Page Needs
• 11 Essential Ingredients Every E-Commerce Site Needs
• 11 Essential Ingredients Every SEO Campaign Needs

If you look at the four variations created above, you’ll see that the first one is similar to the original title. The phrase “blog post” has just been changed to “landing page" - which is another topic area within the area of content marketing.

Note: Creating Infographics requires a content creator and a graphic designer - both of which are available in the 'Hub' but at extra fees so please be aware if you are suggesting an infographic idea to a business. 

Virtual Angels can create simple Infographics using a clever little tool called Pictochart

As for the third and fourth variations, the phrase “blog post” has been replaced with phrases “e-commerce site” and “SEO campaign.” - both of which are other topic areas within the whole content marketing arena.

You will need to consult the business owner on what you have found and get them to suggest other topic areas within their broader industry / business. 

The job of the Virtual Angel is to come up with these examples, suggest how to use them to the business and then work to promote and capitalise on the content after it is created.

The business owners job is to figure out how best to use it to create content and who is going to create that content for them. 

Ok ... it's time for the next step .... 

Although it is not the Virtual Angel's job to create the actual content, it is your job to project manage the content from idea generation right through to it appearing on the website, being promoted on social media and then being repurposed for maximum impact. 

In this step it is important that you and the business / content creator agree what pieces of content are planned based on what you presented to them and a deadline for when they will be ready. 

You add this information to the content planner and your job is to try to keep things on track, keep people focussed on the deadlines (although if it is the business owner creating the content these will likely blowout !!) 

You may need a video editor to edit a video in order for that content piece to go live so keep this in mind in your planning for video content. 

Our Chief Video Magician is part of the 'Hub' and video editing can be done cheaply and quickly right inside the hub so you can suggest this to the business owner. They can access this in the Get Resources section of the VAH Client Portal. 

Images that accompany written content make it far more appealing and far more shareable. Content that has appealing images has been shown to get far more traction than content without. 

In addition the images can be pinned on pinterest and shared on other social media channels so it important to add social sharing buttons if you can. This enables readers to share the images if they want. 

We recommend min 2 images per written blog post but depending on length of post more images can work well too. Also adding videos and slide shares or infographics is very effective. 

These images must reflect the philosophy, branding, look and feel of the business as a whole, be appealing to the target audience of the content piece and preferably be something the works well with the topic or area the content pieces touches on.

Pick out a tip, headline, quote or shortened idea from the content piece and using Canva or PicMonkey add the words to the images to connect the images with the content. 

Then add the watermark of the logo somewhere on the image so it is there but not obstructing the image content and idea. 

See this blog post as an example of this step in action ! 

Content will get more eyeballs and readers staying much longer if the layout of the page is more conducive to easy reading. 

These days every site MUST be mobile responsive or else Google will penalise it in the search listings. One of the methods of making sure it is mobile friendly is making sure that blog posts are easy to read on mobile. This means breaking up paragraphs into shorter pieces and following the steps below. 

It matters ! 

So don't skip this step and think it's just for vanity. Its not ! 

Here's how to make the post more readable: 

1) Break the text up so it is not presenting in big long paragraphs.

Instead have a number of shorter paragraphs broken up be 'sub headlines'. These sub headlines are sentences that naturally stand out and convey a point - or they could be a quote or statistic that was used in the piece. 

When people read a post like this they can easily scan it and 'speed read' it to get the main points. 

2) Place the images strategically throughout the post and in different positions on the page to create depth and difference. Don't have all the images on the left side or all on the one spot. Scatter them through the post making sure the image works for the spot where you are placing it in the post. 

3) Don't leave big white spaces that look like there's something missing. The post needs tohave a evenness about it so it flows. If you post a picture to the left them it will likely need text to the right to balance it out. Don't put images in the centre and leave big blank spaces either side unless the image is really strategic and works well across the middle. 

4) Consider using the 'Click to Tweet' plugin so you can highlight quotes or tips from the article and people reading them can literally click on it to share the tip or quote. See the example below for this in action. (You need a Twitter Account for this)

Here is an example of a post that is well laid out with effective use of images, headlines subheadlines, quotes and spacing. 

Ensure the correct 'longtail keyword phrase' from the original keyword research is accurately reflected in the title of the blog post, the first paragraph and somewhere near the end if possible (if this post has been created from keyword research and not competitor research)

IMPORTANT .... you can't just stuff the keyword in ! It must make sense from a writing and flow perspective so if need be go back to the business / content creator and explain how they need to get the phrase in and ask them to rework it a bit to get the outcome you want. 

URL Structure - when creating the URL for the post follow these few simple rules:

- DO Make sure to use your keyword phrase in the URL - like this one for example http://www.autopilotyourbusiness.com/how-to-do-keyword-research-drive-website-traffic/            

- DON'T include any dates in the URL 

Meta Descriptions

Update the 'meta description' - as per the training video below.

Make sure the post is correctly categorised with the right / appropriate tagging. This is extremely important step when you come to doing more advanced techniques for converting the traffic to the blog posts into actual leads and potential business so please pay attention to this step. 

Optimise IMAGES for Traffic too

What are ALT Tags?

If you just asked yourself the above question, this point is extremely important for you, so pay attention! 

ALT Tags are invisible descriptions of images which are read aloud to blind users on a screen reader. Adding ALT text allows authors to include images, but still provide the content in an alternative text based format.

Why are ALT TAGS Important?

ALT Tags are what Google uses to find and sort and display your images in the Google image search, and to understand the content of your page as a whole for traditional search results.

Every pice of content should be leading towards taking the reader to the next step with the business. That next step may simply be to sign up for the newsletter or to download some free PDF or extra valuable piece of content. 

The aim of content marketing is to get people to give you their email address at the very least - at the very best it is to purchase something from the business. 

The easiest way to lead them towards a sale is to first invite them to join the email list and usually the best way to achieve success with this is to offer something of value in return for their email. 

Examples of what the business can offer:

An Ebook; A webinar; A video training; a free strategy call; a checklist or cheatsheet. 

Therefore the bottom of every blog post needs a 'lead capture box' - these can be created in Mailchimp easily and added to the bottom of a post. 

You may need a web developer to build this into the bottom of the blog post template so if you do then please come into the hub and ask us to do this for you. 

There are widgets out there that do it also and most clients will already have these widgets in their wordpress sites. 

Here is an example of what we mean:

When people sign up then they get added to a list inside of mailchimp. This can be the 'main' newsletter list or it can be a certain 'segment' based on the content of the blog post. 

For example if your business caters for children and adults then perhaps you would like to start building different mailing lists for adult men and women versus mums and dads looking for stuff for their kids.

Before you ever publish something have a look through the preview for the following common errors:

1) Spelling mistakes - these can ruin any great piece of content especially when it occurs on the images, headlines, subheadlines, quotes and click to tweets. 

Please effectively use the Grammarly tool we suggest for spelling and grammar issues. 

2) Are all links working and leading to the correct places? If links are broken or leading to the wrong places it upsets Google and the post will suffer. It is also very bad for business branding and customer experience.

3) If the Call to Action has a sign up box - does the sign up box actually work and where does it send people? Do they get a confirmation email or do they get sent to a thank you page? Whichever is fine but you need to make sure this all works effectively before sending it out. 

Don't just bang a task out to get it done please.

It's better to be late or delayed than send something out that is sub standard ! 

Getting a piece of content created and posted effectively on a website is only half the battle when it comes to online. 

The content then needs to be promoted across social media and elsewhere for maximum impact. 

For guidance on this please now go to our Content Promotion Checklist and use the VAH Social Media Calendar Process.