How can you ensure quality content creation from ideation to publication?

I have been actively writing in different channels since 2001, long before the common terms we often here now such as: Likes, comments, shares and going viral! My goal has been and will continue to be “adding value” to others. What is your goal when you develop content? Projecting authority? Converting likes to Dollars? Just having fun? Once you have clarity on your content creation goals, you will be able to draft a clear writing strategy. I write for different reasons. Writing keeps me sharp. It forces me to research. And it is soothing to my soul. In terms of content marketing, I am in it for the long range.

Write if you can add value to the readers. The more you share the more you learn- I have practiced this in my life learning journey so far. I write for various reasons. Writing keeps me curious and it forces me to research and learn. And it soothes my soul if my writing has impacted an individual to grow more or learn more.

Here's my 5-step process to ensure quality content creation from ideation to publication: 1. Research & Planning: Start by identifying gaps in existing content and what your audience is actively searching for. Create a content calendar based on this research. 2. Keyword & Audience Alignment: Use keyword research tools and audience insights to tailor your content topics and format. 3. Draft & Revise: Write the first draft focusing on value and readability. Revise multiple times to refine language, structure, and SEO elements. 4. Quality Checks: Before publishing, run the content checks to ensure all the data is accurate. 5. Review & Publish: Have a final review and once approved, publish, and promote across relevant channels.

It all starts with following a well-structured process. Begin with thorough research and brainstorming to cultivate fresh and audience-relevant concepts. Develop a content plan, detailing objectives, keywords, and a publishing timeline. During the creative phase, prioritize value, consistency in style, and accuracy via meticulous fact-checking and editing. Collaborate with experts as needed to enrich the depth and quality of your content. Incorporate engaging elements like visuals and videos to enhance user interaction. Before publication, review content for readability and functionality, guaranteeing a distinctive and top-quality final product.

The first two things to do before you start creating your piece of content is: -Define what you want to say and to what purpose. If you don't have a clear objective, it will be hard to form a strategy. -Get to know your audience in each channel where you communicate. Build your persona profile. People don't behave the same way in every channel, so you shouldn't either. Adjust, in each platform, the way you pass on your message. If you don't, you'll risk having your content ignored. Create content for the different funnel stages, to ensure you communicate to each buyer persona. Remember, digital platforms have tools to show performance data for your content. Use them. Get data that will help understand if you need to adjust the strategy.

Creating a content calendar is vital for creating content consistent. You can use a spreadsheet and/or Google Calendar to plan your content for the next month, quarter or year. Another thing to consider is important dates/periods in your industry (fashion weeks, awards seasons), cultural holidays, etc.

Once you have clarity around your content creation goals, you can establish your writing routine and topics of focus. I write about a few topics like leadership, customer experience and startups. This is the case because I have a treasure of personal stories drawn from my experience. Please remember the world is full of theories and suppositions and people are tired of these. They are looking for more pragmatic tips and recommendations that have been tried name tested. You can share your valuable tips in many formats. It could be posts, carousel, articles or videos. Is there a best mix of these? I wish I knew the answer. I publish across all these. Audiences have different tastes and preferences. Experiment and evaluate.

The best ideas are rarely the first ones that pop into our heads. The Creative Brief template I developed over the years prompts me to brainstorm at least 10 different ways to approach a content project. Consider different content formats, visuals and stakeholders' objectives. Ideas that jump right off the page and excite you usually perform the best because your passion infuses your work and resonates with your audience.

Free writing is also a good technique that can be used for generating creative ideas and shaping your thoughts. Like brainstorming, it produces ideas, but with some insights into them. The rules are simple: just set a time, like 10–20 minutes, and write continuously during that time.

It's also helpful to do a content gap analysis against your competitors to see where you are missing content that is working for your competitors. SEO tools like Conductor will also allow you to see content opportunities where neither you nor your competitors are ranking well. Don't forget to reuse your existing content too - updating old content can be very effective.

While doing competitor analysis for creating content, one should re-think who our competitors are. Is it just our business rivals? Or is our content competing against: - Instagram - YouTube - TikTok - OTT platforms? Your content is competing for 'Attention' against every distraction. Our strategy needs to consider 'distractions' and not just 'competitors.' Some of the easier ways to stand out would be: - Sounding 'casual' - Trying non-conventional platforms - Tell stories and have protagonists and antagonists - Have 'empathy' and not just 'knowledge'

In the age of useful tools like AI, remember your writing style is your voice so identify and maintain those human elements to differentiate yourself from others within your genre. If it doesn't exist, create it. The point is to write about stuff you enjoy.

To assure quality across your various content pipelines, there has to be someone involved who is completely unreasonable about content quality. Someone who will fight tooth and nail over the little things. Because once all stakeholders know that person is there, bad ideas and lameness will be self-edited out by content sources because "That will never get past so-and-so."

When you're starting off you may not know the best time to post or the ideal frequency so choose a schedule that matches your current capacity then go change as you get data. "Sometimes, perfectionism can be the enemy of the pursuit of consistency" - Steven Bartlett

One of the mistakes a lot of companies make is not sharing performance metrics with content writers. They need to know, too, what's working and what isn't working if they're going to get better. Not just the people above them who choose the topics.

One of the great things about digital content marketing is the ability to edit, update, and improve content relatively quickly. If you aren't hitting your KPI and metric goals, you can make changes to your content. Sometimes a slightly different word choice in a CTA can improve conversions, or reordering sections can clarify intent.

Analyzing and improving content is like building and consistently training a muscle. It has to be part of a routine and it can be a non-linear process. Besides the metrics and all the data crunching, it is also important to consider the human-first aspects of writing, creating & improving.

I believe the first question you should think of is that your Target audience is not YOU! This means they will have different taste of ideas, niche and attention hooks. One of the most recent issues is not differentiating between your taste & what will your Audience interact with

In my opinion, in addition to the things mentioned in this article, we should always pay attention to two points: 1) When it comes to the creation of quality content, the subject of content marketing is opened, and this means that we must consider a cycle. A cycle that begins with content strategy development and ends with optimization (and this cycle is constantly repeating itself). 2) Let's not forget that the difference between traditional and digital content creation, is that our hands are completely open to edit digital content. Therefore, whenever needed, we can edit and optimize our contents without any restrictions.

Quality content is an team work, one of the method that we can use is to share a google docs with the stakeholders and email them for contributions or suggestions. This process will ensure improvement in terms of content and also ensures additional of views of majority of stakeholders.

Great customer insights are the seeds that all great content growth. Once we have defined the target audience it is vital to ask “Which insights do we have about our audience situation?” Without great seeds, all later stages will be compromised.

Great content boils down to two things: Who it’s for and the biggest problem you solve for them. If your content is driven from start to finish with these two factors, that’s gold.