Content Creation Checklist – Questions To Ask Yourself

Creating content can feel overwhelming if you don’t have clear insight into what to create and a plan to get it done.

Content creation takes time, effort and resources so you want to ensure that you’re maximizing the content that you do create. One of the most impactful ways you can ensure your time is well spent is to ensure you’ve got your target audience nailed down. It’s also very helpful to find great inspiration and keep tabs on the latest trends.

Here are some questions you should be asking yourself when planning your content.

Who Is My Audience?

At this point, if you haven’t created buyer personas for the different types of customers you have, you definitely need to do that. Knowing who your audience is is the key to making content that has a high impact and gets you ROI on the resources invested in creating it. 

Which Topics Interest My Audience?

Once you know who your audience is, you want to consider what topics interest them. You’ll glean some of this from simply considering your industry, your products and your services. You may also look at your historical data to see which posts, blogs and web pages on your site get the most traffic. 

What Challenges Is My Audience Facing?

If you can solve your client’s problems, you’ll have viewers and customers for life. When people come to your business, what concerns do they have? What problems might they have using your product or service? How can you help them make the most of their purchase?

All of those questions should inform the core topics that you focus on in videos, posts, blogs and on your site. 

Are There Unique Insights That Can I Provide My Audience?

Again, if you know information that your audience will find helpful, be sure to share it with them. This is especially important if you are positioning yourself as an influencer or thought leader within your industry. 

Beyond that, you are the expert at how your product or service helps your customers so be sure to also share tips and tricks to help your customers become experts too. 

What New Information Can I Bring To The Table?

Similarly to sharing your insights, keeping up with what’s newest in your industry is a great way to build relationships with your audience and position yourself as an expert. Find a consistent way to bring new information to the table so your audience looks to you as a leader and a trusted advisor they can turn to for the latest and greatest information. 

What Questions Does My Audience Have That I Can Answer?

This is an excellent chance to engage with your audience and make user generated content work for you. Give your audience and customers the chance to ask questions they may have that you either haven’t thought to answer or they may not have come across yet within your content. 

You can do full Story segments, posts, blogs, videos and much more just answering questions from your audience. This builds excellent rapport and also helps you to understand where your content can improve to make the requested information more readily available. 

What Type Of Visuals Does My Audience Respond To?

When creating content, you’ll almost always want to include visuals – still imagery, graphics, videos and more. Consider what elements of your brand to incorporate but also what works for your target audience personas and what has performed well in the past. 

If you know your audience loves infographics to explain your service, use those frequently. If short form video is the best way to share information, choose those most often.

How Can I Make My Content More Easily Digestible?

Easily digestible can mean breaking content down into small bits of information, but it can also include mapping out super short form content to your more in depth content for those who need more information. 

Sometimes this means making the content more visual, using evergreen content in many different ways or latching on to trends to add quick context to your content. 

Where Can I Get Inspiration For My Content?

Never copy content, but find a few other brands that you love and respect to draw inspiration from. They can be within your industry but they definitely don’t have to be and make sure to look outside of your current market to find out what other areas are doing. 

For more information on creating a content calendar, check out our recent blog here. 

If you’re looking to create more content to promote your brand online, a digital marketing company can help. We can assist with answering all of these questions, creating a strategy that maximizes what is made, planning a content calendar and all of the execution. Whatever parts of the process you need support with, we’re here to help!