How to Create Great Infographics

In today’s blogging and internet marketing environment, marketers can make a huge splash quickly through the effective use of infographics.

Learning how to create great infographics is definitely a skill worth taking the time to learn. As you might imagine, whenever we examine successful infographics, we will find the existence of a handful of common traits.

Let us identify some of those traits so that all of us can learn how to create great infographics for our targeted audience.

1) Matches Visuals to Audience – A critical and common mistake among marketers whenever they create infographics is that they try to promote images to audiences that are not interested in their content. We must know who our audience is and what they are seeking.

2) Addresses a Hot Issue – Do not assume you know what your customers’ hot issues are. Remember, they evolve just like everything else does in our lives. If your infographic does not address an issue that is the highest concern of your base audience, it will fail.

3) Has Mindblowing Facts – The one thing about your beautiful infographic that will influence your audience are facts that are powerful. If you don’t have numbers that are powerful, then find another topic.

4) No Clutter – Your infographic needs to be free of clutter. This is very important. If your viewers see your infographic as being too busy, they will not take the time to try and figure it out. They is just too much information out there for them to spend time sorting out an image that makes no sense to them.

If you really want to learn how to create great infographics, then spend some time memorizing and embracing the above four (4) traits found in winning infographics.

Infographic Resources

Additionally, listed below are some great resources to how you in creating your infographics:

Everything We’ve Learned from Making 4,000 Infographics

https://www.columnfivemedia.com/everything-we-learned-about-how-to-make-infographicsWe’ve made infographics for everyone from small startups to Fortune 100 companies. We’ve learned what works and what really throws a wrench in the infographic process, from that first brainstorm to the moment the project goes live. Everything We’ve Learned from Making 4,000 Infographics

Infographics Software for Mac, Windows and Linux

https://www.edrawsoft.com/infographics/You can choose from a variety of free templates and configure an extensive set of options to perfectly match the look and feel of your topics. These templates cover a wide range of fields. They help you get started fast and are visually pleasing and easily customizable. Add your own contents in those templates and make top infographics for the year. Infographics Software for Mac, Windows and Linux

Top Tips from Experts on What Makes a Great Infographic

https://www.easel.ly/blog/top-tips-from-experts-on-what-makes-a-great-infographic/Over the last few months, we have received a huge amount of questions as to what makes a great infographic and how you can stand out from the crowd. We did some research and found a great article by Eloqua – What Makes a Great Infographic — that collected some expert opinions on the topic that we just loved. We also sprinkled more tips and tricks from other sources that should serve you well. Top Tips from Experts on What Makes a Great Infographic – Simple Infographic Maker Tool by Easelly

 

6 Infographic Elements that Cool Infographics Have

We online marketers have all seen the impact of infographics over the past 5 or 6 years.  The fact is that a colorful infographic provides data visualization to viewers which allow them to understand the data more fully.

Whenever we come across an infographics design that conveys a strong message, tells its story by blending stats with design elements, web elements and graphic elements, it is quite compelling. They just seem to have all the required infographic elements that make them unforgettable – especially when they are shared on social media.

vector infographic design elements

This is the power of using effective graphics design regardless of our infographic steps or any canned infographic maker we happen to use.

But there are also thousands of infographics out there that fall way short of the mark. And it is painfully obvious that they were simply thrown together in order to participate in the infographic banner medium. They end up just becoming a mish mosh of web elements that make no sense.

Good Reasons to Start Using Infographics in Your Marketing Campaigns

There are several great reasons why marketers create their own infographics. LucidPress reports these following facts about using them:

  • Blog posts containing visuals and imagery get 650% more engagement that those without them.
  • Content that has relevant visuals get 94% more clicks and views that those use images which are not relevant.
  • Infographics will increase web traffic by at least 12%.
  • When content is curated, the original images are used 30% of the time.
  • A nice colorful infographic is 3 times more likely to get liked and shared on social media channels.

Can the power of using beautifully designed infographics not be more obvious?

Here is what we will be addressing in this article:

6 Effective Infographic Elements

When learning how to make an infographic, it is critical to understand the design elements that the great ones contain. The good news is that those effective elements for infographics can now be identified. The bad news is learning to use them effectively is pretty much an art – or a craft.

The good thing about learning a craft is that practice will just about always make you much better and more skilled at performing that craft. The key is getting skilled enough at this new craft to attract a sizeable audience to your blog or website.

We first have to identify the proper ingredients to mix into our infographic batter before we begin baking our new cake. So let’s get started!

Find the Visuals that Match your Readers

If you have been involved in online marketing for even just a few months, then you probably already understand the importance of using images in your content. And what visual is better than using some stunning vector art or vector graphics in a striking new infographics design?

All online marketers pretty much know that any content containing images will draw about 3 times more engagement than content without images – this rule is even more prominent on a social network. So we don’t need to be sold on the power of using images within our blog posts.

The key here is first understanding our target audience and then finding the graphic elements that will interest them and attract their attention. This is the perfect starting point for creating an infographic and the first of several infographic steps that you will take.

infographic elements templates

Too many times, we see marketers that are so eager to get a new infographics design posted on their blog that they fail to realize that the topic does not interest their target audience. This may seem like common sense, but there are lots of intelligent marketers out there that are guilty of committing this costly mistake.

Having a good design inspiration for an unforgettable colorful infographic is so important because humans are visual creatures. Science tells us that we observe and recognize images within a few hundred milliseconds. This is why we need to use both images and design graphics that relate to our target audience – if we don’t, they will instantly click to the next website or blog.

Remember that you can always test a new piece of vector art or a vector graphic that you plan to use on your social media channels. Ask your social network which design infographic they would choose between two or more of them.

Pick Issues that are Pressing

When we have sufficiently researched our target audience, we understand their needs, their goals, and most importantly, their problems. I say “most importantly” in regards to their problems because this is what will dominate their thoughts in most cases.

We humans tend to think more about the things we want to move away from instead of the things we want to move toward. In other words, we stress more about our problems than we do in thinking about our goals.

Thus, whenever we start planning an infographic and begin reviewing infographic elements templates, it is wise and prudent to start listing the biggest problems that our target audience faces most often.

vector infographic

By choosing from among a current list of problems that your target audience suffers from, you are more likely to pick a winning infographic banner. This is simply because most people think more about their problems than their blessings. Don’t believe me? What do you think about the most?

Write an Infographic Headline that Beckons Others to Look

It is amazing to me how many marketers overlook the value of the headlines they slap on their blog posts. Most people will spend lots of time crafting a great article and then spend just a minute or two crafting the headline.

To give you some perspective, the most successful copywriters in the world will often say that, at a minimum, writers should spend at least as much time writing the headline of an article as they did writing the article itself.

Consider these marketing facts:

  1. There is intense competition for the attention of new readers. Every single day, there are over 2 million new blog posts published online, there are 300 billion emails sent, and there are over 864 hours of new video uploaded. Let us not forget the 400 million Tweets that are sent out. And these numbers come from the year 2013 – it’s even worse now!
  2. 80% of all people who view your headline will never read the article. This is why it is so important to know your audience.
  3. Traffic to your blog can increase as much as 500% strictly because of your headlines. Who wouldn’t love to get 5 times more blog traffic than they are presently getting?

If you were paying attention, then it should be dawning on you that your headline is actually the most important part of your article.

Here are two (2) great suggestions for improving your headlines:

1) Look for great headlines around you. Here’s a way to actually take advantage of the explosion of content around you. Start paying attention to headlines.

Pay attention to those headlines that keep appearing over and over again – it means they are winners. Also, pay attention to those headlines to inspire you to action. Try to figure out why those headlines stand out from the others.

2) Write five headlines for every piece of content you create. This rule will force you to spend more time on your headline. You will discover that in many cases, your first headline will not be your final choice – whereas before, it was always your final choice.

infographic vector graphics

So every time you create an infographic, remember that its success will also depend on the headline you write for the blog post you place it on.

This is another example of where you can ask your social network for their opinion.

Find Powerful Facts that Support Your Message

Today we are blessed with more stats and facts than we know what to do with. This is great news for those of us who create content for our readers. One good thing about living in a busy world is that our environment will often times provide the design inspiration. How cool is that?

So as you are building a vector infographic, you should have the primary message and perhaps the main outline points already in your mind. If you want readers to be persuaded to take action after viewing your infographic, then you must find powerful facts to show them.

Copywriters tell us that emotions are what will sell others, and our facts are what confirm the decisions they made out of those emotions.

Why not have the best of both worlds?

If your facts are powerful enough, they will induce the emotions of your readers all by themselves.

If you are truly dedicated to creating an amazing infographics design that will move the needle, then you must find the most compelling facts available about your infographic ideas. Should you fail to find those powerful facts you need, then you should forget about that infographic and move on to the next one.

Remember that you are not writing text, you are creating an image. And your data is going to be most persuasive aspect of that image. Therefore, your facts are ultra-important.

Put Your Own Spin on the Visuals You Use

A huge mistake that we often see online marketers make is that they use stock images in their content. This is a rookie move and everyone knows it. The fact is that all of us have seen those stock images because they are all over the Internet.

One of the more important infographic elements you can use is putting unique images and graphic designs into your final infographic. This is actually very critical. Most people choose to focus on other elements for infographic at this stage.

If you are like me, I am very quickly turned off by the use of stock images. To be honest, I pretty much expect to see poorly written spun content in blog posts or articles that contain these rehashed images. This is a conditioned response because quite frankly, too many times that has been the case.

But I do understand that many of us can only use stock images because we have a small budget. This is a legitimate reason for using them, but there are countless things you can still do to make them unique.

I suggest you crank up Photoshop or some other image editor to put your own spin on the images you have. Creativity is always welcome in the world of creating infographics, or even if you like simply using infographics templates.

infographic vector kit

There are lots of people who like to download editable infographic templates – and many of them make very nice infographics that way. The important thing here is your own creativity will make your infographic design stand out among all the others in the end.

There is absolutely no excuse for using stock images. There are just too many free image editing resources available online for marketers not to be using unique images whenever they create infographics.

Below are some sites that allow people to edit images online for free:

Picmonkey – This is a very popular online editor that offers a lot of customization. It is quite easy to use.

Canva – This online editor is similar to Picmonkey. It is very popular and simple to use – many people use this editor.

Lunapic – This image editing website offers a host of advanced photo enhancements and adjustments. It is remarkably intuitive which allows even beginners to perform advanced edits on their images.

Fotor – Not as powerful and as comprehensive as other editors, but is easier to use than most. It has a nice photo collage tool.

Pixlr – This image editor is a favorite among e-commerce marketers because of its advanced editing tools. Several one click and automatic tools are available.

Below is a list of image editing software packages that can be downloaded for free:

Gimp – Considered the best overall choice. Many believe it is quite similar to Photoshop.

InPixio – This software is very easy to use and navigate around. It has a before and after feature that users really like.

Paint – Most personal computers come equipped with an image editing software called Paint already installed. Do not take this software for granted. It is more powerful than people think.

And here are several attributes that you can change in virtually any image to make it unique:

  • Change colors
  • Alter the shape
  • Add filters and shades
  • Flip the image horizontally
  • Change the image size
  • Add a texture
  • Cut out parts of an image and paste it on another image
  • Add frames or borders
  • Add text
  • Alter the fonts of text
  • Add drop shadows to text and pasted images
  • And many more!

Simplify the Layout of Your Infographic

One of the most overlooked of all the elements for infographics is making the graphics design simple enough for others to easily process the information.

vector graphic

Many of us like to think we are sophisticated when it comes to our niche or market. And to be fair, there are lots of people who really do have a high level of knowledge and skill in their chosen market. Their knowledge and experience make them a wonderful resource for others in their field.

But when we operate at this level, we must get in the habit of simplifying our messages to others.

Here are three (3) things we can do to simplify our infographic design:

1) One Clear Message. Our infographic must have one and only one message for our readers. Often times, we try to convey too many thoughts to our readers in a single piece of content. This is very counter-productive and will result in readers not understanding the primary message of the content.

Ensure that every infographic that you create has one message that is painfully clear to anyone who sees it.

2) Logical Flow. This must be a nice logical flow in how our infographics conveys information to others. The more intuitive the flow, the better your infographic will perform.

Remember that the most beautiful images in the world will not rescue an infographic that does not have a good flow of information.

3) Add White Space. White space is a term that professional editors use to describe blank space. The fact is that most successful infographics have lots of white space. They are too many infographics out there that are cluttered with way too many images. Readers cannot mentally sort them out to consume its primary message.

Ensure that each primary element in your infographic is surrounded by plenty of white space. This will greatly simplify your layout and make it easier to digest.

Your Infographics Can Greatly Improve

Starting today, you now have access to tools and knowledge that will greatly enhance the construction of your future infographics.

How About Using your Own Affordable Infographics Software?

For one payment, you can have access to hundreds of premium infographic templates. And these templates are fully editable.

built-in-infographic-templates

In addition to that, you will have access to over 10,000 icons and several vast libraries of high quality images. These libraries contain images from every niche imaginable.

infographic-symbols

You can create your own unique infographic in less than an hour!

And since this software is installed on your personal computer or laptop, you do not need an Internet connection to create awesome infographics that your readers will adore.

Try this software for free!

 

4 Actions to Supercharge your Content Strategy Plan

Perhaps you have just created a new content strategy plan or maybe you are thinking about creating one.

Would you be interested in learning four things that will make your content stand out from your competitors?

If you are not aware just how critical it would be to have such an advantage in your market, then maybe the facts listed below will convince you:

  • 60% of all content marketers create one new piece of content every day
  • Content Marketers who create unique content get 8 times more growth than those who curate the content of others
  • 61% of buying decisions by online customers are driven by unique custom content
  • Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing
  • Content marketing generates three times more clients than traditional marketing

And if the above five marketing facts still hasn’t convinced you, then feel free use Google to find dozens more just like them. I could fill this entire blog post with facts that illustrate the importance of creating a powerful content strategy plan for your online business.

Get Your Content Strategy Plan in Writing

content strategy planWhen you create your content plans, you must document it and get it in writing.

Motivational experts have long told us that writing things down is a powerful way to commit to our intentions.

There are several benefits to be gained from writing down your goals and intentions. Let us examine some of them:

Writing down your goals attracts more of your attention. Sometimes all we need to attract a higher level of thought to our objective is to engage more of our senses to the outcome. This is one of the things that writing down objectives.

Writing down your objectives clears your mind. When you have cleared your mind, you are able to focus more on the required actions and details. You don’t waste your mental energy trying to remember what it was that you wanted to achieve.

Writing down your goals will help you stay motivated. If you review the things you have documented, then you can easily visualize and feel the results of accomplishing the desired result.

There is lots of reliable precedent for writing down your objectives. People like Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson, J.K. Rowling, Tony Robbins, and Robin Sharma have all spent their lives writing down their goals and intentions – and this is just a sampling – hundreds of other famous people have embraced this practice.

So when you create and write down your content strategy plan, you have done two things. For starters, you are doing what over 90% of your competitors are not doing – as it is well known that less than 10% of all people have written goals.

Secondly, by creating this written plan for your content, you have greatly increased the odds of success for your content marketing efforts.

Are your Content Objectives Lofty Enough?

As we indicated in the last section, having written goals is awesome simply because they’re effective and your competitors probably don’t have any.

However, there’s another element that your content marketing goals need to have – and that is vision.

You really don’t get vision from deciding what you want to achieve in the next week, month, or year. You get it from knowing where you want to be 5, 10, or even 20 years from now. This is where we learn how big our visions are.

content marketing

When you compare objectives from a project that has vision to one that only has short term goals, you will find that the one with vision has much more purpose. And this will be evident in everything you create for your market.

Others will feel more purpose from your content without having a clue why.

We are stronger marketers whenever we have the ability to feel what our customers feel, and understand the problems they suffer through. But when we have a vision for how we will serve our market, our ability to empathize with them is greatly intensified.

TD Bank recently conducted a survey of over 1100 people and over 500 small businesses in regards to vision and their visualization practices. Here are some of their findings:

  • 76% of all businesses that used visualization practices claim their businesses turned out exactly the way that they envisioned them
  • 82% of all businesses that used vision boards claim they have accomplished 50% or more of their objectives
  • Individuals who have a vision or use some form of visualization are twice as confident that they will accomplish their objectives
  • 67% of those surveyed experience more purpose when using pictures of their goals

This survey – and others like it – has pretty much proved how powerful visions are.

Powerful Visions Take Over Our Lives

content marketing plan

 

As you create your content strategy plan, never forget that the power of your vision will influence the power of your content as well.

Sharing the Ongoing Story Behind your Brand

There is one thing that every single person must feel or experience before they will ever join your mailing list or buy your products – and that is rapport. This is how we connect with them and share with them our humanity.

Your overall content marketing effort must convey some form of rapport to them – otherwise, you will totally fail as an online marketer.

The very first step in building this rapport is sharing with them how our brand was formed, and the hardships we had to endure to grow our brand to where it is today.

Let them experience all the bumps in the road and the setbacks that you have to experience in creating your online business. This is how we humans relate to one another.

Here is what happens after we build rapport with members of our target audience:

  1. They trust us more than our competitors
  2. They give us the benefit of the doubt on anything questionable they might read or hear about us
  3. They will choose us when they can’t decide between our product and an equivalent product from a competitor

There is one last thing I need to mention about sharing the story of your brand. You need to update your story often and keep it current.

content strategy plan

If your market is like most things online, then it is evolving very quickly. So it is important that you share your experiences with updates in your market.

To make your content strategy plan more effective, you must ensure that you specify how the story of your brand will be updated and shared with your targeted audience.

Have you Invited Enough People to the Party?

You have probably already heard about the importance of creating a customer avatar. This is because it works.

Marketers who know the demographics of their primary customer are always more successful – it’s a given fact.

This is why defining your target audience is an integral part of any content strategy plan.

The key here is having the right tools that identify exactly who your customers are. You need to know their gender, their age, their education level, their marital status, and where they live – as a starting point.

Then you need to know about as many of their personal preferences as you possibly can.

Many marketing experts recommend that we create a fictional person that is a typical member of our target audience. They recommend that we give them a name so that we can relate with them more easily. This is a very good idea.

Here is where people fall short in creating customer avatars

Most businesses create and target just one customer avatar. This is a huge mistake. Every online business needs multiple customer avatars.

There are two basic reasons why most online businesses should have different customer avatars

online marketing

 

If your content attempts to address every market condition with only one customer avatar, then your content will lack focus and fall way short of the mark.

One last important Note about Customer Avatars

You must understand that you cannot create this customer avatar and be done with it. You will need to review your marketing data and adjust your customer avatar as necessary. Just like you and I do, people change and so will your market. If you don’t review your customer demographics routinely, then you will find yourself out of business.

4 Content Marketing Elements that Make Your Content Powerful

Regardless of your business or cause, content marketing will play a major role in your success.

This is a fact, whether you like it or not.

Do not believe for a second that your content doesn’t matter. It matters whether you are trying to convince dog lovers to buy your home made dog food, and it also matters if you trying to get mothers to read your parenting newsletter.

longtail keyword

This is especially true when your primary marketing strategy is finding ideal customers online. Many will argue that content marketing is actually most effective when done online, but it is effective anywhere a purchase decision is made.

In this article, I will discuss the four (4) elements that can be used in your content marketing strategy that will make quality content even more powerful in terms of building your audience.

When you begin employing these elements as you are creating quality content, you will discover that your content marketing efforts are paying off more and more.

4 Powerful Content Marketing Elements that Will Make a Huge Difference

What business in their right mind would not engage in marketing activities that would improve their bottom line?

This happens when you start paying attention and begin improving the user experience that is associated with your digital content. I have always embraced the idea of trying to improve 1% every day rather than trying to change 30% or 50% in one single week or even a month.

awareness stage

The 1% rule will gradually improve your actions, your habits, and your results over time. This is the approach that brings about real change. Because it is these gradual changes that are most likely to become habits.

I recommend that you begin embracing these four (4) content marketing elements gradually as you write your blog and website content. Let them become your new marketing strategy as they begin to transform your online business.

The Magnetic Factor That Keeps Readers Coming Back For More

To have really successful content marketing, our digital content should possess that one powerful magnetic factor.

That magnetic factor is Entertainment.

Our content must be entertaining to keep readers coming back for more. Why else would they return to your blog or website?

Oh yeah, I have heard about (and even written about) the major objectives for blog posts and digital content. It has been said many times that our content has to either be entertaining, informing, educating, or inspiring.

While this is technically true – I say that each of those types of content must be entertaining. Why? Because that is what separates your blog posts from other blog posts.

buying process

The cold hard fact is that there are other people out there who are writing about the same things that you are writing about. And they are most likely using more than one form of content platform. So it really comes down to whose content all those readers enjoy reading the most.

Even the most boring instructional content needs to have a little life and personality.

How many times have you forced yourself to read a certain article because “you need to”? And how many times did you actually finish reading it?

Here are some content marketing facts about how our ideal customers are consuming the digital content they discover online:

  • 55% of total page views that a piece of content gets will last less than 15 seconds.
  • About 60-70% of all online content remains unused.
  • Only 10-20% of all readers ever read an entire piece of content online.
  • Those who read your content for three minutes or more were twice as likely to return for more.
  • 67% of all online readers prefer content that is visually beautiful than plain looking content.

If you read those facts again, then I think you will agree that they convey a lack of digital content which entertains and actually builds an audience!

Many people think that entertaining content means you have to be funny and witty, but this is not true at all. There are several ways to entertain your target audience.

Here are four (4) ways to create marketing content that is more entertaining:

  1. Inject drama into your content
  2. Tell stories that are compelling
  3. Dare to say things that no one else will say
  4. Make them giggle and laugh

The Super Power that Makes Readers Respond

This super power that I am referring to is Persuasion.

Persuasion is how your content achieves its objective and getting people to take the actions you desire.

Most content marketers will refer to persuasive writing as writing copy. This is an extremely valuable skill to have. Highly skilled copywriters are usually very wealthy. Average bloggers probably couldn’t afford to hire any of them.

But since we know that writing is a craft that can be improved with practice, common sense tells us that our copywriting skills can be improved with practice as well.

benefits of content marketing

Many of us believe that we have little or no persuasive skills, but this is not true. We have persuaded others all of our lives, we are just not aware of this because most of time this persuasion has been applied subconsciously or even nonverbally.

What we need to realize is that these subconscious acts of persuasive can be the most powerful because they are natural and are not contrived.

The key with persuasion is learning to apply it naturally without invoking stress or discomfort from either party. This is the perfect way to move ideal customers toward the buyer decision – starting with brand awareness.

Let us examine some great ways you can begin using more persuasion in your content marketing strategies:

Focus on your very best target audience. As I have stressed in my article about creating a content strategy, it is the content that is very focused to specific audience with a specific objective that perform the best.

So you should always think about your most ideal customers and write content that is especially suited for them.

Demonstrate empathy for your readers. The second thing you should do when you have identified your best audience is begin identifying and feeling their plight. Show them that you have been there and that you understand the problems they are facing. This establishes immediate rapport with them.

Whenever we want to solve our own problems, who is better to talk to than someone who has already solved that problem?

Tell them why right away. One of the quickest ways to hook your readers is to tell them right off the bat the main benefit they will receive from your service, product, or idea. When you convey this specific message in the clearest way possible, you will definitely attract and retain more readers.

Amplify their pain points. Before you can effectively persuade, you must understand the listener’s major pain points. Do not forget that these issues are the reason they found your digital content in the first place.

You must realize that these painful issues provide two opportunities:

  • Pain points give leverage to your call to action
  • Pain points allow you to build both rapport and empathy

Be repetitive about your major points. In subtle ways, your words need to repeat your main benefit and your call to action over and over again. This is why you want to tell them why immediately – so that you can keep telling them again later.

content marketing examples

Address their objections beforehand. Think of every reason why your target audience would reject your call to action and then list those objectives by priority. Now address each of those top objections in your marketing content.

Your goal is to address these objections at the precise moment that you anticipate an ideal buyer would formulate them while reading your digital content. This is a powerful way to deal with their objections.

Use social proof as much as possible. Here’s a fact for you – whenever a person is confused about what to do, they often do what other people are doing. This is especially true when they are in a new environment. This is the power of social proof.

Whenever you can, use the testimonials and experiences of others because it is very effective. The point in the buying process where social proof becomes most powerful is when someone is almost ready to make a purchase decision. They just need a little push in the right direction – things like guarantees, facts, and social proof are all quite effective in doing this.

content marketing world

Start adopting a headline psychology. When conveying your message, begin thinking of headlines that will attract your target audience to your blog or website. Ask yourself what is the one sentence that best describes how a reader would benefit from reading a specific piece of content.

While you are creating content, you should have its headline in your head. As you embrace the headline mentality, you will find that your content marketing will get stronger and stronger because it gradually becomes more targeted.

What Forces Readers to Keep Coming Back to Your Content

The one thing that keeps readers coming back to your content is its Usefulness.

The most useful piece of content is the one that gives you valuable information that you can put to action immediately. Other types of useful digital content are those that contain information that you will need later when performing a specific task.

Haven’t you bookmarked a really useful blog post that has proven to be great resource? Of course you have – we all have.

editorial calendar

The overall idea is to make your own content more actionable and useful. We should all strive to create blog posts that become a resource for others. You learn to do this as you better understand your market and target audience.

As a content creator, you must understand each stage of the buying process for your brand and market.

Here are examples of content marketing methods that result in quality content that is actionable:

Resource lists – Every market and industry has many tools and resources that are used extensively. It is always a great idea to make a comprehensive list of every useful resource that ideal customers in your market are presently using.

For huge lists, ensure that you group these resources by market categories. Be sure and advertise your resource list on the front page of your blog or website – put it in your main navigation menu and label it as “Helpful Tools” or something similar.

Here are some examples of what those lists could be about:

  • List of Major Book Sites that accept Self-Publishers
  • List of Image Sizes that each Social Media Site requires
  • List of Sites that Allow Free Graphic Designing
  • List of Pet Sites Allow Guest Posts
  • List of Free Image Sites

Pictorial How-to Articles – There is nothing that gets your readers more engaged than a very specific and informative how-to article. The key to this type of quality content is “specific and informative” because you will be demonstrating with step by step pictures, how to achieve a specific task that pertains to your niche.

This is particularly effective for tasks that are complex. If it is a challenging task, then you can be assured that members of your target audience will be following along with you. But you must make sure it does achieve the desired result.

If your how-to article is well written and laid-out, and if it addresses a task that people in your market want to learn how to do, then it will definitely be bookmarked and shared by your readers.

Self-Quizzes and Tests – Another great way to immediately engage your ideal customers is by including quizzes and tests throughout your content. One clever way for employing this content marketing method is to make these self-tests conditional on the way your readers consume the content itself.

For example, you could present the self-test and then say … “if you answered 4 or more correct, then you should do (specific task 1), if you answered 2-3 correctly, then do (specific task 2), all others should immediately do (specific task 3)

This is a very effective content marketing approach.

Templates for common tasks within your niche – Offering task templates are another popular way to make your blog posts more actionable. Who doesn’t like a useful template to work from?

Obviously, what makes content that contain templates so useful is the fact that your readers do not have to invent the wheel each time they do repetitive tasks within your market.

The body of your content would be a simple description about how to use your templates. At the end of the blog posts, you would then offer the downloadable templates to your reader in a variety of formats such as pdf, doc, xls, txt, etc.

Checklists for common tasks within your niche – Checklist can be treated the same way as offering templates. You would structure this kind of blog post the very same way. Using the body of the content to describe how to use your checklists, and then offer the checklists in several downloadable formats.

An Important Point about Actionable Content

As you can see, there are several great ideas listed here that will make your content more actionable. You have to understand that useful content gets bookmarked and shared more than most other types of content.

It is for this reason that I urge you to use your own creativity to create an actionable form of content for your own ideal customers. This will make you the exclusive person in regards to this valuable information – and you will become an instant authority in your market.

For instance, you could develop your own scoring system for evaluating something critical within your specific niche. After that, you would write a detailed piece of content that outlines how to use your scoring system and offer downloadable Excel templates to make it easier and quicker.

Not many digital marketers are using this content marketing method.

The Content Activity that Dramatically Builds an Audience

The activity that expands the number of people that are reading your content is Sharing.

The digital marketers who are getting their pieces of content regularly shared are the ones who are enjoying big growth in their readership.

Experts have long told us that it is impossible to forecast which posts on social media will go viral, but we can employ content strategies that increase our daily shares. In fact, the marketing strategies that we have already listed in this article will help tremendously in getting more shares.

What you need to understand about viral posts is that it wasn’t a bunch of social media accounts from average people that made them go viral. In most cases, they got propelled by several “influencers” (usually celebrities).

So having a content marketing strategy of going viral on social media sites is not the right frame of mind to have.

You have to understand the mentality of sharing content with others. Sharing content is a “social action” so it is very important to most sharers what their friends are “seeing them share”.

Don’t believe me? Then check out the fact below:

59% of ALL articles that are shared on social media sites are not even clicked on by the sharer!!!

That fact pretty much says that people share stuff because it makes them look cool – not because they read it and felt someone else would find it helpful or entertaining.

So articles like “5 Ways to Treat Skin Rashes” would not be shared very often for obvious reasons. It is important to understand this distinction when it comes to sharing content. There is a “What Other People Think” factor at work here.

marketing campaigns

In terms of getting shared, it is things like the headlines, the images, and the way your content looks that become quite important.

Here are factors that help your digital content get shared more often:

  • Content that triggers an emotion
  • Content that tie to their identity
  • Content that addresses trending topics
  • When there are plenty of easy to share buttons available
  • Content that uses pop culture
  • Interviews with celebrities or influencers

Summary

As I like to do in many of my articles, I have identified and shared four (4) vital content marketing items that most content strategy articles do not discuss.

  • Here’s what we covered in this post:
  • We discussed the most effective way to approach our content marketing efforts
  • We identified the one factor that makes readers come back to read more
  • How to get your readers to respond more often to your written words
  • We identified a second factor that practically forces readers to read more of your content
  • We listed several ways to make your readership grow

If you found this article helpful, then please share this with five (5) friends.

3 Content Creation Secrets That Create Irresistible Content

Do these actions sound familiar?

You purchase a promising new content creation bot. It must be great – after all, it costs over $500, right?

You set up 4-5 blogs that are targeted around specific niches. You spend a few days creating content using your new content creation software.

You believe that this is the method that will finally start earning the online income that you have craved for so long. And since all of your articles passed Copyscape, you know they are unique – so you feel even better.

You then spend a couple of hundred bucks for some backlinks, set back, and wait for the traffic to start pouring in …. You wait … and wait.

Most Marketers Make the Same Content Creation Mistakes

In this article, I have addressed the most important elements of creating content but few people are searching for them.

Making Sense of Current Content Standards

The scenario I described earlier is very real. A lot of us have done it – many times. Why? Because there was a time when it actually worked.

Those days are gone.

But when you step back and look, that scenario has left out one important element.

It totally ignores the people you should be serving. How does your customer benefit when you create content from a bot?

The reason it doesn’t work anymore is because Google and the other search engines have gotten much smarter in evaluating our content creation efforts.

 

content creation work

You see, they have customers too. They want to provide their customers with relative content that serves their needs.

Before You Begin Creating Content

Here are three (3) things that Google is now evaluating to determine whether or not your published content is meeting their quality standards. Keep in mind that they have many standards, but these give you an idea of what is expected from bloggers and online marketers today.

1) Customer Interaction and Engagement. One of the newest ranking signals for online content is how well customers are consuming our blog posts and webpages. Google is starting to let customers be more of a judge as to whether our written words are making the grade.

creating quality content

We have all heard about Rankbrain that Google started using in 2016 which measures how much time customers are actually spending on our pages and posts. There is also the bounce rate that we can monitor on our WordPress blogs.

2) Content Creation Process. Google has recently made it very clear that they prefer content that requires effort to create. This directly opposes things like the use of content creation software, the obvious rewriting of existing content, and poorly curated content.

Many marketers today are curating content by writing small introductory paragraphs and then adding several blocks of content from existing blog posts. This is not adding any new value to the Internet world. As a rule of thumb, a properly curated blog post should contain 50% original content – at the very minimum.

The take home message here is that content which has been researched, that is original, and adds value will reign supreme over competing content

3) Content Clusters. Google is looking for relative content indicators that are clustering around the main topic of your blog post or web page. There are countless ways that they confirm these topic clusters, and they fall into two distinct groups – on page and off page clusters.

 

content clusters

 

Directly in the content itself, they want to see relative keywords and key phrases that are directly associated with the main topic. The more associated terms that is in your content – the better. Your subheadings should contain them, and your media’s titles and alt tags should have them too.

Off page clusters should come from the social accounts that are associated with your brand. And they should also come via backlinks from relative sources within your market or niche. Those links need to have a good mix of anchor texts which use many of the topic cluster key phrases.

marketing content system

The important thing here is clarity. It must be extremely obvious what your created content is about, and who should read it.

Now let’s address the three (3) things that will make your content irresistible.

The Magic Dust That Makes Your Content More Desirable than Others

Regardless of what we write and why, our words begin a selling process, whether we like it or not. Even if our purpose is to merely inform or educate, we are still trying to sell potential readers on our ideas and whether to read more of our content.

The magic occurs whenever a specific person finds the exact content that they are seeking. When that happens, the customer is sold on whatever the content creator is asking from them.

write high quality content

Think about this for a minute. A piece of content that addresses a broad topic and a general audience does not have this kind of magic. It might attract more potential readers, but most of them will not fully consume the content. And as we learned earlier, Google wants content that gets consumed.

Obviously, the most important thing about creating content is to identify a specific topic that will appeal to a specific audience.

The first thing you must identify about your audience is their current knowledge or skill level in regards to your topic. So your content should target an audience at one of these levels. First identify the knowledge levels you will be writing for and then write groups of content that target audiences in these groups.

Skill level content

The second thing you need to identify about your audience is where they are in your marketing funnel. Have they just learned about your brand or have they been consuming your content for a while?

Your content creation efforts should address each stepping stone through your marketing funnel. You will have people that have just learned about you and need to be warmed up, and then as they progress through your funnel, they will join your mailing lists and buy your products.

Give your readers an obvious path through your content. This path will both increase their knowledge level and move them deeper into your marketing funnel.

The Magic occurs when a member of that target audience finds a precise piece of targeted content that was written just for them.

How to Create a List of Topics that Your Audience Can’t Resist

The endless task for all content creators – regardless of the platforms they use – is deciding what to write about. Not only that, they want to find content topics that their target audience is currently reading.

What you need is a system for collecting ideas and topics. The fact is that many of the best ideas pop in your head when you are not currently creating content. So the first thing you need is a place to begin collecting these new ideas.

Personally, I use a spreadsheet. It used to be that you needed Microsoft Office to get access to Excel, but now Google offers a free spreadsheet that is very good.

content structure

The first thing you need to do is make a list of the common problems that people in your niche are trying to solve. If this is your market, then you should already know what many of these are. Never forget that you can always write about these common problems – if you are stuck and can’t find anything else.

Next you need to begin monitoring current events of your market and what your market’s gurus and influencers are talking about.

I use Feedly to do this, which is a very nice feed reader and it’s free!

Start adding the biggest channels of your niche to that Feedly reader. Now you are able to see which topics are being read and discussed in your market, and which ones are being shared the most on social media.

content ideas

It is the topics that are getting shared the most on social media that you will want to list on your spreadsheet. What I like to do is copy entire URLS that I have discovered in my Feedly account and paste them in my spreadsheet.

You will find that several different influencers will write about the same popular topics. These are topics that you should definitely write about right away – while they are hot. DO NOT COPY what has already been written, instead write about your own views and experiences – this is what your audience wants to hear from you.

Forums are another place to find a gold mine of topic ideas. Not all niches have active forums, but for those that do, you should definitely become an active member. Not only can you discover what topics those people want to read about, it is also a great place to share your own content.

As you spend time on these forums, start paying attention to the posts that are getting the most views and replies. This is precisely how that forum will tell you what to write about.

content from forums

After a few weeks of collecting ideas and topics like this, you will find yourself laterally overwhelmed with things to write content about. This system has a compounding effect because of how our brains work.

As we add ideas to that list, our brains start thinking of new ones that are related to those and so forth, and the process begins mushrooming by itself.

Additionally, we find ourselves able to immediately identify the specific audience group – as we defined in the last section –which each topic is best suited for.

Learning to Get Attention for your Content

If you read the heading of this section closely, then you know we are talking about writing headlines.

Many of you probably thought I would talk about writing your content or how to create an outline for your content here. Those are important too, but frankly, those tasks are worthless if you cannot entice people to read your words in the first place.

blog post content

What most marketers do is slave over their articles, do the proper research, and even do the proper editing. What do they do next? Slap a headline on it and immediately publish their brand new piece of content.

Many successful bloggers say that the same amount of time we spend writing an article should also be spent writing the headline for that article.

I don’t believe we need to go to that extreme, but I do believe we spend far too little time crafting headlines.

For this reason, I think we should force ourselves to write at least five (5) different headlines whenever we create new content. Writing effective article titles is a skill that anyone can learn to do. Like any craft that is learned, the more you practice, the better you get at doing it.content headlines

social media content

content management system

 

One way to write better titles is to attach human emotion to the process. Never forget that emotions are what sells – not facts and logic. And headlines is what sells people on reading your content

So before you begin the process, try to feel the emotion that your piece of content is trying to induce. Do not convince yourself that your article doesn’t create emotions; this is not true – even the most mundane of topics conjure up feelings. It’s just that some topics invoke more passion than others.

Secondly, many of the most successful headlines ever written have followed a template that has been proven to work again and again. The good news is that there are dozens of these headline templates.

Even though our world changes, human beings will always feel emotions. This is why these same basic headlines work decade after decade.

Rather than reproduce all those templates here, I will refer you to this awesome article about writing blog titles and headlines. This blog post is a wonderful resource as it lists all of these successful headline templates.

Summary

In this article, I wanted to address some of the things that content creation authorities typically overlook when they write blog posts about creating quality content.

All of us think about what we will write about and how we are going structure our content. But not very many of us think about the skill level of those who will read our words – or whether they are someone who has visited our website previously.

content marketing activities

 

Most of us write about topics that are too broad.

From my own experience, I know for a fact that most people think very little about crafting their blog titles compared to writing their web content. And they think even less about maintaining an idea or topic file.

For these reasons, I hope you found this blog post to be useful for you.

Let us summarize:

  • We talked about how the content standards have changed for the search engines
  • We listed three (3) things to consider before we even begin creating content
  • We identified the one Magic thing that connects readers and content creators
  • We showed you how to set up a content topic and idea collection system
  • We discussed how to get the attention of others to read your content

Please share this with five (5) of your friends.

9 Compelling Reasons for Creating a Content Strategy Plan

How important is it for your online business to have a content strategy plan?

Consider these facts:

  • Small businesses that have blogs are getting 126% more customer leads than those who have no blogs.
  • Around 50% of all people from the ages of 19 to 49 are getting their information and news updates online, and these numbers keep growing year after year.
  • 61% of Americans purchase products after reading recommendations online or on a blog.
  • Online content marketing generates three times as many customers as traditional marketing and actually costs 62% less.
  • Businesses who publish at least 16 pieces of web content each month will get 3.5 times more traffic as those businesses who only publish four or less monthly blog posts.

This is why creating content is serious business.

It is also why you should start crafting a content strategy plan.

In this article, I have listed 9 compelling reasons for creating a comprehensive content marketing plan for your business:

Content is Your Most Valuable Online Asset

content planningYou should consider all of your online content as the most valuable possession of your online business. A good piece of content will work for you for many years into the future, so you should treat you pages and blog posts as the valuable assets that they are.

The good news is that you can use many types of content to promote your business. Each page and blog post is an additional piece of Internet real estate that you can add to your content management holdings.

Even if you are a traditional brick and mortar business with an online presence – your web content is just as important to your business as well.

Don’t believe me? Look at your competitors and see what kind of content marketing strategies they are using right now.

There are several businesses today that are hiring content strategists to help them with managing content and creating content management systems.

9 Powerful Reasons Why a Content Strategy is So Important

What we have to realize about creating content for the web is how competitive the online environment has become.

It used to be that online marketers could craft some decent blog posts for a general audience by targeting some popular keywords within their niche. Then they could just sit back and wait for the traffic to start flowing in a few weeks.

Today’s web content has to be approached differently. We simply cannot use the same marketing activities and expect our results to change. Our topics need to be more specific and be targeted for a specific audience.

Secondly, you must think about the long term performance of your articles. This means your content needs to clearly define the buyer journey and you must think about the overall user experience of anyone that interacts with the various online channels associated with your brand.

Finally, you should understand that you experience more returns and rewards from publishing content that is evergreen.

Let us now examine those 9 reasons why content strategies are critical to your business:

(1) Undeniable Proof that Web Content is Here to Stay

All the marketing trends about content indicate that it will be around for a long time.

If you are not convinced that content creation is your most vital business task, then examine these hard facts that will influence the future of creating content:

  • 50% of all Millennials will research products online before they make a purchase.
  • 73% of all Generation Z make purchases based on recommendations they read online.
  • 90% of all Generation Z goes on the Internet several times daily.
  • 97% (almost all) Millennials say they use the Internet daily.

These facts indicate that the up and coming generations are consuming content at an amazing pace, and their conversion rates are also supporting this trend.

This is why the way you are currently managing content will have a massive effect on the future bottom line of your business.

2) Content marketing strategies re-enforces your purpose

There’s a popular statement regarding how we write our content that says, “What we write is nowhere near as important as why we write it.”

If you haven’t defined your why, then how can you ever determine where you are going or who you are serving?

While many of us may have done a very good job of crafting our why statement in the beginning, we tend to gradually drift away from that path over time.

We get seduced by a great new article we just read or get the urge to jump on the latest trend that is getting tons of buzz. Perhaps we like these shiny topics so much that we make a stretch by offering them to our audience. And we know deep down that it is not something we should be doing.

The good news is when we have a solid content strategy plan that we review on a routine basis, we get the chance to re-calibrate our content marketing efforts.

This is how we set the stage for some effective content planning.

3) Content marketing strategies strengthen your brand

definition of content strategyOne of the most important facets of our content marketing efforts is to have every content channel of our business echoing the same message and purpose.

After we re-establish our purpose, every single one of our social media channels needs to reflect the same mission statement, the same logo, and a willingness to serve the same audience.

These types of marketing activities will give you an immediate advantage in many niches because most online businesses will not bother connecting the dots of their content management channels like this.

Never forget that potential clients will eventually lose trust in those businesses that have inconsistent mission statements from one social media channel to the next.

And it is a known fact that people must usually trust a business before they ever buy from them.

4) Content marketing strategies clearly define your audience

After you re-define your mission statement and your business goals, you can now define your audience. One successful marketing plan is to use your audience research to identify a specific buyer persona that represents the vast majority of your potential customers.

There are many content teams out there who publish content that is too broad. We have to realize that these types of content do not serve our target audiences in the end. Too many times, a content marketing program tries to satisfy the search engines more than their readers.

Creating content that is too broad is like a radio station that plays jazz, bluegrass, hard rock, and country music because they want to serve everyone – yet no one will listen to them because most of the time the station plays music they don’t like. Let that sink in for a moment.

5) Content marketing strategies provides business objectives for your content

Every time you create content, it should have a specific objective for a specific person. This is how focused your content marketing needs to be in today’s competitive blogging environment.

Let’s assume that you have a blog about drones. And through your mission statement and other methods, you have determined that your target audience is mostly men aged 30 to 55.

Not only do you create a blog post that appeals to that audience, it should also be tailored for a specific skill level from that audience, and where they exist in your marketing funnel.

For instance, are they advanced drone operators? Or are they just starting out with a new interest in drones?

Secondly, have they just discovered your blog? Or are they very aware of your blog and the services that you offer?

Notice that it doesn’t take a bunch of elaborate customer research for this. These same layers exist in every single market.

Each one of these conditions will need its own piece of quality content. You blog posts should be arranged in a way that allows for readers to move along in a natural progression. As they consume one piece of content, then direct them to the next one in order.

When your content has an objective, you gently move your customer deeper into your content marketing funnel. This is why you must have business objectives to begin with.

6) Content marketing strategies let you stand out from the noise

content strategy the philosophyThe biggest problem that online marketers face today is trying to get the attention of an audience who has become blind to all types of marketing.

People today are literally shell shocked from information overload. We live in a society where every single doorway that separates our private lives from the public is constantly jammed with advertising.

Our phones are full of unwanted calls and texts, our email boxes and our home mail boxes are full of spam, solicitors are constantly banging on our doors, and our TV shows keep showing us more and more commercials.

And when we are online, we have to put up with unwanted content like pop-ups and videos that do nothing but cause our PCs to freeze up.

Consider these two content marketing facts:

  • People from 1984 saw an average of 2000 ads per day, while people in 2014 were seeing an average of 5000 ads per day.
  • A PageFair report from 2017 reports that 615 million devices are now using Ad blockers

So when you create a new piece of content for your online audience, it has to be really special to stand out from the crowd. You must craft a killer headline that attracts attention.

When you have a content strategy plan, your content creation goals and business objectives have already targeted a specific group of people. And the good news is that these people are actively looking for your content because it addresses a need that they have.

Think back to a specific need or problem that you had. Didn’t you jump on the search engines looking for a solution? Didn’t you try one search terms after another seeking that solution? Of course you did – we all do.

And how did you feel when you finally found that blog post that took care of your pressing need? It was like that piece of content was created just for you.

This is how people should feel about your web content. Your content planning activities can make this happen.

This is what makes you stand out from the noise.

7) Content market strategies increases your productivity

When creating a content strategy plan, it allows you to be much more productive. When you get very clear about your mission statement, and you know where you are going, the next logical task is identifying the steps needed to reach your content creation goals.

Many successful online marketers like to use some sort of an editorial calendar to plan out when to create various pieces of content for the web. After defining all the content they need to generate, they simply assign dates to each of them.

There is a free WordPress plug-in called the Editorial Calendar which lets you view your blog posts in a calendar format for content planning purposes. How cool is that?

The format you use to plan your blog posts is not important. What’s important is that you create a content creation plan and get it written down somewhere – other than in your head.

Writing down tasks and planning them gives them a better chance of being accomplished.

A recent study by a psychology professor at Dominican University in California discovered that people were 42% more likely to achieve goals that were written down than those that were not written down.

8) Content marketing strategies provide more customer engagement

If you have spent any time at all on social media channels, then you already understand the importance of engagement. Every social media platform out there places a very high premium on engagement.

This makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

After all, they are social environments, aren’t they?

Engaging with your following and your community are social acts, so these social networks will greatly reward you for doing so.

There are people on each of these social media platforms that are making a living from one social media channel – no blog or website – just from that one single social media account.  This is how powerful these channels are.

Needless to say, cultivating a community on social media is time very well spent. When you take the time to engage with your audience on these channels, you will be rewarded in many ways.

Here are some social media facts:

  • It was discovered that in 2012, each Internet user had an average of three (3) social media accounts. Today the average user has seven (7) social media accounts.
  • An amazing 97% of all adults from the ages of 16 to 64 have logged into at least one social media account within the last 30 days.
  • On average, every American will spend over two (2) hours each day on social media.
  • 1 out of every 3 minutes that users spend on the Internet is spent on social media and messaging.
  • Around 79% of all social media users have shared a personal milestone with their social media audience.
  • An incredible 89% of all social media texts and messages to brands are ignored.
  • One out of every three consumers is willing to name a brand when sharing a life milestone on their social media channel.

Are you not seeing the amazing opportunity that social media is providing for your online business?

These facts clearly indicate that many online businesses are ignoring this gold mine!

And most of the activities on these social media platforms cost absolutely nothing to perform – other than time. Successful marketers typically set aside a specific amount of time for interacting with their social media communities.

Just an hour a day spent on these channels can dramatically increase your traffic.

The key to being successful on these social networks is being available to engage and answer any questions or concerns that your followers may have. When they understand that you really care about serving them and making their lives better, your following will grow beyond anything you ever imagined.

Remember that your overall goal on social media is to direct them to your primary online content and blog posts.

9) Content marketing strategies will make you an authority

content auditsThe thing about being an authority is that it’s one of those things that you can’t give to yourself. It’s like a nickname; other people have to give it to you.

Becoming an authority is a perception that others have about the way you present yourself and your overall persona.

So when you have a solid content strategy plan, it shows that you are knowledgeable and organized, and that you have a firm grasp on the market you are serving.

Putting off this kind of vibe is invaluable because it will attract people who are seeking the knowledge and marketing content that you have. And they will be willing to pay you for that knowledge.

And when you think about it, isn’t this the overall goal that all of us have?

…. to become an authority in our chosen niche or market?

Let’s Summarize Your Content Strategy Path

It is my hope that at this point you have a good grasp about formulating a content strategy plan for your online business and your future blog posts.

It has been my experience that most marketers out there do not have any kind of content marketing strategy in place.

This is a shame because doing so will produce far more web traffic and conversions from your content creation activities.

Let’s summarize again what a content marketing strategy plan can do for your business:

  • It prepares you for future marketing
  • It lets you re-establish your purpose on a routine basis
  • It helps you align all of your brand elements
  • It helps you redefine your target audiences
  • It helps you identify the various business objectives for your content
  • It helps your content stand out from all the noise
  • It makes your content management systems more productive
  • It helps you to engage more with your customers
  • It helps you become an authority of your niche

If this article was useful for you, then please share it with five (5) of your friends.