The 5-Step Process to Creating Remarkable Content

1.) Researching Your Content

“If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?”

— Albert Einstein

If you want to provide comprehensive, fresh, and unique content, you’re going to need to start with step 1: research.

Research typically entails gathering data for your post that you can present in a way that either generates new insight or compliments tactics that you are about to go over.

For instance, on my post covering how bloggers can use YouTube, I gave information on the growth of the YouTube userbase over the years.

In addition to this more “standard” form of research, I also sought out a variety of YouTube tactics from across the full spectrum of YouTube users, from large YouTube partners to companies using YouTube to even other blogger’s uses of the platform.

I did this research because although I had a fair amount of information to share about YouTube, I wanted to make sure I was covering things in a fresh perspective and that I was offering a complete picture for how to effectively use the platform.

Francisco himself offers us a great example of doing good “research” in his latest post on Facebook for WordPress.

I say “research” because I don’t want folks thinking that they have to dive into academic papers (like I sometimes do) or slog through a huge slew of boring statistical charts just to come up with new content.

Research simply means that you are taking the time out to be informed before posting.

In Francisco’s example, he gives a step by step analysis of all of the new features of the Facebook plugin for WordPress, goes over installation and even gives his final thoughts on its usefulness.

If you are going to create content that has massive amounts of utility (read: provides value), you must do your own due diligence to make sure the information you are about to publish is up to snuff.

2.) Positioning Your Content

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

— Dale Carnegie

While these may seem like some harsh words coming from Carnegie, it’s still a point that you very much need to keep in mind.

Despite the fact that we are discussing emotions, there is a lot of good science behind creating content that triggers interest and “goes viral”.

What your content really needs is what any good brand needs: a strong unique selling proposition.

The “purchase” you are trying to get people to make is their time.

What is it about your post that promises to leave a lasting impact on those who read it?

Fortunately, there are two resources you can use to help decide which emotional arousal you are after in potential readers.

The first set comes from Mark Hughes Buzz Marketing book.

Mark is known as the marketing guy for Half.com back in the day, and it notorious for pulling stunts like getting a town to rename themselves Half.com!

In his book, he defines the 6 buttons that you can push to generate interest in anything.

They are as follows:

Taboo

Unusual

Outrageous

Hilarious

Remarkable

Secrets

What’s interesting is that while Mark’s “buzzmarketing buttons” come from personal experience, new research has been found that coincides perfectly with these emotional triggers.

The paper is called “What Makes Online Content Go Viral?”, written by Jonah Berger and Katherin Milkman of the Wharton School of Business.

In their research, Berger and Milkman found that the kind of content that goes viral typically creates a form of high emotional arousal, with 6 key emotions being apart of that process.

The 6 emotions of high arousal are as follows (notice their overlap with the buzzmarketing buttons mentioned above):

Emotion of Awe

Emotion of Anger

Emotion of Surprise

Emotions of Anxiety & Fear

Emotion of Joy

Emotion of Lust

It’s like the 7 deadly sins, except it would be a sin if you didn’t use them to generate remarkable content!

So, when it comes time to position your content, keep these emotions of arousal and “buttons to push” in mind: just how are you going to make this information stay with people and encourage discussion?

3.) Defining Your Content’s Medium

Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.

— Walt Disney

So, you’ve got your research in hand, you know how you are going to invoke strong emotional arousal from your content, now you need to decide just how you are going to present this information.

Articles are great, we all know and love the classic blog post, made for easy reading and information consumption.

The thing is, articles aren’t the only medium (by far!) in your content marketing toolbelt.

Additionally, just because you are creating an article doesn’t mean that you can’t also include another medium of content (like this post did!)

Fact is, different types of content mediums will help you stand out when everybody else is “just” writing.

Where you might have normally created a quick 3-point blog post, why not create a YouTube video instead?

Using different mediums offers a number of specific advantages:

New mediums of content keep your content marketing efforts “fresh” for long time readers

Most media content encourages “stealing” (being shared) on other sites; nobody will tell you to copy and paste someone else’s article, but they would tell you that it’s okay to embed or share an infographic or a video

Creating a variety of content allows you to “be everywhere”; you won’t be able to reach a potentially massive audience on iTunes if you don’t dabble in any podcasting

You don’t have a lot to lose in structuring great content (even old content) into a shiny new coat, so what’s stopping you from trying new forms of media for your content marketing efforts?

4.) Creating Your Content

“The best writing is rewriting.”

— E.B.White

Finally we get to start actually creating some content! 

Content creation is obviously a topic in itself, and addressing the entire range of subtleties within crafting content is outside of the scope of this post.

However, if you follow the previous 3 steps outlined in this post, actually writing your content will seem like much less of a burden.

Gone are the days of having 8 tabs open, trying to read and write content at the same time, and procrastinating in between.

I like to add a little extra focus to my regiment by using the following 3 tools:

Readability

FocusBooster app + The Pomodoro Technique

ZenWriter

Here’s the deal with these…

Readability is perfect for when you are going over in-depth content from one of your sources in order to incorporate the information into your own post.

I use this often when I’m reading research and opinion articles from the Harvard Business Review, because I find their body font to be an eyesore, and, more importantly, I can get distracted easily when I’m on a normal web page.

The Readability app eliminates this problem by creating a temporary page where the content is laid out in a plain format with large, adjustable typography.

This eliminates my “clicky clicky” desire to click off of the article I’m reading, and helps me consume information faster in order to create my own posts.

When it comes down to writing in a distraction free environment (and staying focused during the process), I like the tag team of FocusBooster and ZenWriter.

The FocusBooster live version is an online timer that follows the pattern set in the Pomodoro Technique, which emphasizes a 30-minute schedule consisting of 25 minutes of work and a 5 minute break, which may help you to stay focused on longer projects (it does for me).

While writing, I tend to use the program ZenWriter, mostly because I have the same problem I mentioned above when in my WordPress dashboard: I want to go everywhere else on the web but my writing screen as a method of procrastination.

ZenWriter helps eliminate this problem (for me at least) by being a full screen writing program that has beautiful typography and even offers some “zen-like” customization including ambient sound and type-writer effects.

You can also use the free variants WriteRoom (for Mac) and DarkRoom (for PC) if you’d like.

5.) Promoting Your Content

Business has only two functions – marketing and innovation.

— Milan Kundera

Okay, your post is published, time to share it on your social networks, add it to Buffer a few times, and call it a day, right?

Wrong.

Fact is, you could be doing a lot more in promoting your supposedly excellent content than hitting the tweet button and hoping for the best.

I mean, if you REALLY believe the content that you just created is worthy to be seen and shared (and if you don’t, go ahead and hit that ‘Move to Trash’ button…), you shouldn’t be sitting around waiting for good luck to happen, you should go out and get an audience for your content.

How?

One of the great things about creating content in different types of media (especially visual content) is that this “being everywhere” approach often promotes your content for you: videos get discovered on YouTube, podcasts get downloaded on iTunes, etc.

Outside of that, you need to look for folks who might enjoy the content that you just created.

The key here is to not saturate the same two blogger’s inboxes over and over with your new content.

A quick fix for that problem is to head to AllTop and to find related blogs in your niche.

You can also use the more obvious source in Google to find related blogs in your niche, and then write the authors a very personal email about content that you created that they may enjoy.

You often don’t even have to link to the content in the first email, just ask them if they are interested.

Original Post

Agencia365 Marketing Online.