Content is a vital element to all modern businesses. This is a fact that people are coming to realize but have been slightly slow on the uptake. A lot of mainstream businesses might look at the idea of content and see it as unnecessary. Still, others might see its benefits but decide that, in the scheme of things, it seems as though content is more useful for companies other than theirs’, associating it more with creative companies, or social media-oriented companies.
The first thing to establish is that content has value to everyone, all the time. Being a content creator, whether a copywriter or a video game streamer, has never been more valuable than it is today. Internet is insatiable, always on the lookout for more content to consume, share, and disseminate through all of its access points. If you’re a player with a stake in the internet, you should know how relevant content is. Bring your content to the table and draw attention to your cause.
Interactive content is on the rise exactly because businesses need new ways to communicate. Content’s spread is outstripping any of the older, traditional marketing techniques.
Naturally, content development and creation are not simple to understand, and it certainly isn’t simple or easy to execute. Even doing the level of content development required to maintain a basic blog or social media feed requires expert knowledge and an aptitude for understanding the data you will collect along the way.
The difference between content creation and content development is a distinction also worth addressing at this junction, as we look to understand the world of content. You can hire out-of-house for content creation, and it can be completed effectively by people who don’t even necessarily have an in-depth knowledge of your business. Content development is an in-house process, which involves the scheduling, planning, cultivation, and execution, content dissemination, and data analysis.
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Content development needs to be professionally handled. Let’s now take a look at the reasoning behind it, the skills, and the framework that best suits content development.
Why is the content development framework so important?
The content development process is dense and time-consuming. It has to be managed every step along the way to ensure that you are securing the best possible results from your content.
For planning
The challenge is to make content development an ongoing process, an action that can never stop. You have to keep pushing hard for results. As the old maxim goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. It is also valid here. Planning is absolutely vital for content development, and that’s exactly how creating a content development framework will help you.
Who’s got two thumbs and is heading down to NYC for a 2020 business planning and content strategy deep-dive extravaganza? THIS KID RIGHT HERE! (I *may* go check out the windows and lights and holiday merriment as well, since this is my FIRST holiday visiting the city!!)
— Elisa Doucette (@elisadoucette) December 17, 2019
Who’s got two thumbs and is heading down to NYC for a 2020 business planning and content strategy deep-dive extravaganza? THIS KID RIGHT HERE! (I *may* go check out the windows and lights and holiday merriment as well, since this is my FIRST holiday visiting the city!!) – Elisa Doucette, Editor | Writer | Content Marketing Strategist | Writing Coach | Speaker
For accountability
For the sake of maintaining a thorough and disciplined approach to content development, you should create a step-by-step approach to building your framework. Content development pros would say accountability at every step of the way is vital for ensuring that you know what you need to alter.
By implementing a disciplined framework for your content development process, you give yourself the best chance of truly optimizing your process. Without a proper content processing plan, it will be almost impossible to effectively monitor this.
For keeping track of content and its ownership
Content ownership and keeping track of what content you have available are also important reasons why a detailed framework is imperative. For example, you may find that you have untold content recyclability.
If content is flying from its creator through your company and out onto the web without proper management, you could miss the opportunity to re-use and find alternative purposes for content that you thus only have to pay for once. For example, a piece of website content development could quickly become a piece of training content development. Without the system to keep track of it all, that opportunity would be missed.
For quality control
The last reason a framework is necessary is for quality and purpose control. “Even the most talented of content creators are capable of putting out work that misses the mark in some way or another.
It’s of the utmost importance that you have a content delivery framework with a stop and search, if you will, so that you can catch anything that it wouldn’t be beneficial for you to publish”, says Martin Ashfield, content marketer at Academized and Do My Assignment. This is a simple enough reason but is another one of those significant justifications for having a well-designed content process framework.
Design criteria
Speaking of ‘well-designed content process frameworks,’ it’s essential that you not only understand the importance of a content development process framework but also what one feels like. Before we get into the ins and outs of the actual structure itself, it can be useful to think a bit more artistically about the criteria that your framework will fulfill.
In-house or outsourcing?
The debate of in-house or outsourcing is a question of rigidity and fluidity. Never has the idiom ‘Pick your battles’ been more accurate than with content development. On some fronts, you want things to be ultra-flexible, with the ability to adapt from different types of media to different distribution routes to various creators. At other times you’ll want to outsource all creation, but the framework needs to have the flexibility to revert to in-house production if needs be.
A majority of content professionals (56%) currently outsource content creation to contractors and/or freelancers, with an additional 8% planning to in 2020. The remaining 36% manage content creation in-house. – Angela Tague, Content Marketing Writer & Journalist @ WebWritingAdvice.com
Clarity and communication
Flexibility can only be appropriately created with clarity – another vital element to your framework. Clarity will require exceptional communication systems and everyone on the team to be briefed about who to talk to, at what stage, etc. Clarity is the key to optimization and to ensuring that your channels for communication don’t get clogged up in ways that affect any part of the long content development process.
Quality control and accuracy
There are some aspects to a useful framework that remain rigid and inflexible. These are the high priority elements that, regardless of the situation, always need to stay intact. An example of this would be the quality control element to your content development process. Part of development, regardless of any other factors, is ensuring your content is up to scratch. This will require different things from different people but, for written content, for example, it means maintaining incredibly high standards for accuracy of content. Sometimes this will need outside help, so you might look to sites like PaperFellows, Best Writing Services, Custom Essay, and EliteAssignmentHelp, all of which will be able to give you the help you need in ensuring that this inflexible task is completed.
The framework details
Let’s take a closer look at what the actual components of your framework should be. Note that there’s flexibility within this. But most of these elements are generally advisable regardless of the situation.
Scheduling
The first element is the campaign schedule. “For website content development schedule, you have to take a slightly alternative approach. The reason for this is that it is impractical to do a separate schedule for each project since the process is ongoing. Instead, you ought to develop an overarching schedule that applies to each piece of content that you need to develop and then release”, advises Laura Crawford, tech journalist at StateOfWriting and BigAssignments. The schedule will be a powerful guiding tool and will ensure that, within your framework, organizational standards are maintained to the best of your ability.
Identifying the best approach
You’ll want a phase of identifying the most relevant approaches towards developing your content. You don’t want to run the risk of wasting time developing content that, in the long run, won’t aid you. Your framework should have a big emphasis on deciding what approach you are taking ahead of development so that your entire team is working towards a unified goal (a text post on Pinterest, for example).
Once you know where you are headed with your ultimate content release, that’s when you can start analyzing your target audience more closely to establish how to optimize your content. This is complex and will require a real set of professionals constantly looking at trends and internet optimization. An example of this would be working intensely on keyword SEO for website content development. Mainly, you’re working on packaging at this stage in the framework, ensuring that your content release is streamlined and packs a punch.
Call to action
Next, you want to work on your calls to action. This element of content marketing is vital, since missing that opportunity can actually nullify the whole content development process. You need to be continually looking for ways to get those experiencing your content drawn closer to your ultimate goal, making a sale, for example. Calls to action are effective (when done well) and aren’t all that difficult.
Appealing content is the key to driving engagement on Instagram. Here are the concepts you need to focus on: Targeted, Authentically helpful, Focus on useful, concise information, Think repeatable-social-mobile, Curate, and include a Call to action.
— Karen Civil (@KarenCivil) May 27, 2019
Appealing content is the key to driving engagement on Instagram. Here are the concepts you need to focus on: Targeted, Authentically helpful, Focus on useful, concise information, Think repeatable-social-mobile, Curate, and include a Call to action. – Karen Civil, Owner of KarenCivil.com & LiveCivil.com
Social media organization
The next step, and it’s a big one, is organizing your social media. The overwhelming majority of content these days is destined for social media. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or TikTok are some of the most important platforms where you can find your audience.
And, even if it isn’t directly produced for social media, you rarely want to release content without advertising it that way. Social media managers are people who spend masses of time getting to know and understand the patterns and flow of social media.
Thankfully, we now have tools that help us keep everything organized. For example, Planable can help you plan, collaborate on, and schedule your content for social media. Everything on the same page, in a seamless manner. If you didn’t get the chance to see how it works, you should sign up right now and get 14 days free trial.
All this can finally flow into getting ready for significant events, days when you really want to cash in, like holidays. Content repackaging for Christmas or Halloween is a really massive part of modern content development.
Conclusion
Overall, it’s a complex world with lots of options available to you. Content development, whether it is for social media advertising, website content, training content, or really anything you like, is a vital step. Having the systems and content workflow in place to handle the volume that you will have is nothing short of intense and demanding. It’s a great opportunity, and it has to be taken.
This article was submitted by Aimee Laurence who has worked in tech policy and journalism for the past 3 years at Coursework Help and at Assignment Help. She also works in email marketing freelance at the Type My Essay portal.
