Content Creation 101 — What You Need To Know Before You Start

Learn about content planning, cross-promoting your content on social media, SEO, and content marketing strategies.

As I tell anyone who wants to hear it, I have been amazed by the digital world since I was a kid in the 90s. I grew up with Windows 98 (later XP) and a lot of weird and fun experiences on the internet.

Back then, the internet was a different place. There were blogs and websites, but no Facebook, and definitely no Cookie banners. The term content creation was not even born yet. How things have changed.

Nowadays, I feel like the internet is a space consisting of content creators.

No matter where you look in the digital space, there they are. I even call myself such a thing — even though I used to call myself a writer or blogger.

Becoming a content creator is not hard, but succeeding in this area can be. To become a successful one it needs some knowledge and tools, e.g., SEO optimization, knowledge about content planning, and your content marketing strategy, or promoting your content on social media.

In this article, I want to give you a short overview of what you need to know when you want to become a content creator yourself. Or if you are already a content creator, you can maybe brainstorm some new ideas with this article.

The beginning — content planning

I know, when you start out, you really just want to get going. But, let me tell you, you require a plan, or you will quickly burn out.

No matter what your platform of choice for your content creation is, find at least 50 to 100 ideas of content you could produce.

You don’t have to produce them all at once, but if you cannot come up with that many ideas, potentially you chose the wrong niche or topic.

I recommend, consistently posting 3 to 7 times a week for a couple of months to get started on the platform of your choice.

Don’t expect any views on your first published piece of content.

The internet has not been sitting around waiting for your one masterpiece.

Just stay on track and create your first 50 to 100 pieces. It will be a fun, rewarding, also challenging journey you are going on.

This seems like a lot, but if you have your 100 initial ideas ready, you can easily fill the first couple of months worth of content with them.

If you already have your basics down and want to know about my perspective on different content creation strategies, I have a story for you here.

Cross-promoting your content on social media

Is it enough to post your content on only one platform? Well, yes and no.

Most of the content creators I see and know have something like a “main” platform and then promote their content on other social media platforms as well.

Take a YouTuber for example, they post their long-form videos on YouTube, but also have an Instagram account where they post about the fact that they uploaded a new video.

I, as a blogger and Medium writer, promote my stories on Pinterest and post them on Twitter.

Thinking about too many platforms at once can be overwhelming at first. There is no need to think too much about it. With time, promoting your content on other social media platforms will get easier, and can definitely generate a lot of traffic.

With this cross-promotion, you are not too dependent on one platform and can benefit from different types of audiences.

Most content needs SEO (search engine optimization)

We all know search engines like Google and Co. Even though we don’t want to create our content only for them, we want them to show our content to as many people as possible.

For the algorithm to understand what your content is about, you need to do search engine optimization, short SEO.

I sure am no expert in this field, but I know enough to see a significant improvement in my traffic when I apply the basics of SEO.

First, you need to know what keywords you are going to optimize your piece of content for. Think about someone who would type in some words into Google and this person finds your piece of content. What is the person typing?

You can also go the other way around and find out keywords that many people are searching for and then create content for that specific keyword.

But again, if you are just starting out, that might be a bit overwhelming at first.

So, if you decided on keywords you want to create your content about, make sure to do the following things right.

• Your headline needs to contain the keywords somehow. It is best for your headline to start with the keywords and use the same exact wording.
• Write a description or an introduction, depending on the form of content, that contains all the keywords.
• Link to other websites and content of yours. This applies mostly to blog articles I suppose, links in Instagram posts for example don’t make sense.
• Use hashtags corresponding to your keywords if you are on a platform where hashtags make sense like Twitter, Instagram, and even Pinterest to some degree.
• Your blog posts and articles should be long enough, a minimum of 300 words for a blog post. Of course, this tip does not apply to a TikTok video, where there is a set time limit.
• If you create blog posts, add at least one image.

You can study SEO thoroughly if you want to, here on Medium alone there are a lot of articles on that topic. As I said, I am no expert on this. If I forgot something important, please enlighten us in the comments.

Where to go from there — content marketing strategies

Many people create some sort of product when they have seen success with their content creation. If you have been around enough and know your basic tools for content creation, you might decide to go one step further.

Examples of a product you can create are e-books, online courses, coaching, workbooks, or other digital products like planners, templates, or even physical products like merch.

This is a two-way street. It is not content first, product second.

Some people and businesses have a product and want to sell it, therefore, they create content to promote it.

Other people create content to simply earn money from creating said content, like a writer on Medium, or someone on YouTube with Google AdSense and brand deals for example.

I think you should think about that a little before starting out. Do you only create content for Instagram, for example, because you want to sell your online course to your audience?

Then you should definitely think twice. Not every platform is suitable for every marketing endeavor.

In the end, the platform has to suit your skills and abilities. If you find it easy to edit videos and like to show your face on camera, then choose YouTube or TikTok.

But if you are good with words, creating a blog or writing on Medium would be a better choice.

Furthermore, think about your audience. Where are people who want to possibly buy your product?

I don’t say you need to have it all figured out, but you should be somehow clear about your initial motives. If content creation is just a vessel for another goal of yours, then it can become quite frustrating not seeing results right away because you selected the wrong platform.

As always, thank you so much for reading. I really appreciate it. Of course, I have not covered everything there is to say on that topic. Do you have any suggestions or is there something I missed? What are your thoughts on the topics I mentioned like content planning, SEO, and content marketing?

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