Your New Website – What’s Happening During Content Creation?
At Spade Design when we say we’re creating content, we’re often met with blank looks. It’s like we said we’re “doing stuff.” Clients wonder what that means, and for good reason. Content can mean a lot of different things. We want to shed some light on the content creation process so you know what you’re paying us to do.
What Is Content, Exactly?
Any media users will consume on your site is content. As soon as they click on a link to any page on your site, what they see on that page is content. Here are a few examples:
- Page text — The heading, subheadings, informational text and calls to action on your homepage are all content.
- Product and service pages – We craft compelling descriptions and use high-quality images, all of which are content.
- Blog posts – Each post is its own web page with keyword-rich, relevant content.
- Videos – Provide customer testimonials, product demonstrations, real estate walk-throughs and more through this extremely engaging content format.
- Free-books, case studies, and white papers – Offer these to share your expert knowledge, build relationships and generate leads.
- Infographics – These persuasive, easy to digest forms of content are more frequently shared. They are graphic visual content that makes large chunks of data easy to understand.
The Spade Design Approach to Content Creation
You can hire someone to crank out writing for your pages. You can use stock images from free online sources. It costs less than what we’re going to charge you but if you hired us for your web design, what’s important to you isn’t going the cheapest way possible, it’s getting results.
At Spade Design, we do that by finding what makes you unique, then going through our tried and true processes. We’ve gleaned a lot of knowledge from our years of content creation, and we’re willing to share that with you.
Start with Strategy
We use the sitemap we created in the beginning stages to create a content plan. We developed your sitemap by focusing on the user, and that’s the same place we start when creating content.
To better understand the people who will be visiting your site, we create a buyer persona. We look at the data we already have from your business and others like it to isolate demographics, behaviors, goals, and needs. We use all that to create a semi-fictitious representation of one person who embodies those traits.
During the process, we become connected to the type of person who matters most to your business. We give him or her a face and a name. We know what they worry about when they go to sleep at night, what they do for recreation, what motivates them to act. We’re going to use all that to help them meet their goals.
We also understand the stages they go through when they’re making a decision, a process we refer to as the buyer journey. We use the buyer persona and buyer journey to create a detailed roadmap for content creation. Read more about our content strategy here.
Offer High-Quality Content
Your website visitors and search engine crawlers aren’t just looking for text, images and video content. In order for the pages on your site to rank, the words on your page can’t be just good, just informative, just well-written.
The bar isn’t to look at what your competitor provides and try to provide something that works just as well. We aim to find where your business is unique and provide content that’s ten times better than anything else out there for those keywords.
Because if you’re not on page one of search engine results, you won’t get traffic.
High-quality content must be original. That means it has to be written by you or by someone you hire. It can’t be copied from another source, even if you have permission to use it. It’s not automatically generated, and nothing about it is aimed at being sneaky or manipulating search engines.
High-quality content is credible, with original research and links to reputable sources. It doesn’t just re-word what others have said, it offers a unique perspective. It’s more useful and informative than anything else out there.
View Content Creation As a Process
We believe in growth driven design. During this phase we’re creating the content for your site, but once your site goes live the work is far from over. Start with a long-term view that leaves room for continual evaluation and refinement.
What’s Happening at Spade Design During Content Creation
If you received an email that said this week we’re working on content creation for your new site, maybe you wondered what, exactly is going on at our office. If you could peek behind the curtain, you’d see us working through several tasks.
Content Idea Generation
Here’s how we generate ideas for your site content:
- Keyword research – we use tools and your buyer persona to find out what words your audience uses to talk about what you do. Keyword research reveals content topic ideas.
- Audience surveys – Sometimes we ask for feedback to find out what people think, feel and want and use that to create engaging content.
- Team brainstorming – Each member of our team has unique perspectives and a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the user experience. We start generating ideas from the first meeting.
- Competitor evaluation – To be better than your competition, we have to know what they’re doing. Your competitor isn’t just the guy down the street, it’s anyone online who ranks for keywords you’re interested in.
Content Planning
Once we’ve decided on what content your site needs, we focus on how best to represent each piece. Your buyer persona will find some information most useful and relevant when presented as an infographic. For other topics, a video or article format will be more effective.
Content Creation
We create site content and optimize it to maximize your return on investment. Your page titles and meta descriptions will let search engines know what your page is about and entice users to click on your result above all others. We’ll optimize H1 tags and body content with keywords and include them in your alt tags, URL and image titles.
Why Does Content Creation Take Time?
When you receive your breathtaking, engaging website and you see the simple, seemingly effortless content on each page, you might wonder what’s the big deal. That’s how you know it’s good. The focus isn’t on the delivery, but on the message. Your message.
Content creation takes an incredible amount of time and effort because we don’t work from a template. Everything we create is unique.
We write for the target audience, your target audience. Just like your business isn’t like any other of its kind, your audience also is one of a kind.
We have years of experience at what we do, and we conduct extensive research like every business we work for is our first. That research takes time.
There’s more to content creation than just words. We optimize content to improve page load speed, make sure the user doesn’t encounter broken links and all graphics and copy work together.
If we’re already working on your site, that’s what’s going on this week. If not, your business might need a better website. We can help.
