What is Digital Content Creation?

June 5, 2024

If you’ve ever clicked on a YouTube video or turned on your favorite podcast, you’ve participated in part of the process of digital content. Good content likely caught your attention and maybe it eventually led to a purchase or subscription. As a business owner or marketing expert, though, you’ll be on the other end of the digital content creation process, and it’s a very different experience.

Digital content is only increasing in popularity and helping businesses establish their online presence. If you want to stay competitive, you’ll likely need to produce some kind of digital content. The good news is that many strategies can help you with your digital content creation and help you craft pieces that are effective and that reach the right people.

Read on to learn more about digital content and the steps to creating effective content that will resonate with your audience.

What Is Digital Content Creation?

Digital content creation involves generating media of any kind in a digital or online form. It can include anything from crafting a blog piece to posting a video. In general, digital content creation involves updating websites, blogging, article writing, photography, videography, online commentary, maintaining social media accounts, and editing and distributing any media. The goal is to create content that’s specifically catering to audience or user needs.

These are the main types of digital content:

Blogs
Articles
Newsletters
Social media posts
Landing pages
Other website pages
Photos
Videos
Podcasts

Most companies put out at least one of these types of digital content, but many produce and distribute several types of content as part of their digital strategy. For example, a company might run a company blog, publish guest posts, run an Instagram page, post photos on their websites, and produce a company podcast.

What Are the Benefits of Digital Content Creation?

Companies spend anywhere from $5,000–$20,000 a month on average for content. Why are companies spending so much on this? It’s because of the excellent benefits of strong digital content creation. Here are three of the key benefits:

Build trust and authority with your audience. When you’re producing good digital content, you’re also building your reputation and establishing yourself as an authority figure. That builds trust with your audience. They learn to turn to you for information and to trust your company. This becomes important when they’re looking to buy a product or service. When that time comes, they’re more likely to choose to buy from a company they trust. With great content, you can work to become that first choice.
Improve visibility. Here’s the thing. People love digital content. They spend significant amounts of time on social media and other sites consuming content almost all hours of the day. They’re interested in finding content that piques their interest and engages them. If you’re providing that kind of content, more people are going to learn about your company. They’ll interact with your digital content and start associating your brand with good content. That will ultimately boost your visibility and help you draw in new potential customers.
Drive traffic to your website. Ultimately, creating good digital content will bring people to your company’s website. Whether it’s from a fun social media video or a blog post that answers a question, people will be more interested in learning about your company and seeing what else you produce. That’s part of why a good digital content strategy is important.

What Is the Best Digital Content Creation Process?

With how powerful digital content is, creating a content strategy is helpful. These are some of the general steps for building a digital content creation process:

Plan Your Content

Before you start pumping out blogs, take some time to plan your content process. These are three important components of planning a strong strategy:

Define Your Audience

You can’t create content that speaks to your audience without knowing them. If you’re already established, you might know exactly who your potential customers are and their key pain points. You’ll want to make sure to address those as you move forward with your content strategy.

If you aren’t sure who you’re making content for, start by defining your audience. Segment the population until you find the people who would be interested in your expertise specifically. From there, learn about who they are and what’s important to them. For example, you might find out where your audience lives and use that to inform your content. If they primarily live in California, you can cater to California-specific needs in your content strategy.

Conduct social research to learn about the pain points of your audience. What do they need? What do they want? Answering those two questions can help you establish what intangible things your audience wants to learn about. For example, you might discover that your audience is acutely interested in learning about how to grow their own following online. You can now create content about how to do that, and your audience will find that helpful.

Do SEO Research

Before you begin creating content, start by seeing what will perform online. To do this, you’ll want to do SEO research. Search engine optimization (SEO) determines where your content will rank on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. And if your content isn’t ranking on the first page of results, you’re not likely to see much traction. That’s why you should take the time to determine how you’ll rank before you even create content.

Start with SEO tools that can show you which keywords are easy to rank for. You don’t necessarily want to create content for all of those keywords because there’s little point in ranking for a keyword that’s only searched twice a month. Use the achievable keywords as a starting point. Try to aim for ones that you could potentially rank for but that are searched in high volume. That can give you a starting point for content that can succeed online.

Here are a few things to watch out for that indicate something might be a good keyword to target:

No big names. Google prioritizes content that comes from authoritative sites. No matter how good your content is, you’ll likely never outrank the CDC. So if you’re seeing big names in the top positions, it’s likely not a good keyword to try and target because you’re up against strong sites. If they’re not there, that can be a good indication that there’s potential to rank.
Forum posts rank high. If posts on Quora or Reddit are the top hits, Google is struggling to find good responses to that search query. You have a high potential to rank for this keyword and perform well.
The results aren’t informative. If the current top hits aren’t answering the user’s question, that’s another chance to rank. Higher quality content will likely outperform what’s currently ranking, so you have a great opportunity there.

Decide What Kind of Content You’re Creating

As you’re doing your keyword research, you’ll likely see what other competitors are doing and what’s ranking. If pages with images are the highest-ranking pages, you’ll likely want to mimic that and create pages with fantastic photos that would be more interesting than your competitors’ photos. Use this stage as an opportunity to determine what kind of digital content is likely to reach your target audience and resonate with them—and what’s going to do well online.

Research Topics

Once you know who you’re trying to reach and what’s online already, you can decide what topics you’ll cover. Now is the time to sit down and make a master list of topics to cover. This list will help you always have something to create, and you can just pull from it when it’s time to create something.

This stage is a great time to do some research and have good examples linked. That will make the creation process much easier because you’ll only have to refer to your master sheet to start creating.

Create Your Content

After thoroughly researching your audience and content, it’s time to actually dive into digital content creation. This stage can be the most fun. Here are some tips for each major type of content you might make:

Blog/Article

If you decide to create written content, these are some things to keep in mind:

Make it easy to read. Scannable content performs better, and most audiences like it better. That means short paragraphs (especially if your audience might be using mobile devices), lists, headers, and images. Also keeping the tone light can make it easier to read for your audience.
Add in multimedia content. Even if you’re making primarily written content, don’t forget about the multimedia elements. Having videos and images increases your potential to rank on Google and makes it more likely that your audience will find your content informative and useful.
Keep content focused and keyword-oriented. Make sure your content is actually answering your audience’s questions and meeting their needs. That’s the number one job of written content, and it’s important to stay focused on that goal.

Video Content

Videos are incredibly popular and for good reason. They can easily bring people to your sites and raise awareness about your company. To make an effective video, keep these tips in mind:

Write a script. Instead of turning on a camera and talking, write a script. Having your video pre-planned can help you map out a compelling story that’ll draw your audience in.
Keep your environment in mind. Try to film in a decently professional setting. Think about the lighting you have and aim for a non-distracting background. All of these elements can help create videos that look well-made without costing your company too many resources.
Use professional equipment. Microphones, real cameras, and decent editing software go a long way in creating good videos that will meet your audience’s needs. This guide includes our top video equipment recommendations.

Infographics and Images

Infographics and images can be ranked separately from your other content, which means there’s double the potential for people to find your website if you’re including images. That being said, the goal should be high-quality infographics and images that catch people’s attention and help answer their search questions.

Podcasts

Podcasts are an up-and-coming form of digital content that can help you establish a strong following and help you get into thought leadership. That’s why so many businesses have podcasts today. To make your podcast, consider these tips:

Get professional equipment. Talking into an iPhone works, but you’ll sound more professional and establish yourself if you have professional equipment. A real microphone and solid editing equipment can help you come across as a true thought leader in your field. See our podcast setup recommendations.
Consider guests. If you’re not sure what to say on your podcast, have a guest expert come on and talk with you. They can help establish your authority and give you interesting and thought-provoking content all at once.
Write a script. Just like with a video, it’s helpful to take some time and write out your thoughts, information, and story before you start recording. Podcast scripts help you carefully structure your show to capture people’s attention and keep them engaged from start to finish.

Monitor Your Content

Once you publish or post your content, you’re still not finished. The next important step is to see how your content is performing. Check your metrics and stats to see if people are watching your videos, listening to your podcast episodes, or reading your content. If they are, now you know that kind of content is effective, and you can make more of it.

If your content isn’t performing well, take a look at what’s not working. Is this topic interesting but would perform better in another form? Is the content clogged with bad writing? Are you targeting the right audience or keywords? Consider answering these questions and adjusting your content accordingly.

How Sweet Fish Can Help

Understanding and leveraging digital content creation is essential for any business looking to thrive in today’s digital market. From blog posts to podcasts, the variety and versatility of digital content allow companies to build trust, enhance visibility, and drive demand gen. The real magic, however, lies in crafting a comprehensive strategy that speaks directly to your audience's needs and interests.

That’s where we come in.

As a full-service media brand agency, we take care of everything. From managing all things podcast production to repurposing content across various platforms for maximized reach, we handle the entire digital content creation process. This enables our B2B marketing partners to enjoy the creative journey while seeing impressive results.

Ready to elevate your digital content strategy and achieve measurable success? Discover how Sweet Fish Media can help you build a media brand that captivates your audience and drives conversions.

Learn more about starting a media brand with Sweet Fish Media.

‍