How to Set Goals for Every Piece of Content You Create?
Are you feeling guilty for creating and posting content just for the sake of it?
Perhaps somebody told you once that publishing 800-word blogs regularly is a foolproof way to boost your presence on the SERPs because ‘search engines love fresh new content.’
Or maybe you are just used to creating as many content pieces as possible just to check a box against an essential from your list, emphasizing more on the quantity of the published posts instead of quality.
If this sounds anything like your ‘content strategy,’ then you need to put it off right away!
The reason being is that you are just wasting your time and resources.
More likely than not, creating content without any goals is doing little to no favor to your brand. Also, there’s a good chance that most of these are ranking as thin content without any unique value.
But it’s time to change your old habits and plan out a real and solid content strategy that will do something good for your brand. All you need to do is understand how you can set goals for every piece of content you create, and in this blog, that’s precisely what we are going to discuss.
The Purpose of Your Content
First of all, you need to ask yourself that as a brand, why are you creating content. And then just write down whatever answers you can think of at the moment. Prepare a list (hopefully, there are enough answers). Some common answers can be:
- ….so that our blog looks active
- …because Google likes seeing fresh content
- …because our manager wants five posts going out weekly
If these are the kind of answers you have come up with, then you are just creating content for the sake of doing so.
Your content has no real purpose and clearly, no goals. This is a big mistake and a waste of your time, effort, and resources.
Each and every content you create must have a purpose. It should be seeking one or more bigger marketing goals.
You should be able to explain to anybody who asks why you wrote that blog or crafted that infographic.
Let’s take a look at some of the most common purposes of content creation, but remember there’s always and will be exceptions.
4 Common Purposes of Content Creation
In most cases, content is typically created to:
- Earn more links
- Rank better on SERPs
- Educate the audience
- Drive social media engagement
The key lies in understanding what a particular content piece can do for your brand.
- How can it work towards achieving your bigger marketing goals?
- Is it actually good enough to accomplish them?
- Does it have to be in a specific format to serve the purpose?
Let’s dive in-depth on these four purposes of creating content.
- Earn More Links
Link building is one of the most crucial aspects of SEO, and a lot of brands use content marketing as a link building technique.
If you are also one of those brands, then your content should be made in a way that it is easily accessible to journalists and top-tier publications.
Keep ‘linkable assets’ in mind, and you will probably be on the right track. Some of the most common types of content made with the purpose of acquiring more links are:
- Infographics
- Guest posts
- Surveys
- Interactive tools
- Offering expert comments
Remember, there is no single content format to acquire links, and nobody is expecting you to stick with one form of content throughout. Right when you are at the planning phase of your campaign strategy, keep in mind that ‘earning links’ is your ultimate goal.
Also, we are not talking about a 5000-word long blog post here; instead we are talking about a linkable piece of content that is capable of adding a new unique data-driven value to a specific topic.
Besides being in this field, we all must be aware that links are one of the key ranking factors that Google uses, and without strong links, you will most likely struggle to acquire site visibility.
Having said that, every business, whether they are an eCommerce giant or a brick and mortar establishment competing on a local scale, needs to create content with the purpose of earning more quality links.
Moreover, content created with the intention of gaining links has to be fabulous – not just good or great, fabulous!
Among this cut-throat competition, link building is becoming harder day by day. But with the right idea and understanding of your goals, both ideation and creation process can align and deliver content that serves this purpose well.
- Rank Better on SERPs
In order to earn traffic organically from search, you need to obtain a top-ranking position.
That’s it.
Ranking with trash content has become a thing of the past now. Gone are those days for good.
When your purpose is to rank higher on the SERPs to gain organic search traffic, you will have to build content totally different from what you would make to earn links.
That’s absolutely okay.
Once again, it’s all about understanding the content purpose and aligning the content format and creation to your goals i.e., rank better on SERPs.
Let’s understand it better with an example.
If you have conducted keyword research and found that you can potentially acquire high-quality traffic by earning a top-ranking position for the search term “best places to eat in Spain.”
Now when your content purpose only is to rank higher, it is self-explanatory that your content should be the ‘best content’ around that specific topic.
Keep this in mind while working on your content, and you will already be a lot ahead of most competitors. But this is also the area where most of them fail.
Let’s see why.
If you want to acquire a leading ranking position for the search term “best places to eat in Spain,” you will probably struggle unless you build the best of the best content piece available online.
Think for yourself. Every search engine wants to display the best, detailed, and most relevant results for any search query. So why would they even rank a content in a prominent position that is not up to the mark?
That’s right; they won’t.
When it comes to producing the best content, you need first to realize what makes a content better than other pieces. Surprisingly, you can do it simply by taking some time to analyze the SERPs for the keywords you want to target before you proceed with the content creation.
Particularly, analyze the web pages holding the first three positions in the SERPs (those are the most important ones). This will help you in creating content better than them or at least equally good as theirs.
Also, another misconception around this is you can snatch away the top spot from a content by just increasing the length of your piece.
We wish it were that easy.
However, it goes way beyond this. You need to consider the user intent, user experience, and various other factors.
Imagine this: let’s say you have successfully found 100+ best places to eat in Spain. But think about it, who would actually want to read a bulleted list straight away? Does that sound like a piece of content deserving the ‘first’ ranking position?
Here you need to understand what the user came looking for in the first place. What do they want to know through your content?
On the other hand, let’s suppose you create a comprehensive guide, mentioning the location, images, contact details, menu, reviews, and popular tourist destinations around it. Now, this is the kind of content that deserves a prominent ranking position in the SERPs because it satisfies the user intent and query.
When your content purpose is to rank, your focus should be on delivering quality, not quantity.
- Educate the Audience
Typically, content is created as a marketing material.
Meaning content will always be made with the intention of educating the audience and helping the potential leads and customers move through the sales funnel.
In a lot of cases, there are many crossovers between content created with the intention of educating the audience and that for ranking. However, there are also cases where they are created individually.
When it comes to building content that educates the audience, make an effort to find out what questions are crossing the readers’ minds, and carry out a comprehensive content gap analysis against your competition.
This will make sure that:
- When a prospect searches for information related to the product or service you are offering, you have created content that properly answers their questions, and it is ranking on SERPs.
- Once the prospect lands on your websites, there should be content that further helps them move smoothly through the sales funnel.
Remember, informative content can take many different forms. As long as you can explain how it helps you achieve your broader marketing goals, every content format works well.
- Drive Social Media Engagement
Living in the era of social media, you just cannot ignore it.
Many brands have realized its importance and are already utilizing it to boost their brand awareness and engagement.
However, to enjoy true success, you need to build content with the sole purpose of driving social media engagement.
Well, we all know that interesting content formats like videos, quizzes, polls, images, and other fun content works wonders on social media platforms. And that’s what exactly brands should focus on building.
A 5000-word long blog post built to rank better on the SERPs will perhaps fail terribly on social media because that’s not what the social community members want to engage with unless there is something exciting that can create a lot of buzzes, likes, and shares.
But a poll and quiz competition can work like a charm across these platforms.
Focus on creating content with a purpose and make sure it meets the goals. As long as it serves its purpose, everything’s cool.
Conclusion
Marketers often tend to try and create a piece of content that serves multiple purposes – that can rank better on SERPs, educate the audience, acquire more links, and also drive social media engagement. But that’s not likely to happen.
Remember, content is in no way a one-size-fits-all type of thing. Trying to tick all the boxes with one content piece will get you nowhere.
As a brand, you must realize this. Content creation requires an investment of time, efforts, workforce, resources, and money. Targeting too many things with one content will make things messy, and it will be all just a waste of all these resources once again.
It’s better to focus on a single purpose, create a dedicated content around it, execute it well, and enjoy greater rewards. Sometimes, there might be a crossover of different purposes but always focus on identifying one reason you decided to make this content piece. So, take your time to educate your team and ensure that every member is on the same page. Understanding and setting each content piece’s goal will help you drive real success and make sure your resources are not wasted.