Anyone who’s worked in content will tell you that it’s a challenging job. Not only do you have to write a. lot. of. content… you also have to constantly plan ahead to what you’ll write about next. It’s a highly generative role, and it’s one that many pour their hearts into.
A lot of us got into content because we enjoy writing, and we enjoy communicating complex ideas in ways that anyone can understand… especially in B2B SaaS. At the end of the day, we all want to make content that our customers or prospects will discover, read, enjoy, and learn from.
Unfortunately, the reality for many content marketers is that the work they create is rarely read. In a recent Ahrefs study of a billion (that’s right…a BILLION) pages on the web, 91% of them didn’t get traffic from organic search (see study here). That’s a lot of thought and care put into a lot of pages that were never seen, read, enjoyed, or learned from.
Content creation software can help with this. It can help content marketers know that they’re creating content that will fill a need for their audiences, and be discoverable through good SEO.
Here are the major elements of content creation software to know about if you want your content to be discovered and enjoyed:
Content Planning Tools:
Before you even start brainstorming the types of things it makes sense for your company to write about, you should always start by seeking to understand what your audience is searching for today.
Keyword Research is a great way to do this. Some recommendations:
Start by brainstorming the categories that your company fits into – think less about what people might search for, and just the cold, hard facts of what problems you solve, how you describe your product, etc. Ask yourself – what pains are people experiencing that I have an authentic solution to?
Make a list of these phrases, then take that list over to Google to get some search volumes to see how well your gut matches what people are indeed looking for. For each keyword, look through related terms and uncover the (sometimes unexpected) ways that people are asking search engines questions.
The outcome of this is your content ideas generator…the list from which you’ll create all SEO content moving forward. It’s a list of keywords that describe how you can help your audience, that overlaps with what your audience actually has a need for solving.
How To Generate Content Ideas:
Ideally, you create a piece of content for each of the keywords in your list. But what’s the story for each keyword? Some will feel repetitive, and that’s okay. The main thing to keep in mind is that you want to share your unique take on the topic at hand (like we’re doing right now, with “content creation software”).
The best content creators also keep their strategic goals in mind – i.e. is my marketing team trying to drive people toward content downloads or demo requests? This will definitely impact your unique take on each keyword.
Next up: The best content creation tools help you outline and write content with SEO in mind. Read on to learn what we mean.
Content Outlining and Content Creation Platforms:
So you’ve done all the hard work of getting a list of keywords that will each become a piece of content. You’ve built a schedule around rolling out all of this content (at Demandwell, we aim for five pieces a week), and you’re ready to take action.
The most important thing, to ensure that all of your hard work is worth it, is to optimize this content for SEO. Content writing software that corrects your grammar is great for correcting grammar, but grammar *don’t* matter if no one reads your work.
Content creation platforms like Demandwell have outline builders that (1) create sections based on related keywords, (2) provide a list of related keywords that should be included in the body, and (3) enable dragging and dropping of the right keywords into each section of the piece. The result is an outline that any writer can clearly follow and use to produce content that is perfectly optimized for SEO.
This functionality saves a lot of time, and makes success more likely. While some blog content creation tools today can tell you if you have run-on sentences or if there are simpler synonyms to use…they’re not going to move the needle in terms of getting your content into your audience’s hands organically.
Analyze your content for SEO:
Congratulations! Your outline is ready and you’ve sent it to your content writer. They poured themselves a cup of coffee, typed up a draft for you, and it seems great. But did all of those keywords get into the piece in the places that they were supposed to be?
You now have to “control F” over and over until you’ve confirmed that they made it in….unless you have an SEO Content Analyzer.
If you want fast content creation software, this functionality will certainly save you a lot of time.
It ensures that the piece of content has all the necessary elements for search engines to understand what it should rank for.
Our final thoughts on Content Creation Software:
First, as you maybe guessed with all the talk about filling needs for your audience, we do not endorse Automated Article Writing Software or Content Writing Apps. At this point in time, the technology isn’t good enough to create an authentic and helpful experience for your readers.
Lastly, this concept doesn’t have to only apply to written content for SEO. If you need Video Content Creation Ideas, you can follow the same general framework to uncover the things that your audience needs help with, then create content to answer those questions.
For more Content Creation Resources…check out this demandwell article on content creation software, and if you want to learn more about how we can help, book a Demandwell demo.