You have probably heard SEO consultants tell you, “Create more content!” over and over again, but the truth of the matter is that they’re right. Now, it might seem like a bore constantly trying to think of new content ideas to fill your blog and you’re constantly racking your brain for one more article, but there are some simple tips and tricks to help you get the best out of your content. But first, you need to start thinking about your content in a whole new way.
Content Influences By Motivation
If the content on your website is really boring and not that engaging, what is going to motivate your prospective client or customer to click on your little ‘get in touch’ link and become a lead or buy a product? The answer is unfortunately nothing.
Because of this, content warms people up to your brand. Let’s imagine this scenario where a prospect heard about your brand through social media or various other means, they look up your company or business name, and they’re so excited to be enthralled by your website’s content and be met with the perfect partner for whatever their needs are that you can fulfil. However, as soon as they open up your website, they find barren, empty pages instead of the exciting and enthralling blog they were looking for and all of a sudden, they are disappointed and heartbroken.
To avoid this unfortunate situation, you have to make sure every bit of content on your website is written in the right tone, offers the right information, and appeals to your audience because that is what’s going to get them to hurriedly take out their wallets and buy your product or service. Your content doesn’t just inform, it also inspires.
Content Establishes You as an Authority
Everyone wants their problems to be solved by an experienced authority figure. If your prospects have a pain point or need for your product or service, they need to be able to trust that you have the right amount of experience and authority to give it to them. It’s the same as going to a doctor or a mechanic; you probably look for the most experienced one who can instantly convince you that they know their stuff just by talking.
In the world of business, you do not exist in isolation from your competitors. Audiences will constantly be comparing you to your competitors to try and find out who has more knowledge, the same as you compare the 60-year-old veteran doctor to the 23-year-old fresh graduate.
In this sense, who do you think a prospect will go for when they need a product or service: a website that looks pretty but doesn’t have much content, or a website with many words explaining the problems the prospect has, how the business is going to solve them, and how much better they are than everyone else in the same field?
This is why good content on your website helps establish and reinforce a message. That message could be a philosophy, a core, or a promise from your business that you send out in emails, YouTube videos, podcasts, public speaking events, etc. The more you reinforce that message to your audience, the greater trust you build.
Content Keeps You In Front of Your Potential Customers
You always want to be in the back of your customers’ minds, even if they don’t revisit your website over and over again. How many times have you ordered food from a really good restaurant, enjoyed it, but then forgot about it completely the next few times you wanted to eat? Maybe that restaurant doesn’t have enough of a social media presence, or you stopped seeing its name pop up everywhere and it eventually faded in the back of your subconscious.
We don’t want that for your business or brand. You always want to be in front of your competitors so that every time your audience needs your service, they go right back to you. This is done through constantly putting out content to get your name out there. And the most important thing is, the content doesn’t even have to be on your website.
Most people think of content as long blog posts on your website, but content can be anything that gets your brand to your audience’s eyeballs. This can be done through videos, witty or insightful posts or comments on social media, or even blog posts on your local chamber of commerce.
But How Much Content Should I Create?
The simple answer to that question is, there is no answer. The most important factor when it comes to content is consistency. If you can write four or five blog posts a quarter, that would be great, but even if you can only write one (that’s really good), but you do it every quarter, then that’s also fine. The caveat is that you’ll probably feel more tempted to write more and more if people start reading your content.
As for how long it should be, it depends on your niche and what your competitors are doing. A good rule of thumb is don’t write less than 300 words and only write over a thousand if it’s something that you’re really into.
Your competitors are also a good metric, as you can take their content, chuck it into an AI tool, find out how many words it is, compare different posts or articles, and get an average of how long yours should be. But always remember, a small amount of content is better than no content.
Five Tips to Create the BEST Content
But now that you know the how and how much, here are five tips that can help you create the best content for engagement:
- Think About What’s New To YOU
Although you know best about your industry, any new information you discover could be an absolute game changer for your audience. If you’ve discovered something new about your field and think, “Oh, surely everyone knows this already”, you may be mistaken. If you, a master of the industry, just found out, then to them it could be a revelation.
Another important element is that your competitors may KNOW about something, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re sharing it. So, even if this revelation is something well-known, you could be the first to share it and thus you’d still be putting out great, insightful content.
- Comment on Industry News
Speaking of being the first to share something, industry news is the ideal type of content to be the first to comment on. You can get this news on social media, on TV, on the radio, or anywhere else, and then all you have to do is share it on your blog, on your socials, or especially on LinkedIn.
There is a trick to this, however, and that’s not being vanilla. Sharing news could be very boring, so you want to frame it in the most interesting way possible. You can achieve this by being argumentative, opinionated, brave, or even a little controversial. This entices engagement and comments, bringing more eyeballs to your content.
Content can often be governed by personality, so you need to show this personality as much as possible when writing your content. If you don’t agree with something, say it. Be brash, be bold, but never be beige. Your personality will always attract like-minded people, and these could end up being your best prospects.
- Search on Google
Google isn’t just great for looking up movies and recipes, as it can be a powerful tool for finding content ideas. Just looking up a keyword and adding, “What is…”, “How does…”, “Controversies around…”, or “Advice for tips around…” could be a gamechanger for finding out what people are talking about and what they are searching for. From an SEO perspective, this is a goldmine of information.
- Go to Quora
Quora is a great medium for finding questions people are asking on the internet. The trick is to look for the most upvoted questions on topics related to your industry. The upvotes mean that these are the most talked-about topics in your niche or the questions that people ask for the most (that you can then answer). To get the most out of Quora, you just have to input technical terms, buzzwords related to your industry, names of equipment, etc.
- Use Google Alerts
Google Alerts works by giving you a little nudge every time an inputted keyword, phrase, or brand name pops up somewhere over the internet. Google will send you an email or an RSS feed telling you, “Hey, this thing you wanted updates on just popped up on X or Y, check it out.”
To get even more out of Google Alerts, you can add the names of your competitors to get a notification every time they publish new content that you can then analyse and get inspired by.
BONUS TIP: Use BuzzSumo.com
BuzzSumo isn’t free, unfortunately, but it is an absolute power tool when it comes to content. It works by adding a keyword or title for your industry and it will then show you the most popular topics for these keywords and how many times each of them was shared on social media. This makes it so easy to create different forms of content for your blog, YouTube channel, social media, podcast, etc.
Conclusion
The most important thing about creating content is to just create content. Even if you have no idea whatsoever, it’s so easy to just fire up Google or Quora, and look for news on social media, or the latest trends. As long as it’s related to your niche, you can turn it into an article, video, or post. So, don’t overthink it, and just start creating.
Last Updated on May 27, 2025
