What is Content Development?

Content development is the continuous process of creating content by researching, producing, and publishing information. Developing content is no easy feat. Content writing will require your uninterrupted focus and deep knowledge of the topic. 

You will also need to know the ways of writing. Without the beauty of writing, even if you have great knowledge, you can never bring it into words. We will discuss all aspects of content development in this article, so let us get started with it. 

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Why is Content Development Important?

Content creation is the ultimate marketing practice for your website. When you create content, you’re providing free and useful information to your users. 

By doing so, you are attracting potential customers to your website. Not just that you will be successful in retaining existing customers through quality engagement, but you will also successfully expand your business.

Here are some points why content development is necessary:

1. Content marketing brings in about 3 times as many leads as traditional marketing practices do. Also, it costs 62% less.
2. Businesses that use content marketing are expected to get 126% more leads than those which do not.
3. About 61% of online purchases are the direct result of a customer reading a quality blog.
4. According to experts, companies that publish more than 16 blog posts per month get 3.5X more traffic than those that post four or fewer posts per month. 
5. Better content equals better business growth. 
6. With better content development you can effectively reduce the bounce rate.

Types of Content

1. Blogs
2. GIF
3. eBooks
4. Images
5. Videos
6. Informatics
7. Podcasts
8. Audio, etc.

Steps to Make your Content Development Professional

The one who develops content is called a content developer, as we discussed earlier. However, developing an article is not an easy feat. 

The writer needs to make sure he/she has made all the needed preparations to produce a professional piece of content. Here is a list of things you need, in order to prepare a professional content:

A clear and fresh mind

A clear and fresh mind is a very important step, if you want to engage yourself in developing content. 

Many content creators think they can just waste their time and create content near the deadline. They can, but it will never be quality content. If you take 3 days to write an article of 1000 words, then you will have 3 days and three fresh minds to create an article. 

When you have to write the same article in a day, your mind would have to process everything that you would otherwise do over the period of 3 days. 

That is why the quality of the content will degrade considerably. 

Strong Research 

You will need very strong research before composing any kind of content for any platform. You cannot develop content if you do not already know about the topic and many other things relevant to it. 

Here is a list of things you need to research before developing your content: 

• Target demographics 
• Key competitors
• Past site performance 
• Site goals 
• Other information unique to the individual client

You will also need tools like Google Analytics and Search Console when you are looking for on-site data. 

Composing Strategy

Tackling your content creation with a predefined strategy is very smart and important for creating impressive content. 

During this phase of content development, you will build out the content strategy and editorial calendar. 

The exact strategy may vary from client to client and may depend on the industry. However, your default strategy should focus on tone, style, looks and engagement in the composition. 

You should always use a style that matches the topic. For instance, if you are writing about medicine, you should use a writing style that is serious, informative, and comforting. 

You should not joke and make demeaning claims in the article. Also, you should never curse in content. 

Write

Now the main part. At this point, you will have the knowledge and all required preparations in place. 

Now you just have to put what’s in your mind into a beautiful piece of writing. To do that, you will need to keep a few points in mind:

1. Correct use of Heading.
2. Change paragraph after every 200 words.
3. Use sentences that are smaller than 20 words.
4. Use Active voice, and limit passive voice to 10% only.
5. Don’t forcibly use keywords.
6. Properly place anchor text.
7. Use both internal and external links.
8. Add a table of contents.

There are more things you will need to watch out for while you are in the writing part of developing content. 

Optimize and Publish

The next part is optimizing your content and then publishing it for users. By optimizing your content, we mean making it lighter in order to load faster on both desktop and mobile phone. You can optimize your content by decreasing the image quality and size. 

Now you have to move on to the part of SEO. Where you have to add and check keywords, embed images, videos, audios, add slug, meta description, tags, title, readability, etc. 

When you are done with SEO the only thing now left to do is to publish the article for your users. After this, you are all done with writing and optimizing the content. 

Promote

Now, the next thing to do is to promote what you wrote. Without promotion, the organic traffic can decrease up to 50% easily. 

Unlike printed media, digital media doesn’t have a set number of consumers. That is why you have to work hard to promote your content every time. You can promote your content by following these steps: 

• Send an email broadcast
• Engage with your community
• Pay to promote
• Reach out on social media
• Connect with influencers 
• Ask them to include your content
• Write for others

Promoting your content is the work of digital marketing teams. You can promote your own content until a certain point, but it is always better to leave it to the experts.

Review and Edit

The content development process can never end. It is a continuous process of making your content better than your competition. 

Once you publish your content and it is live, you will notice some mistakes, or you will need to update some facts or numbers. These little changes are not under your control. 

You will then be required to make these edits and publish them again. This process can go on forever, for as long as you care for that content. 

Conclusion

We prepared this article for you, so that you can have an overview of what the pillars of content writing are. 

Also, if you plan to make this your profession, these tips will surely come in handy, while making your first content writing steps.

In any case, this blog of ours will surely give you some useful tips and tricks as to how to improve your writing or how to start this profession in the best way possible.