In this content creation course, you’ll discover how content can be used to get more traffic, leads, and customers.
Discover the type of content that works best for you, how to come up with content ideas, how to promote content to get traffic and grow your audience, how to sell content, and more.
Almost every type of online business can benefit in various ways by creating and/or selling content.Table of Contents
Part 1:
Why Create Content?
Almost every type of online business can benefit by using content.
Here are the more common types of online businesses and how they can use content.
InfoBusiness
An audience is a fundamental part of an InfoBusiness.
You can build it by creating, publishing, and promoting content on social media platforms or your blog.
This is explained in the 4 step InfoBusiness strategy guide.
Content will also allow you to be perceived as an “expert”. This will make selling much easier.
Content can also be packaged and sold as Information products e.g. ebooks, books, video & audio courses, and so on.
Affiliate Business
A common way to build an affiliate-based business is to create content (articles) on your website. And then optimize them with SEO techniques to get a lot of traffic from Google.
You can promote affiliate products within the content and on the website. You can also build an email list and promote affiliate products via email.
Social Media Influencer Business
In this type of business, you create content for an audience on your social media platform e.g. Youtube.
You promote this content to grow your audience. And then monetize your business using affiliate products, a membership site (e.g. Patreon), sell ads, and other options.
In some ways, this is similar to an InfoBusiness.
Freelance Business
This is more like a job than a business. You can find content creation jobs on the various freelance sites e.g. Freelancer.com and get paid for your work.
You can create content in various formats e.g. articles, ebooks, video scripts, etc.
Other Type of Business
In almost every type of online business, you’d have to build an email list. Emails are also a form of content. Copywriting is also another form of content. This consists of writing ads, sales letters, headlines, etc.
Choose The Right Niche For You
If you pick a niche that you like it will be much easier to create content.
Imagine having to create content each day about a topic that doesn’t interest you. You’ll be working against your strengths. It’s always advisable to find the niche that works best for you.
It takes me about 4 days to create a piece of content (article).
I can’t imagine spending 4 days researching, writing, editing, and optimizing an article about a topic that doesn’t interest me e.g. “knitting”. Furthermore, there’s nothing I can teach, I don’t even know the basics.
There are several techniques to pick a profitable niche that you like!
As I explain in that guide it will be easier to create content if you have a lot of knowledge, skills, and experience about a certain niche.
But you don’t need to be an “expert” to create content. If you know just the basics you can create content and help beginners.
After all, in almost every niche your audience will consist mostly of beginners.
You can keep learning about the topics relevant to your niche. And as you gain more knowledge, experience, and improve your skills you can create more content and help more people.
Now let’s see the various formats and types of content that you can create.
Part 2:
Content Types And Formats
The content format refers to how you’re going to package/present the information.
These are the most common content formats. You’ll be using one or more of them.
- Video
- Audio
- Text
- Image
You can create various types of content from those formats.
For example:
- How-To Tutorials
- Reviews
- Case Study
- Quotes
- Infographic
- Swipe File
- Checklist
If you want to create audio content that includes mp3 files, podcasts, etc.
Text content includes articles, emails, etc.
Image content includes memes, illustrations, infographics, etc.
Here are the ideal content type and format for the various platforms.
Social Media
The top social media platforms are Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter, and Podcasts.
In my other guide, you can discover the best content types and formats for each one of those platforms.
Blog
The ideal content format is text-based (articles). Because you can optimize them with SEO techniques to get a lot of traffic from Google.
You can also create blog posts with video content but you have to transcribe them in order to optimize the post for SEO.
DigitalMarketer has a great Infographic with 65 different types of articles (pdf file) you can create for your blog. For example, review posts, how-to tutorial, FAQ post, etc.
Info Products
You can create and sell Information products. The typical content formats are ebooks, audio, and video courses. These can be sold as physical products too i.e. books, CDs and DVDs.
You can also bundle multiple formats together to create a more expensive and valuable Infoproduct e.g. 10 videos and an ebook (workbook).
Those formats can also be used for lead magnets or product bonuses. Lead magnets are freebies that can be used on optin pages, sales funnels, and so forth.
The best types of content for lead magnets or bonuses include checklists, swipe files, cheat sheets, mind maps, Infographics, special reports (short ebooks), interviews, audio file, and more.
In the Infobusiness and other types of business, the best format for emails is plain text. This email doesn’t contain any images, videos, buttons, etc. It’s just text with some links.
You can use font styles (bold, italics, underline) and emoticons.
Here’s an example:
Plain text emails will appear as if they’re being sent from a friend. That will make it a bit easier to build a good relationship with your subscribers.
If they see you as their trusted friend/advisor it will be much easier to sell the products and/or services that you recommend.
Newsletters are typically used by E-commerce stores or big companies.
Here’s an example of a newsletter. You can see big images, buttons, and testimonials.
You may have to try the different options to find what works best for you and your audience. You can try plain text. You can try plain text with a few images. Or you can try a newsletter.
The Ideal Type And Format
For Your Content
The ideal content type and format for your business depends on these three things.
Your Strengths
You should try to use the content format that works best for you. This is KEY to be able to create high-quality content with ease.
For example, if you hate writing you’ll be working against your strengths if you spend your time writing articles.
You may have to try different content formats before you eventually find what works best for you.
Find out which format you prefer the most.
Your Audience
Consider also what your audience prefers.
For example, if you have a business in the travel industry your audience may prefer to see more image-based content.
This consists of Infographics, gifs, quotes, memes, slideshares, etc.
Your Platform
For example, if you’re going to build an audience on Youtube you can only create videos. On Facebook, you can use text, image, and video content formats.
The type of content also depends on the platform.
For example, on Youtube, you can create how-to tutorials, reviews… On Facebook, you can create fun facts, quotes, memes…
Know Your Audience
Any kind of content you create is for your audience.
So it’s important to know as much as you can about them.
You want to understand their issues, problems, needs, wants, desires, challenges, etc.
That way you’ll be able to create content that helps them.
It also makes it easier to come up with content ideas.
This 10 min video shows you how to get to know your audience by using the “Facebook Audience Insights Tool” and Review Sites (Amazon, Yelp, etc).
Now let’s discover the process to create the most common content formats.
How To Write Articles
You can discover a complete step by step process to write articles in my other guide. It includes everything e.g. how to pick a topic, write introductions, editing, tools, and more.
Articles are the typical content format for websites and blogs.
Because you can optimize them with SEO techniques to get a lot of traffic from search engines.
The ideal way to build a website or blog is with WordPress.org. It’s free and easy to use. There are thousands of plugins that give you the ability to add almost any feature/function to your website.
For example, Yoast SEO Plugin is very useful if you do SEO and WPRocket will increase your website speed.
This video shows you how to install WordPress:
Ideally, you should install a page building plugin like Elementor (link to my review) or Thrive Architect. These give you a lot of features to build almost every kind of website.
This guide shows you how to install Elementor’s free plugin.
How to Install Elementor Page Builder
If the free version doesn’t contain all the necessary features consider upgrading to the pro version.
This guide shows you how to install the pro version:
This video shows you how to install Thrive Architect:
Both plugins have you professional customizable themes for your website.
I suggest you keep the design simple and minimal because those tend to convert the best.
You can discover 12 different ways to optimize your website to get more leads and sales.
How To Create Video Content
The length of your videos depends on how you’re going to use them.
On Youtube, the ideal length is 10 mins. But you can have some videos that go deeper into a subject and hence longer.
If you’re going to create a video course you can make them as long as you want.
Your goal should be to try to help your audience as much as you can in every video you make.
You can discover the 3 methods to create videos (Animations, PowerPoints & Smartphone) in my other free guide. It also shows you the 4 steps to create videos using just your smartphone.
An important part of video creation is the script.
In the following video, you’ll discover how to structure your content to create attention-grabbing videos.
You can use a free tool called Trello to plan videos and manage the complete creation process. This video shows you how to use it step by step.
How To Create Audio Content
Audio can be used to create a podcast, audiobooks, and audio course.
InfoProduct
The following is an example of an audio course. This consists of 15 modules (15 audio files) plus a workbook.
You can sell big audio courses. The price of that one is $69.
You can also use a much shorter audio file (approximately 30mins or less) as a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a freebie that you use on optin pages or “popups/optin forms” to build your list.
In either case, you can use a free tool called Audacity to record the audio. You can upload the file to your website and give users a download link. They play the files on their computer.
You can also record and host files online using SoundCloud. Users will be able to play (stream) the audio files without download.
With the free plan, you can record up to 180 minutes (3 hours). You can set the files as “private” so you only make them available to your subscribers or customers.
You don’t have to purchase expensive microphones to record audio files.
Podcast
You can create content in the form of a podcast. These are audio files that you upload to various podcast directories such as Spotify.
You create new audio files for your podcast on a regular basis. These are called podcast episodes. Your podcast subscribers will be notified when you release a new episode.
You can also put the podcast episodes on your website. Your visitors will be able to listen to it from your website.
Here’s an example:
In this video, you’ll discover how to start a podcast for free using your phone and 2 free apps.
Watch the complete process which includes recording the audio file, publishing, submitting to podcast directories, and playing it live on Spotify!
You can also use services like Libsyn to host your audio files (and other features). These provide you the RSS feed that you’ll need to submit your podcast to podcast directories.
How To Create Infographics
Infographics can be used within articles or ebooks to add more value and make them more visually appealing.
They can also be published on some social media sites e.g. Facebook Page.
They’re best used when you have some kind of information, data, or knowledge that you need to present quickly and clearly.
They’re also good to use as lead magnets or bonuses with paid products.
In this video, you can discover the 10 different infographic formats and how to use them.
Canva can be used to create Infographics for free.
How To Create Mind Maps
These are similar to Infographics. They can be used within articles or ebooks to add value, in social media platforms, or as lead magnets and bonuses.
They condense information so it’s easier to understand.
For example, my “Sales Letter Template” guide contains 10 steps and my ebook explains each step.
As free bonus customers also get a complete overview of all 10 steps in a simple mind map. It can be very useful.
Here’s a section of that mind map:
There are various tools to build mind maps and you can export them as an image or pdf file.
You can use free tools like Bubble.
If you want something more feature-robust I use ConceptDraw MINDMAP. It also allows you to input large paragraphs of text and images in each “bubble”.
It’s not free.
How To Create Animated Gifs
These are like very short videos but they automatically play and keep playing continuously (loop).
These are useful if you want to record your computer screen but a screenshot just isn’t enough. And at the same time, you don’t need to make a long video.
An animated gif is something in between – a “video” that lasts only a couple seconds. You can record animated gifs using a free tool like Gif Recorder.
Those gifs are useful in certain niches where you have to share your screen e.g. to show how a certain software works.
Other types of gifs are purely for entertainment.
Here’s a very simple one:about:blank
You should make sure your audience tolerates them. If unsure use as few as possible and only where it’s appropriate.
You can find them for free on sites like Giphy.
Copywriting
Copywriting can also be classified as content.
This type of content includes ads, sales letters, headlines, etc. The difference is in its purpose. Other types of content deliver value and give helpful information.
This type of content tries to get an action from the prospect e.g. a click on a link, a purchase, and so on.
This free copywriting course is a good way to discover how to create this type of content. You’ll find basic and more advanced copywriting techniques. As well as tools and swipe files.
Copywriting is useful in cases such as:
- It can be used to write email subject lines and email body. You can write more convincing copy to get more clicks on the links in your emails.
- It can be used for the “Call To Actions” part at the bottom of emails, articles, videos, and other content. This is the part where you ask the reader/viewer to take a particular action e.g. to download a lead magnet.
- It can be used to write blog post headlines. Also, for the blog post itself so it’s more readable and interesting. You’ll also write content that is more likely to connect with your readers.
- You can use copywriting in social media e.g. Youtube video descriptions so it’s more enticing.
It’s useful anytime you’re producing content (in any format). Because you’ll be able to create more engaging, interesting, and convincing content.
That is achieved by following principles such as “talk about the prospect not about yourself”, by using power words like “jam-packed” and “proven blueprint” and many other techniques.
Now let’s see some of the ways to come up with content ideas.
Part 3:
How To Come Up With Content Ideas
You can write about every topic and subtopic related to your niche as long as it will interest your audience.
I’ve created a separate guide revealing 40 different methods to find interesting topics and generate content ideas.
Once you find an interesting topic you can create any sort of content about that.
For example, you can write an article, do a Facebook live video, create a lead magnet, make a checklist, and so on.
Here are some of the tools and techniques that you can use.
Keyword Research Tools
These can be used to generate a huge list of keywords related to your niche.
Keyword.io
Soovle
Answer The Public
If you search for “cats” it returns almost 700 related keywords. You’ll find several interesting topics for new content.
You can input as many keywords related to your niche as you want. The tools will keep generating related keyword ideas.
AnswerThePublic returned 200 keywords related to “cats”. Here’s some of them:
are cats loyal
are cats nocturnal
are cats colour blind
are cats evil
are cats clean
are cats intelligent
how cats mate
how cats show love
how cats communicate
how cats drink water
how cats age
how cats ask for help
how cats mate
how cats show love
how cats communicate
how cats drink water
how cats age
how cats ask for help
where cats go at night
where cats play
where cats hide outside
where cats hide in house
Those can all be new content ideas e.g. “cat mating”, “how cats communicate”, “how cats grow up and age”.
Kindle eBooks
Find Kindle eBooks about your niche for new content ideas. From the left sidebar find your niche:
In our case we have to click the “Crafts, Hobbies & Home”, then “Animal Care & Pets” and then “Cats”. We’ll see a list of all Kindle ebooks about cats.
From the right menu, we can sort them by ‘Avg. Customer Review’ to see the best selling ebooks.
Look at the ebook titles for topic ideas.
One best selling ebook teaches “basic first-aid techniques” such as how to clean a wound, make a splint, and perform CPR.
That could be an interesting topic for a new piece of content.
You can also find topic ideas by reading the full ebook description and looking at the Table of Contents.
Article Directories
Search article directories like Buzzle for topic ideas. Just input keywords related to your niche, for example, “cats”.
Currently, there are over 16,000 articles about cats in that directory. Skim through the article titles to find good topic ideas.
Youtube
You can do the same thing on Youtube.
This technique doesn’t work well for the cat niche because you have to scroll past a lot of “funny cat” videos. So let’s use the “diabetes” niche for this example.
These are some of the Youtube video titles:
Top 10 Worst Foods For Diabetes
Top 10 Fruits for Diabetes Patients
16 Signs Your Blood Sugar Is High & 8 Diabetes Symptoms
Diabetes: Footcare
These could all be good topic ideas for a new piece of content. For example content about “diabetes symptoms” or “diabetic exercises”.
Quora
You can do the same thing on Quora.com. Search for a word related to your niche e.g. “cats” and look at the questions:
What is the downside of having cats as pets?
What are the worst things about cats?
How do I turn my cat vegan?
So we might create content about “cat behavior” or “cat vegan diet”.
In Quora, you can also click the search box and it suggests related topics e.g. “Topic: Wild Cats”.
Click on those topics and it shows you more questions.
Forums
Find forums related to your niche and look at the topics being discussed for new content ideas.
You can sort the threads by the most replied. So you’ll see the most popular topics.
In one particular forum I found these threads with a lot of replies:
How often do you clean the litter box? What’s something cool that you made for your cat instead of buying it? Has anyone tried the Emery Cat scratching board?
Maybe we can create content about “cat cleaning”, “cat grooming”, “cat DIY projects” or we can review the “Emery cat scratching board”.
Sometimes you can get ideas by looking at the forum categories or subcategories.
These might all be good topic ideas:
Cat health
Cat nutrition
Cat behavior
Grooming & Cat care
Pregnant Cats
Kitten Care
Web Directories
The best one I know of is Dmoz Archive.
Look at the subcategories for topic ideas. For the “cat” niche we find the following:
Maybe we can create content about “cat rescues and shelters”, “cat shows”, “cat behavior”, etc.
Each subcategory contains even more topics. For example, the “Behavior” subcategory contains:
New topic ideas include “cat aggression” or “cat mating”.
Best of the Web directory is also a good directory. In it we find these:
New topic ideas include “cat reproduction”, “vaccination” and “alternative medicine”.
Study Your Audience
You can study your niche and your audience to figure out the kind of content that will interest them. You need to learn as much as you can about them.
Discover what they want, and learn about their problems, issues, needs, desires, challenges, and so on.
Then you can create content to help them as much as you can.
You can start your research by visiting forums in your niche to discover what your prospects are talking about.
You can check Facebook Groups and Quora to see what questions they’re asking.
That will help you discover topic ideas for new content.
Cover Subtopics
If you create content about a general topic you can then create content about all its subtopics. In this way, you cover the topic in greater detail.
For example, if you create content about “cat health problems” you can then create content about “skin problems”, “cat food allergies” and so on.
One piece of content can inspire and lead to another.
This mind map illustrates this.
The content format doesn’t matter, it can be articles, videos, a podcast…
Data Driven Technique To Determine Interest
Once you find a topic idea you need to make sure your audience is interested in that.
If you’re passionate or have experience with a particular niche you’ll probably know right away if a topic will interest your audience or not.
You can also use the following technique to determine (with actual data) if your audience is interested in a particular topic.
For this technique, I’ll use a paid tool called KWFinder. Paid tools provide more accurate traffic volume than free tools. A free alternative is SearchVolume.io.
Let’s say we have a business in the cat niche. We want to know if our audience is interested in the topic “cat vegan diet”.
We want to find as many keywords as we can similar to the “cat vegan diet”. And then check how often people are searching for these keywords.
For example, if nobody is searching for these keywords it means they’re not interested in that topic.
We find:
cat vegan diet – 590 monthly searches.
vegan cat food – 2,322 monthly searches.
vegetarian cat food – 720 monthly searches.
vegetarian cat – 391 monthly searches.
There are more keywords related to this topic. On average each gets about 500 – 1000 monthly searches.
So there’s definitely interest in this topic.
If the monthly search volume for each keyword was about 50 that would be too low. It would be an indication that there’s not much interest in this topic.
Here’s an example of a topic with higher search volume, “cat allergy”:
Notice these keywords have way more monthly searches:
cat allergy – 9841 searches per month.
cat allergy symptoms – 12,109 searches per month.
cat allergy cure – 880 searches per month.
cat allergy treatment – 1,152 searches per month.
And there are more keywords related to this topic. So this topic definitely interests your prospects. And more so than the other one “cat vegan diet”.
KWFinderdisplays the monthly search volume. Other keyword tools may display the daily search volume.
Check their tutorials to find out. If that’s the case just multiply it by 30.
If you use other keyword research tools make sure they allow the country/territory to be set to global/worldwide or International. So that you see global search volume unless you’re going to build an audience from one specific country.
Here’s how to use KWFinder:
Keep in mind this isn’t an SEO technique. This is only used to determine if your audience is interested in a particular topic or not.
If you want to create an SEO optimized article about this topic you’d have to use the proper keyword research technique.
Now let’s see how to promote your content.
Part 4:
How To Promote Your Content
Content can also be used to drive traffic to your website or your social media platform.
If you use content to drive traffic to your website you should have mechanisms in place to convert them into email subscribers.
If you promote your social media content you’ll build an audience on the particular platform e.g. Youtube subscribers.
There are various free and paid traffic methods to promote your content and grow your audience.
You may have to try different methods until you find out what works best for you.
The best “free” traffic method is SEO if you’re going to publish content on your blog. It’s not completely free because you’ll need a paid keyword research tool for the best results.
You can do Youtube SEO if you’re going to publish content on Youtube.
Paid methods include Youtube Ads, Facebook Ads…
The “Omnipresent” Strategy
Peng Jung uses content to build a massive audience on his social media platforms. He has hundreds of thousands of followers.
In a nutshell, he starts with a 10-minute video, converts it into various formats, and promotes it across many social platforms.
You may have to try it to know if it works well for you.
He reveals the entire strategy for free in this video:
Your Content Calendar
In any type of business, you want to create content consistently. You can’t expect good results if you create an article or a video once in a while.
At first, your content won’t be that good. But over time your skill will improve. You have to be persistent.
Keep cranking out videos, articles, or whichever content format you’re using. Keep learning all the tricks to create better content. Eventually, you’ll become really good at it!
I had to go and re-write my old articles and my emails several times because they were not that great!
Here’s the recommended posting frequency for the various platforms.
Facebook – Post between 1 – 2 a day. 1 post a day is the optimal number.
Instagram – Post between 1 – 3 a day. 1 – 2 posts a day is the optimal number.
Twitter – Post between 3 – 30 a day. 15 posts a day is the optimal number. Spread your posts throughout the day instead of posting all of them at once.
Pinterest – Post between 3 – 30 a day. 10 – 15 posts a day is the optimal number.
Youtube – There’s no optimal number. The more you post the better assuming they’re good and provide value. If you’re just getting started, try to post at least once a week. As your skill improves you can post more often.
Blog – Just like Youtube you can post as often as you like as long as the quality is good. Aim for at least one post a week.
Email – You should email frequently, at least once a week. You can email more often, up to once a day. More than that is too much.
Those are not rules. You should always try to figure out what works best for you and your audience. That’s something you’ll learn over time from experience.
Analyze Your Results
You can evaluate your content promotion performance by using various analytic tools. The goal is to understand how well whatever you may be doing is working.
For example, if you’re making Youtube videos you may want to check “engagement rate”, “subscribe growth” and so forth.
If you’re writing articles you may want to check “average time on page” or “number of social shares”.
You can learn from this data.
This process shouldn’t take a lot of your time. You don’t want to waste hours “playing around” with analytic tools. They can be addicting.
Focus on the more important aspects of your business such as creating content.
Almost all social media platforms provide analytic tools.
For example, Facebook provides the Page Insights tool. This helps you understand which posts get the most engagement and how well your page is performing.
If you’re using a blog you can use Google Analytics. It’s a free tool. “The Avg. Time On Page” is one of the most interesting metrics.
For example, if people are spending too little time on a particular page compared to others it can mean two things.
They don’t find it useful so maybe you can update it. Or they’re not quite interested in that particular topic.
If you’re sending emails to your list check the “open” and “click-through rates” of each email.
You can try a different subject line if an email has a low CTR compared to others. Or perhaps people aren’t interested in the topic of that email.
Analyze and then interpret the data that you see. And then try to find ways to make improvements and get better results.
Part 5:
How To Sell Content
Content can be sold as Infoproducts in the form of ebooks, books, video courses, audio courses, and more.
To create an Infoproduct is very much the same as creating an article, video, audio, and so on.
For example, an ebook is just a very long article. And a video course is a bunch of videos.
But since you’re going to sell these products, you have to make sure they contain excellent value.
Conclusion
This content creation course has shown you the many ways you can use content to get more traffic, leads, and customers.
There are many options so you should always try to find out what works best for you.
Whenever the task at hand is a bit complicated you should try to do ONE thing at a time.
For example, if you’re going to start a Youtube channel don’t start a Facebook page at the same thing.
If you’re going to do Facebook Ads don’t try SEO at the same time.
It’s hard to juggle two complex tasks at once.
Once you master one thing it becomes easy. You can then consider something new to take your business to the next level. 🙂