It’s hard to keep your content writing fresh as more and more industries and companies are becoming content creators. It’s becoming a saturated market, and it’s important now more than ever, to contribute content that is interesting and unique.
Creating a content strategy is one of the best ways to ensure that quality content is consistently being published. On that note, writing content ahead of time is much more efficient and less stressful than pushing things out at the last minute. But content written ahead of time may lose relevance if someone else publishes something similar first, or it’s considered old news by the time it goes live.
Fresh content means finding a balance between staying ahead of the game while ensuring that your published content will be relevant.
Here are some foundational strategies to keep your content writing fresh.
Finding Relevance
The most important rule to keep in mind when writing content is relevance, and timeliness is just one aspect of this. Yesterday’s news is much more quickly forgotten in the digital world than in print.
Make sure that the topics you’re focusing on get published as news breaking if you’re strategy is to show that you’re current and knowledgeable. If that isn’t your strategy, aim to create evergreen content, which is content that stays relevant and useful regardless of the time factor.
Another important piece of the content writing puzzle is thinking about the person that you’re writing content for, and asking yourself if your content helps answer a question or solve a problem for them.
A couple different places to find questions you can answer:
– Quora
– Industry Facebook and LinkedIn groups
– Your company’s contact form responses!
Just because the answer comes easily to you, doesn’t mean that it does for them. Keep this in mind as you create content.
Your Content Strategy
Creating and actually following a content writing strategy is one of the best ways to ensure that the content you plan for actually gets published. In a recent Marketing Profs podcast episode, Alicianne Rand of Newscred shares just how effective this one step can be.
The main piece you should be focused on in regards to staying organized, is a content calendar. Set and plot dates for when content should be completed and published. Write in the topics you’d like to cover. Ask yourself if the content will still be relevant if there are any delays in publishing. And don’t forget to plan what you’ll do after you get the click.
It’s next to impossible to predict trends and the news of tomorrow, but with a an organized content
calendar (also known as an editorial calendar), you can certainly stay ahead of the curve and adjust dates as necessary
A content calendar can be as simple as you want it to be. Consider these free resources for content calendar creation:
– Hubspot’s blog editorial calendar
– WP Editorial Calendar Plugin
Planning and Writing Ahead
Planning and writing content before it’s actually needed can be incredibly helpful.
In a recent Content Academy post, several bloggers shared their strategies for how far ahead they create blog content before publishing.
News content is most efficiently used when curated from another source on social media. Alternatively, you can opt to write it if you have a large enough staff capacity to keep up. No need to write a long post – a short update on the subject is enough to show that you’re keeping up with the latest trends.
The key to success with keeping content writing fresh is to strike a balance between evergreen content planning and the timely sharing of news content. Preparedness has its own rewards, but there is magic in spontaneity that can’t be denied.
Keeping it Fresh
Now that you have a better idea of how content works on the planning side, here are 7 specific and actionable ideas to keep your content writing fresh:
- Be on the lookout for news. Then, write fast and share fast. Short form posts are fine.
- You don’t have to know everything. Leave blanks for readers to fill in. Use your content to start a conversation.
- Set alerts to find fresh content and industry news with Google Alerts
- Use Google Trends to predict topics of interest
- Be sensitive of your readers’ needs. Use Google Analytics to determine what content was most effective, and create more content like your best work.
- Relate evergreen content with news content where it makes sense
Conclusion
We live in a fast-paced, noisy digital world.
When you make the effort to keep your content writing fresh, you have a better chance of engaging readers. To do that, you must stay grounded on relevance and strategize ahead of time. Plan ahead, but leave room for updates and changes.
If you keep these things in mind, you’ll be well on your way to a successful content strategy!
