An Expert Guide to Creating and Sharing Engaging Content

Sep 2

How to keep your sanity AND produce high-quality content for your audience.

Marketing Crash Course - Northwest Creative

Regular, high-quality content is essential for keeping your audience engaged and coming back for more. It truly is the way to increase followership and build credibility with your audience. But building and maintaining a content calendar that you can actually stick to is tough for the busy business leader.

No fear, my dears.

I’ve been at this a long time, and I’ve put together a fool-proof guide for creating and sharing content that your audience will swoon over.

How To Keep Up With Content Creation (and Make It Worth Your Time)

Plan Ahead
Generate Engaging Content Ideas
Create Quality Content Efficiently
Share Your Content Strategically

Step 1: Plan Ahead

In order to keep up with content creation, you need to plan ahead. Create a content calendar that outlines all of your content, and include as much detail as possible, such as topic, format, distribution channels, authors, creative assets, etc. I have a handy Crash Course on creating editorial calendars that might come in handy as you think through this!

☝️ Posting on a whim should only happen in the gaps or when something urgent comes up.

It is also important to remember to set realistic goals. Determine how often you can create and share content without burning out. The key is consistency, so if you can only publish one piece of content per week, then commit to that and stick to it. Publishing five one week and none for the rest of the month won’t do you or your audience much good.

Tools to Use: I have used Trello, Asana, Later, Google Calendar, and even a spreadsheet for planning and tracking content. My favorite so far is Asana.

Step 2: Generate Engaging Content Ideas

First (and I feel like I beat this drum constantly), you need to understand your audience. Do your research. Revisit your audience's interests and pain points to brainstorm relevant topics.

Next, mix up your content formats—blogs, videos, infographics, social media posts—to keep things fresh for your audience. This also helps you analyze what formats work best later on when you continue planning for more content production.

Step 3: Create Quality Content Efficiently

I can’t emphasize this enough. Batching your work will save you so much time. Dedicate time to creating multiple pieces of content in one go. I typically like to set aside a whole morning to work on this. Your brain will thank me later!

You can also create templates to save yourself time later on. If you produce something that is on brand and that works well, turn it into a template so you can use it later. Develop templates for blog posts, social media graphics, or videos to streamline the creation process.

Another way to create content efficiently is to leverage user-generated content. If your audience is publishing good things about your brand, share it on your own platforms. You can even ask/encourage your audience to share about their experience with your brand and feature them in your content.

And let’s not neglect AI. ChatGPT (or your favorite bot) can give you a TON of ideas and even outline your content for you. I don’t recommend leaning on AI for full-on content writing because you want to humanize your content, but asking for ideas and inspiration is totally acceptable, in my opinion.

Step 4: Share Your Content Strategically

Analyze your past content on a monthly or quarterly basis to determine the best times to post on your channels. If you tend to get the most engagement on Instagram in the early afternoons on Tuesdays and Thursdays, continue posting during those times. I also recommend spreading out your post times so you can continue analyzing this. If you only ever post on the same days at the same times, you will have limited data to analyze.

While you’re in analysis mode, review your content formats, too. What resonated most with your audience? Was it video, blog posts, quotes, or just specific topics no matter the format?

Additionally, repurposing content is a huge opportunity to use content you’ve already produced and reformat it or reshare it with little time spent. This is an excellent way to maximize reach. Even if an audience member has seen your original content piece, they will get something new out of the reformatted version (or, they won’t even notice they’ve already seen it!).

Examples of ways to repurpose content:

Turn a blog post into a series of social media posts or a video
Turn an eBook into an email series
Turn a podcast episode into 7 reels that highlight the key points made throughout
Grab quotes from any content piece and post on social media
Turn a video into a blog post
Turn a webinar into an online course

Finally, engage with your audience. Respond to comments, ask questions, and create polls to keep the conversation going. The more you know about your audience and what they care about, the more you will be armed with content ideas to strategically share with them. The engagements you contribute with your audience will also spur on growth for your online community, especially if you are contributing authentically and adding value to their lives.

Here’s the point.

Consistency and quality are the keys to creating and sharing engaging content with your audience. Produce what they need and deliver it where/when they will be most likely to consume it. It takes intentionality, but there are ways to save on time if you remain consistent and persistent. Most often, the results come in slowly at first, but stick with it and you will see improvement. You just have to keep at it. Produce, distribute, engage, analyze, repeat.