The Ultimate Checklist: How to Create Engaging Content for Your Brand

Grabbing your phone to do something and finding yourself forty minutes after doing anything but that, sounds accurate? Well that happens to your audience too. Creating compelling written content is now a skill for survival, anybody who tries to grab their audience's attention away from endless distractions needs to know that regardless of how good your message may be, understanding the proper process to present it can make all the difference. Based on my experience in Inbound Marketing and brand creation content, I've developed a simple guide you can use whether you're building your personal brand or creating content for your company to write in an impactful and purposeful way.

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Start with a Clear Purpose: Know your why

Before typing a single word, I would like you to define why you’re creating the content, you should ask yourself the goal of your piece and who is it going to either inform, inspire, sell, or perhaps just engage, so you can adapt your tone and voice accordingly. When creating content like my weekly articles, I constantly ask myself what do I want my audience to feel, think, or do and if what I’m presenting is interesting enough for them to keep them engaged or if I should use something they are passionate about to maintain their interest.

Back It with Research

In such a dynamic field as Marketing, high-quality content should always be supported by research. Before you start writing you should immerse yourself with data, examples, or quotes from sources that will add credibility to your message or even better, combine those with your own professional experiences to deliver an even more powerful message.

From chaos to order: Organize for Impact

Like Oscar Wilde famously said: "Without order nothing can exist-without chaos nothing can evolve". Us as Marketers we first have to identify our purpose, the target audience, and the information to back up our claims, so then we can organize our creative thoughts and deconstruct the overall message to each paragraph, sentence and word we use. For effectively organizing your content, I suggest you identify the points you want to cover and from there, structure the ideas logically of the text until they lead to your memorable closing arguments or call to action where you invite your audience to apply what they have just learned. By doing so, you will improve the flow and ensure the text is easy to read while at the same time your reader remains engaged. A question I always get is: Gianmarco, what if I am writing something that is not interesting to my audience? Then my answer is then you probably shouldn't write it. Make sure your content is relevant for the audience you try to capture and in case you must communicate something they are not interested about, try your best to clearly stipulate why it is important for their future what you're saying and the benefit or benefits they will get from listening to you.

Note: Having a quiet environment can help you focus and structure your ideas.

Refine Until It Shines

Great content isn't written in one stroke—it's crafted, refined, and polished until it shines, so once you are done with the writing, it is time to read it again and edit it until you feel comfortable with the product and this is crucial, because I believe editing is where good content becomes excellent. When I worked at Enfamil, explaining complex scientific terms to parents taught me the importance of being concise and clear. Your ideas should connect seamlessly, using language your audience can understand.

Note: Try generating your own images to add value, just like this one.

Visuals and SEO

Now that you are so close to publishing, make sure your content is presented in an organized, visually appealing nature; adding images, graphs, or videos to make it interactive, and using negative space as a tool for your advantage, while optimizing the content for search engines.

Reflection and improvement

If you carefully follow this guide you're one step closer to delivering impactful and relevant content for your audience, nevertheless, nothing is perfect and you should always think about what you could do next time to improve future posts. The most successful content creators aren't just good at writing; they excel at delivering it, through the right channels, at the right time and the best content doesn’t just inform—it inspires, engages, and calls for action.