Prominent content maker Ahmed El Awady presents successful methods for creating content in the Arab and international world through marketing advice for your interesting content.
Content creation or content creation is contributing to the dissemination of information in specific contexts, through media, especially digital media, for the benefit of the end user, called the audience. Content is “something that can be expressed through some media, such as speech, writing, or any of the various arts” for self-expression, distribution.
marketing, or publishing. Typical forms of content creation include maintaining and updating websites, blogging, photography, videography, online commenting, maintaining social media accounts, and editing and distributing digital media.
What is content creation?
Content creation is a broad concept that includes creating messages and readable, audio, and visual content. It is a strategic process that includes generating ideas and topics that target a specific audience, developing them, planning their creation, then manufacturing and disseminating them in various forms to share with your audience.
What is the difference between content writing and content creation?
Some people think that content writing and content creation are synonymous terms, but the truth is otherwise. Because content writing focuses only on creating texts, articles, and other textual content. As for content creation, it is more general and comprehensive than that, as it refers to the production of visual and audio content. Including multimedia content.
So, content creation cannot be reduced to writing articles and blogs only, but rather includes other styles such as: creating videos, infographics and illustrations, podcasts, documentaries, promotional advertisements, e-books, 3D designs, and so on. The public interacts with it through traditional means, such as: newspapers and print magazines, or modern media, such as: blogs, websites, and social networks.
Types and fields of content creation
The types of content you create vary depending on your needs and desired goals, your target audience, the nature of your business, the type of medium that suits you, and other factors. However, we present to you the most popular and consumed types of content in the digital age:
Writing blog posts: You can learn to write articles and craft blog posts that express your ideas or convey valuable information to your audience. It includes list articles, informative and educational blog posts, etc.
Social media posts: They serve as marketing content aimed at increasing brand awareness, achieving more sales, and other marketing goals. To learn to create this content, you must know your audience and understand how to manage social platforms professionally.
E-books: This type of content is very popular now, as you can create e-books on specific topics, covering them from all aspects, so that they include rich and informative content. This requires identifying your audience's needs and conducting in-depth research before you start writing.
Podcasts: Also known as podcasts, they are an audio medium that delivers audio content digitally to the audience. It includes a variety of topics, such as: presenting stories and news, and conducting discussions and audio interviews. However, you should choose unique ideas that meet the aspirations of your audience.
Video production: The increasing consumption of video among Internet users has prompted companies to include it in their marketing strategies, and its uses and fields have become multiple, as it includes awareness, education, entertainment, advertising, marketing, and others. So, their industry needs to understand the basics of video design.
Infographic design: Whether it is static, animated, or video graphic, infographics are more attention-grabbing and interesting than traditional text. Its industry requires an understanding of the principles of infographic design, the ability to collect information, write texts, and deal professionally with image and video editing programs.
Animation design: If you have artistic and technical skills in graphic design, and are proficient in using 2D and 3D graphic creation software, you can start creating animation content.
Interactive content: It contributes to enhancing communication between you and customers, and includes making games, creating opinion polls, designing interactive files, and storyboards. This requires determining the type of interactive content you want to create, then learning and understanding its basics and skills.
Email Content: Requires skills in writing newsletters and email marketing. It includes creating linked chains, designing work templates, sending nominations from the site, and more.
Landing pages: These are pages that call users to take a specific action (CTA). Creating it requires defining its purpose, choosing the appropriate platform, then designing attractive visual content and linking it to advertisements.
Content creation skills
Content creation requires several necessary skills that must be constantly acquired, refined, and developed, the most prominent of which are:
Ability to understand the audience
If you start creating content without knowing your customers and their characteristics, you will not meet their needs and aspirations. If you have the ability to understand your audience, you will create more targeted and influential content, your message will reach them better, and the chances of it being shared and spread will increase, which contributes to increasing interaction, enhancing the popularity of your brand, and building trust with your customers.
Research skills
To create valuable, high-quality content; You must possess research skills that enable you to collect information and data from reliable sources, verify their validity, analyze and evaluate them with high efficiency. For deeper and richer content. These include the ability to do advanced research, knowledge of databases, understanding how to document sources, etc.
Planning and organizing
The ability to plan and organize is a skill that cannot be overlooked when creating content. Because it helps you achieve your desired goals, and plays a major role in organizing your ideas and information, managing your time efficiently, and carefully setting your priorities. Thus, you can accomplish what you want easily, and you can create more smooth and effective content.
Content writing
Without having content writing skills, you will not achieve any satisfactory results. It helps you communicate effectively with your audience, improve your content, increase its credibility, and provide additional value to your customers. It is necessary to learn creative writing, composing and editing skills, check grammatical and linguistic errors, and simplify information for the audience.
Visual content skills
Maybe you are interested in creating visual content such as graphic design and videos. In this case, one must possess specialized skills such as: knowledge of design principles, understanding of color theory, familiarity with types of cameras and lenses and how to adjust them, understanding of photography and lighting techniques, and proficiency in dealing with photo and video editing tools.
Data analysis skills
Data analysis skills give you a deeper understanding of audience interests and needs, help you know which types of content perform best in your strategy, and enable you to measure results, know the effectiveness of your content creation efforts, and improve its quality.
Content marketing skills
Many beginners overlook content marketing skills, despite their importance. No matter how good or strong your content is, you must market it to reach your target audience. Therefore, it is important to understand the basics of digital marketing for beginners, and be able to create engaging posts to promote your content on social media or email.
Content creation tools
Content creation tools vary depending on your needs, the type and nature of content you plan to create, and your level of experience. They can be classified by content type as follows:
Text content writing tools
Text content creators use several important tools, the most prominent of which are:
Google Trends: A free tool that explores the most popular topics and keywords that audiences search for on Google.
Grammarly: A free assistant that relies on artificial intelligence to scan and review texts, correct grammatical and linguistic errors, and improve writing style.
Yoast SEO: A plugin that can be installed into WordPress websites for better SEO. It is used to analyze keywords and strengthen content titles.
So, content creation is an arduous process and a difficult field that requires a lot of effort, time, and sufficient skill and experience. To get amazing and distinctive results. It is a constantly changing world, and its tools and technologies are witnessing rapid developments and transformations. Therefore, you must be aware of modern trends and changes, keep up with them, and keep pace with them, to produce influential and creative content that leaves a strong impression in the minds of customers and remains in their memories for as long as possible.