In the age of technology, the topic of content creation and management is becoming key to a positive online presence. With constant and easy access to information come new challenges, including when it comes to library materials – whether material or digital. Your users use the Internet as a medium through which they search for useful information, but they also connect on a formal level. That’s why it’s important to learn not only how to create content for websites, but also to plan and manage content. In this article, we will talk about the process of creating and managing content, from planning through writing to publishing.
PHASE PLANNING
Planning is the first step towards effectively creating and managing online content. The planning process consists of a series of pre-works that serve to effectively prepare for writing. In this chapter, through 5 steps, the method of market research, selection of topics and goals and creation of a calendar of publications will be presented and elaborated. Emphasis will also be placed on their importance in the context of creating a general content strategy.
MARKET RESEARCH
Every planning starts with research. Before we start researching what will later become a content strategy, we need to take the time to research the market. What others write about, what topics they cover and how exactly they address their audience are key elements of this mix. There is nothing more important in determining what will be written about than researching similar content. Inspiration often comes from insights into other people’s work, and encourages creative thinking about future topics.
It is desirable that there is interest in each of the selected topics, both among library users and on the Internet. The best example of a tool that helps with this is Google Trends , which can show the popularity of certain phrases or words on Google search engine in real time. It is an indispensable tool when researching market trends. Once we understand the trends, it is necessary to pay attention to the type of communication to the end user. This means paying attention to the differences between the official or personal tone of communication in the text, their advantages or disadvantages. After researching trends and markets, we are ready to move on to choosing the topics of our own works.
SELECTION AND CATEGORIZATION OF TOPICS
Studies have found out what similar sites write about, what’s next? You need to start choosing topics for future posts you plan to write. On this occasion, it is important to group into categories all the interesting ideas for publication that you found on the Internet. They are the first step towards structuring and planning the future content strategy, but also the pre-work required for the very beginning of writing the content.
Why is it important to define topics or niches for posts? In addition to helping your users better navigate your website, it will also allow you to clearly define and narrow your fields of interest and, over time, specialize in specific topics. Bad online writing practices often involve writing content without clearly defined topics, divided into categories. This leads to a dispersion of interests, in creating a permanent readership.
You can take a pen in your hand and list several categories on a piece of paper, and then try to put all the ideas for publications in them. In doing so, pay attention to the number of categories and their importance in the context of selecting future categories, so that their number does not grow uncontrollably over time. If you don’t turn something on or forget, don’t worry, you can always do it later. Once you have selected the ideas and categorized them, you need to define your writing goals.
GOAL SETTING
Once you’ve successfully categorized the topics, it’s time to think about setting smart goals . It is worth bearing in mind that they must be specific, realistic, measurable and in line with deadlines. They are also an unavoidable second step of the content strategy, and they are here to guide and more precisely define the way your library will be represented on the Internet.
PREPARING TO WRITE
Once we have fully defined the content strategy, it is necessary to prepare for writing the content. This process is simple, and includes the conceptual elaboration of the topic of future work, the division of thought units into meaningful units and the finding of auxiliary tools in writing.
In order to successfully prepare for writing, it is necessary to first work out the chosen topic. A simple table at the top of which is the selected topic can help us with that, and below are all the related terms.
WRITING PHASE
After successful planning, it is time to explore the text writing process in more detail. It consists of a series of pre-works that will help you format the text more easily and prepare it for publication.
TEXT FORMATTING Choosing a title brings us to the need to format the text. Just like a book or a scientific paper, writing content for the internet contains a set of “rules” that are worth following.