Forget Charles, content is king. If you want to get ahead on the internet, you need good content.
‘Content’ basically refers to anything postable. Blogs are ‘content’, as are graphics, videos, podcasts, articles, social media statuses etc etc etc. But it’s more than that. Content is how you show your audience who you are and what you stand for. It’s how you build brand recognition and lasting relationships with your customers. It’s also an absolute pain in the arse at times.
It’s less of a pain if you know how to create great content. Once you’ve found a voice and a style that works for you, creating content becomes less of a burden on your brand. It can even be (dare we say it?) fun.
But how do you get to that point?
Here are our five top tips to create great content in 2025:
1. Know your audience
We went into this in our last post, but it bears repeating. The first (and arguably most important) step to creating great content is understanding your audience. After all, you can’t build a reciprocal relationship with people you don’t know.
‘But how?’ we hear you cry. ‘It’s all very well to tell us to know our audience, but HOW can we get to know them?’
Well, start by considering these questions:
- Who is your target market? Who do you want to engage with your content?
- What platforms do these people hang out on?
- What sort of content do they engage with?
Once you’ve answered these questions, you should have a reasonable idea of who you’re targeting and the kind of stuff they like.
The next step is to get to know them. Through data.
Yes, we know, data is boring. Data-gathering is boring, and data-analysis is even more boring. Unfortunately, data is the best resource available to you when it comes to understanding your audience, so pop on your nerd specs and dig in.
Look for data on:
- Audience demographics.
- Audience location(s).
- Engagement (what kind of content does your target audience engage with?)
- Purchase and brand interaction history.
- Any other data that’s relevant to the kind of results you want from your content (for example, if you want to boost your social media following through content, pull up data on social media behaviour).
This will give you valuable insights into who your audience members are and the kind of content they want to see. You can then use those insights to craft well-targeted, personalised content that will build a relationship with your audience (and hopefully encourage them to become loyal customers).
For more on data gathering and personalisation, check out our blog on the subject.
2. Find your ‘voice’
It’s not enough just to know your audience. Your audience should also be able to get to know you. For that to happen, you need to build a brand persona that they find relatable and engaging. You need to create an identifiable ‘voice’ for your content.
Your ‘voice’ should, as far as possible, reflect your brand values, mission, and offering. If you are a fine dining restaurant you might adopt a more formal tone with lush language that hints at the sumptuous and sophisticated experience diners can expect from you. If you are a takeaway chippie, on the other hand, your voice might be more informal, more chatty.
For example, as a no-bullshit agency we try to take a direct and straightforward approach. We try to talk to you like the intelligent people you are, and we don’t sugar-coat our language. We have a voice that our writer describes as ‘sweary’ (although we like to credit ourselves with a little more bloody nuance than that!), and we try to make sure that our tone is always in line with who we are both as people and as a company.
Having an identifiable voice is great for brand recognition. But, more importantly, it helps to build a relationship with your audience. When your audience feels like they know you, they’re more likely to engage with your content and, ultimately, with your product/service.
3. Be authentic
Authenticity is a scarce and precious resource on today’s internet. If you can inject a note of authenticity into your content, you’ll stand head and shoulders above your less credible competitors.
What do we mean by ‘authentic’? Honest, trustworthy, reliable, and genuine. Create content about topics that you’re genuinely passionate about. Talk about the things that really matter to you and your audience. Don’t post fluff purely for the sake of posting (unless fluff is what you’re passionate about. Hey, no judgement!)
The more authentic you appear to your audience, the more they’ll trust you. True passion and true interest shines through, no matter what content medium you’re using.
If you’re not sure how to put that authenticity into your content, try telling a personal story. Create content around something that really happened to you, something that had an impact on you. Think about the moments that have helped and hindered you in your life and career, and work out how you can turn those moments into authentic content that will benefit your audience.
You don’t have to be ‘raw’ and confessional to be authentic. You just have to be genuinely invested in what you’re talking about. Think about what riles you up, what makes you happy, what’s affected and impacted you during your life and career. And then contentify it.
4. Try UGC
UGC (User-Generated Content) is a gamechanger if you can get it right. A good UGC content campaign will get you masses of audience engagement plus free content. Win win! The only snag is that UGC relies on the general public. And the general public can be a bit shit.
The classic example of UGC going well is the ‘Share a Coke’ campaign. You definitely remember it. Like all the best campaigns, the concept behind it was incredibly simple: Coke put names on bottle labels, and encouraged their customers to take selfies with bottles bearing their name. That’s it. Well, that and the hashtag #ShareACoke, which ensured that every selfie linked to Coca Cola’s pages.
The campaign was a runaway success. Coke bottle selfies flooded the internet, Coca Cola received an unprecedented level of brand engagement, and Coke consumption increased worldwide by 7% (which may not sound like much, but which actually represents millions of extra customers for a big brand like Coke).
Now let’s take a look at when UGC goes wrong. Because we don’t want Coca Cola to get too big for their already massive boots, let’s use their example again. Here’s what happened when Coca Cola tried to make the internet a happier place: in a word – Nazis.
Again, the concept was pretty simple: Coca Cola would take any post tagged with #MakeItHappy and turn the content of that post into a cute graphic, like this:
Cute idea, right? Wrong. Take a closer look at that adorable smiley face above. Note that it’s in German. Note that it contains terms like ‘Deutsche motherland’ and ‘Endlösung’. Terms made famous by a certain book written by a certain nasty little mustachioed man in the 1930s.
Yes, the Coca Cola bots turned the unhinged manifesto of that failed Austrian painter into a cute smiley face. Because Coca Cola gave its users the power to do so, with a simple hashtag. (We’re genuinely serious – this happened.)
So, UGC is potentially a very powerful and engaging way to create content. But don’t get lazy with it. If anything, a good UGC content campaign requires more work than a self-created campaign, because the general public needs a fuckton of monitoring and regulating. If you give them half a chance, they can and will turn your campaign into Mein Kampf purely for shits and giggles.
5. Hire a creator
Not everyone has the time, inclination, or skills to create content. And that’s ok! You concentrate on what you do best, and get someone else in to cover the content part.
Even we use a writer. Her name’s Heather, because we have a strict rule that everyone who works for us must be called Heather or Graham for brand consistency purposes (joking. Or are we?). It isn’t ‘cheating’ to use professional content creators. In fact, getting a pro in can be a really, really good move that brings big value to both your content and your team.
A professional content creator can devote their full time and attention to your content. If they’re worth their salt, they can also suggest topics and give you insights into your audience. After all, studying and creating content for diverse audiences is their entire job, whereas it’s just a part of your job.
You can give your hired creator a big head start by following the first two points on this list. The more audience insights you can give them, and the more well-defined your brand voice is, the better able your creator will be to appeal to your particular audience in your particular tone.
It is not ‘lazy’ to hire a third party content creator. In fact, it’s a really good idea. Just be sure to answer their questions, brief them properly, listen to their expertise, and pay them on time (our writer told us to say that. But she is right).