Content creation can be a slog – especially when you’re not a writer or a social media pro. You presumably got into your business to do a particular kind of work, so it’s easy to get resentful when you have to push that work aside in order to ‘build your brand’ through content creation and monitoring.
Look, you know us. We’re not going to bullshit you. The unfortunate truth is that content is an essential part of business in 2026. It’s how you get your brand to hit all those annoying buzzwords (‘visibility’, ‘reach’, ‘eyeballs’, ‘conversions’). In short, it’s how you make people aware that you exist, how you build your brand’s reputation online, and how you convince people to hire your people or buy your product rather than going with a competitor.
Sorry. It sucks, we know. But that is how it is.
It does help (and speed things up) if you know what you’re doing from the get-go, though. So, to help you out, here’s our guide to how to craft and target content.
What is ‘content’?
To start, let’s get right back to brass tacks and define what we mean by ‘content’.
Basically, ‘content’ is an umbrella term for any material you put out there to inform, help, or generally engage with your target audience. It’s quicker and easier to say ‘content’ than it is to say ‘blogs, podcasts, whitepapers, articles, posts, videos…(etc etc)’.
We’re broadly going to be talking about content writing here, as most content creation involves an element of writing at some point, but we’ll try to make the tips broadly applicable to every kind of content creation.
So, with that out of the way, let’s dive into how to craft and target content:
Start by knowing your audience
It’s common for people to leave the targeting element up to the algorithms, and only think about it when it’s time to select audience settings. In fact, targeting should be baked into your content right from the start. Before the start, actually. You should be thinking about who you want to consume your content long before you pick some topics and start crafting.
Knowing your audience is one of the most effective things you can possibly do both as a content creator and as a businessperson in general. By understanding who’s most likely to benefit from your product/service, you can tweak and fine-tune everything from your brand voice to your products and protocols themselves in order to appeal to those people.
So, before you jump into writing or recording or whatever, take a moment to think about who you want to consume this content. You don’t need a complex persona document with umpteen personality details and a fully fleshed-out backstory (although go nuts with it if that’s your kind of thing) – but you do need a rough idea of the kind of person you want to reach.
Take this blog, for example. We know that we’re writing for small business owners who run their own marketing and who don’t necessarily want a load of jargon and buzzwords. So, we’re trying to talk to you in a straightforward, no-bullshit way that avoids all the usual kind of crap that you’ll get when you google ‘content creation’ (hopefully it’s working – let us know if it’s not!).
HOWEVER, if we were writing for seasoned marketing professionals, we’d skip over topics like ‘what is content’, because marketers already know AAALLLLL about what content is. We’d also probably use more of that annoying jargon, because marketers will understand it, and it’ll help us to get to the points that they’ve come for much more efficiently.
So, basically, get to know your audience. That way, you can give the people what they want, in the language that they prefer.
Pick topics that your audience cares about – and that you know
Once you’ve got an idea about who you’re creating content for you’ll find that it’s much easier to pick out good topics. Most audiences have a relatively well-defined set of interests that lend themselves to certain topic areas and content formats.
If you’re not sure what your audience wants from you in terms of content – ask them! Make a couple of posts saying something like ‘Hey guys, what kind of content would you like to see from us in the future? Do you prefer blogs or videos? And what topics would you like us to explore?’ You’ll be surprised about how forthcoming people are about this kind of thing.
One important note, however: try and work on topics that you actually know about. If you pick a topic that you can’t easily talk about for ten minutes off the cuff, you’re going to struggle to craft compelling content about it. Yes, you can research topics that aren’t in your wheelhouse. But if you don’t generally enjoy the content process, trust us, you’re really going to resent the extra work involved in researching a topic that doesn’t interest you.
If you really want to make a piece of content about a topic you’re unfamiliar with, hire a professional. Professional writers and creators make a whole career out of researching stuff they’re not familiar with and creating authoritative, engaging content about it. And many of them are very reasonably priced! A bit of expenditure for a piece of content you don’t have to worry about is often more than worth it.
Make it scannable
This one’s mostly applicable to written content, but it does also have some relevance for video and audio content (we’ll get to that in a moment).
Most people don’t approach blog posts or even print articles the same way they would approach reading a novel. Long blocks of unbroken text, with hefty paragraphs and few subheadings will be very, very offputting.
People like to scan online content. The average reader will run their eyes quickly over the headings before they go back and start reading from the top. If what they see isn’t scannable, and if they can’t grab the main takeaways just from the headings, they’re not going to bother to read in more depth.
So, break your content into clear sections. Keep paragraphs relatively short. And make sure that readers can grab the key takeaways just by running their eye quickly down the page.
How can you do this with video and audio? Well, captions are one useful tool (we’ve used Subtitlebee in the past). Make sure that your watchers and listeners can pick up key info from the caption or the ‘About’ section of your content. Subtitles are also a great idea (remember that a lot of people flick through their reels feed with the sound off). And, if you’re posting vids from a platform like Youtube, break the vid down into timestamped chapters that people can easily hop between.
Don’t get hung up on perfection
This one especially applies to first drafts. Every first draft is shit. That’s the whole point of a first draft.
A first draft is for getting your main ideas out of your head and onto the page. It won’t read well. Even the world’s best writers can’t make a good first draft – and, most importantly, they don’t try to. Trying to make the first draft perfect (or even good!) will almost always backfire on the finished piece.
Use the first draft as a sandbox. Get as much crap out onto the page as you can. Fill up the blank space, and DO NOT worry about making it sound or look good. Then, go back to edit and put the craft in.
The second (and third, or fourth, or fifth – draft as much as you like!) are for the creative crafting bit. Trust us, it’s a LOT quicker and easier to make good, well-crafted, engaging content if you let the first draft be crap and edit it into submission later than it is to obsess over making the first draft perfect.
Think of the whole process as like making a marble sculpture. The first draft is all about quarrying the raw material out of the rockface in a big, messy chunk. The later drafts are where you chisel it into something pretty.
This goes for video and audio, too. Ramble and mess up and run as many takes as you need. Cut it into something more engaging in post production.