What Is Content Creation? An Overview & How to Do It Right

What Is Content Creation?

Content creation is the process of developing and sharing media in various formats to reach and engage your target audience.

Ideally, your content should solve your audience's problems, answer their questions, and/or entertain them.

The professionals involved in content creation can have various job titles like content strategist, content writer, or content marketing manager.

Their shared goal is to identify relevant topics, create engaging content, and share it with their audience.

And content creation can help your business:

• Build brand awareness
• Establish trust with potential customers
• Generate leads and sales
• Share expertise and knowledge
• Stand out from competitors

Types of Content

Here are some of the most common content formats:

Blog Posts

Blog posts are articles that often educate your audience on topics that are relevant to your business, which can help you build trust and demonstrate expertise.

For example, a fitness club might write an article about recovering from workouts. Like Mercedes Club does here:

Blog posts are particularly good for targeting keywords and prompts that people enter into search engines and AI tools. Which means they can drive search engine traffic to your website and build credibility that leads to more visits to your website later on. 

Social Media Posts

Social media content includes short videos, carousel posts, question prompts, and polls that can help you connect with your audience and even drive traffic to your website.

For example, a restaurant might discuss its recipe and cooking techniques on Instagram. Like Gage & Tollner here:

The types of social content you create will depend on the platform. For instance:

• Instagram and TikTok are great for short videos, behind-the-scenes content, and quick tips
• LinkedIn is best for industry insights and professional discussions

Videos

Video content uses visuals (and typically audio) to reach audiences and cover topics that might not work well in a written format. And they can appear in both traditional search results and responses from large language model tools (LLMs).

Real estate agent Ryan Serhant creates virtual property tour videos. And shares them on platforms like YouTube to help potential buyers explore homes remotely. 

Different types of videos include:

• Tutorials showing step-by-step processes
• Webinars that allow you to connect with your audience in real time
• Behind-the-scenes videos sharing what goes on at your company

Ebooks and Whitepapers

Ebooks and whitepapers are comprehensive guides that help you share detailed insights while collecting potential customers’ information.

For example, consulting firm EY offers industry reports in exchange for contact information. Which helps them connect with potential clients.

These long-form resources work best when your topic requires in-depth coverage and offers insights audiences can't easily find elsewhere.

Podcasts

Podcasts are audio shows featuring in-depth conversations that allow you to share expertise and engage with your audience.

For example, Goop's podcast incorporates discussions with experts in various wellness-related fields:

Podcasts work well when you want to:

• Feature conversations with industry experts
• Discuss timely topics in detail
• Share behind-the-scenes insights
• Build a loyal following

Interactive Content

Interactive content engages your audience by providing personalized answers and insights based on their input.

For example, Rocket Mortgage has a loan calculator that helps potential customers determine their monthly payments based on different variables.

You can create various types of interactive content like calculators, quizzes, assessments, and interactive guides. To help your audience get customized answers to their query.

Another reason to consider creating interactive content? It often gets mentioned and linked to elsewhere around the web. Which can drive search engine and AI platform visibility.

How to Create Content

Let's go over each step of the content creation process to help you get started.

1. Set Goals

Setting content goals helps you create content that’s more likely to drive business success and makes it easy to measure your results later.

To set effective content goals, consider your larger business goals. Then, create content-specific goals that align with what your business is trying to achieve.

Make your goals specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).

Let's say your business goal is to increase sales by 20%. 

If you know product guides typically drive downloads and lead to sales calls, your content goal might be to create three detailed guides that increase guide downloads by 25% in the next quarter.

Keep in mind that your goals can change as your business grows.

2. Do Audience Research

Conducting audience research helps you understand who you're creating content for and what they’re most interested in.

One way to get started is to talk to your sales team about what they're hearing from prospects and customers. 

What questions do these individuals ask? What challenges do they face? What kind of information helps them make decisions? These direct insights can guide your content creation. 

But don’t stop there. Because the insights you gain from talking to sales are only about current customers and those who are likely to become customers.

To learn more about your larger audience, use Semrush’s Traffic & Market Toolkit. You’ll be prompted to create a folder, where you can add up to 100 competitors. Then, click “Save changes.”

Go to the “Demographics” report to learn about your audience's age, gender, and location.

Then, head to the “Behavior” report to see details about your audience’s interests, device preferences, and preferred social media platforms.

Use these audience insights to decide which platforms to focus on and tailor other elements of your content strategy. 

For example, if you see your audience primarily uses Instagram and LinkedIn, prioritize creating content for these platforms. 

And if data shows your audience members are highly educated professionals, you might want to create detailed whitepapers and technical guides rather than basic how-to articles.

3. Find Content Ideas

You’re now ready to find topics that align with your goals and your audience's preferences. Which you can do by analyzing your competitors’ content and researching new topics.

Let’s say your company sells CRM software. And Pipedrive is a competitor.

Use Semrush’s Organic Research tool to identify Pipedrive’s top-performing pages. Just enter the domain and click “Search.”

Go to the “Topics” tab and look for topics that are relevant to you and also drive a substantial amount of traffic to the competing site. Here, we can see that Pipedrive’s article on B2B sales is ranking for over 160 keywords and driving about 870 visits each month. 

Review the page and look for any gaps you can cover in your own content. For example, I think details about the complex, nonlinear journey B2B buyers take and practical tips readers can act on to be successful would be useful additions that give readers extra value.

You can even go beyond website content.

There are many YouTube videos focused on B2B sales. About 32K videos use the #b2bsales tag, which gives a rough approximation of how many are covering that topic.

And when we go to Pipedrive’s YouTube channel and search for “b2b sales,” we can see that they don’t have any recent videos on the topic of B2B sales. Meaning there’s an opportunity for us. 

We also analyzed Pipedrive’s Instagram account and found one of their top-performing posts is an entertainment-focused carousel highlighting employees’ cats that was posted on International Cat Day. Which shows there’s room to create content that shows off your brand’s personality. 

Repeat this process with other competitors’ websites and social media profiles.

For more topic ideas, use Semrush’s Topic Research tool.

Open the tool, enter a seed topic, and click “Get content ideas.”

The tool will collect related content ideas. And sort them into cards. 

Click "Show more" on any card to see headlines of the most linked-to pages on the topic and related questions. 

Focus on ideas that match your audience's interests and questions they're likely to have.

When you find a topic you want to pursue, look for ways to cover it better or differently than what's already out there.

4. Plan Your Content

Planning what content you’ll create and when each piece will go live helps you stay organized and maintain a more consistent publishing cadence.

Let’s say you’ve decided to create blog posts, YouTube videos, TikTok videos, LinkedIn posts, and ebooks. And that you’re covering different topics related to content marketing. 

Use a spreadsheet to create a simple content calendar that has spaces for you to indicate:

• Which topics you'll cover
• When you'll publish each piece
• What format each piece will take
• Who’s in charge of each piece

Keep your plan realistic. And focus on what you can consistently deliver rather than trying to spread yourself too thin.

Use our downloadable content calendar template to get started.

5. Create Content

Start creating content by turning the ideas you curated in the previous steps into valuable media for your audience.

Begin with a detailed outline to organize your thoughts. This outline will depend on the type of content you're creating. 

If you’re writing a blog post, your outline might include subheadings, examples, and supporting details to structure your article. 

Once your outline is ready, start drafting your content. Make sure you:

• Use simple language and avoid jargon to ensure your audience understands your message
• Address your audience’s specific problems or interests
• Use clear transitions to guide your audience smoothly through the content
• Optimize each individual passage by directly addressing the question/topic posed by the heading and ensuring each paragraph can stand out its own. This helps AI tools retrieve specific passages in your content for use in response to user prompts.
• Incorporate relevant statistics and expert quotes—research shows these inclusions can improve AI visibility

Alternatively, use Semrush’s AI Article Generator to quickly create SEO- and LLM-friendly articles. It’s part of the Content Toolkit that helps you streamline and automate content production from start to finish.

Once you launch the AI Article Generator, enter your idea in the prompt field and click “Get suggestions.”

Next, you’ll see the following fields to fill in based on your brand and your needs:

• Audience location
• Title
• Target keywords
• Word count
• Tone type
• Readability level

Check the box next to “SEO booster” to optimize your content based on competitive search data. Once everything’s set, click “Create article.”

The tool will then generate a full-length draft tailored to your inputs. Once you have the first draft, use the built-in editor to review and edit it for accuracy, consistency with your editorial standards, etc. 

Click “View tips” to find a list of SEO, readability, and tone of voice suggestions you can apply to further optimize your content. 

The AI Social Content Generator app can be useful for creating social posts. 

It offers multiple options for turning ideas into engaging content, tailored to different formats and platforms.

Use the "Text to Post" option to turn your ideas into ready-to-publish social media content.

Just input your topic and adjust the settings to generate engaging posts.

In general, focus on creating content that’s clear and helpful. 

Share your knowledge, simplify complex ideas, and use real-world examples to help your audience better understand the topic.

6. Promote Your Content

Promoting your content across different platforms helps you reach more people in your target audience.

Consider these ways to expand your content's reach:

• Share with email subscribers: Include a link to your blog post or video in your newsletter, along with a compelling teaser
• Repurpose blog content: Turn key points from a blog post into a series of engaging social media updates
• Use video snippets: Cut longer videos into short clips to share on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook
• Engage in community discussions: Share relevant content in industry forums like Reddit threads (as long as users have expressed interest in learning more). Fostering discussions about your content and brand in these places can even lead to better AI platform visibility.
• Collaborate with colleagues: Encourage your team members to share posts on their professional social channels to increase visibility
• Partner with industry leaders: Collaborate with influencers or partners to share your content with their audiences
• Run targeted social ads: Use social media advertising to boost key content pieces, targeting specific demographics or interests

Be sure to adjust your content format and tone for each platform while keeping your core message consistent.

7. Analyze Results & Improve

Analyzing your content's performance helps you identify what engages your audience and provides clear guidance for improving future content.

The metrics you monitor will depend on your goals and the types of content you’ve created:

• Blog posts: Keyword rankings, AI citations, organic traffic, AI traffic, and average engagement time per session
• Social media posts: Reach, impressions, engagement rate (based on likes, comments, shares, etc.), and click-through rates
• Videos: Views, watch time, and click-through rates for video descriptions or links
• Interactive content: Participation rates and completion rates
• Ebooks and whitepapers: Number of downloads and subsequent conversions (like consultation requests)

Most platforms provide built-in analytics tools. 

Here's an example from Instagram:

For website content, use Google Analytics 4’s “Pages and screens” report to evaluate how different pages are performing. 

You can even apply a filter to isolate traffic from LLMs in GA4—we cover how to do this in our AI referral traffic article. 

To simplify evaluating how you’re faring in AI platforms, use Semrush’s Visibility Overview tool (part of the AI SEO Toolkit)—it shows how visible you are relative to your competitors, the specific prompt responses that mention you, and more.

Once you’ve identified what’s working, take actionable steps to refine your strategy:

• Identify high-performing topics. Use metrics like views and engagement to pinpoint the topics your audience values most. Create more content around these topics.
• Optimize underperforming content. Adjust headlines, update information, or improve visuals for content that’s not performing well.
• Experiment with formats. If certain formats (like videos or interactive tools) outperform others, shift your focus toward creating more of those.

Content Creation Tips for Beginners

Here are some key content creation tips to improve efficiency, organization, and even performance:

Use AI Thoughtfully

AI can help you brainstorm fresh ideas and speed up your processes when used properly.

For example, imagine you sell protein bars and want a hook for a short video aimed at young professionals.

You can prompt ChatGPT with a specific prompt like this:

You can then add your personal touch to make sure the tone is just right. The value AI provides here is speed and volume. 

Here are some other AI tools you can try to speed up your content creation process:

• Social Content AI: To generate social media ideas and content
• AI Article Generator: To generate search-friendly blog posts
• Ideogram: To generate images
• ElevenLabs: To generate audio content
• AI Video Marketing Automator: To generate videos based on a prompt

Update Your Old Content Regularly

Updating existing content can help you get more value from work you’ve already done.

You can update content by adding:

• Fresh stats
• Clearer, more specific examples
• New visuals
• Answers to additional questions your audience is now asking

Focus on content that gets a lot of visibility, has seen a traffic dip, or covers a topic that’s trending again.

For example, we updated our Authority Score blog post with new information at the very end of April. There was a noticeable increase in traffic after the update, as shown by the Organic Research tool. 

You can even make adjustments to social posts and share them again. 

Try Other Formats and Platforms

Creating content for more than one platform and in more than one format helps you reach a wider audience.

If you usually publish long-form articles on your company blog, consider building a presence on LinkedIn, YouTube, or another platform your audience uses. And experiment with new formats like short videos, carousels, or podcast episodes.

Clever Girl Finance is a brand that does this well. The website attracts almost 77K monthly visits.

It’s also active on Instagram.

And on YouTube.

Start with one new platform where your audience already spends time to see how it goes. And tailor your approach based on what you observe. 

Create Content in Batches

Making several pieces of content at once and publishing over time saves time and keeps you consistent.

For example, you can use one morning to write all your social media posts for the week. Or set aside an afternoon to record several short videos at once.

If you’re focused on social media, use a tool like Semrush’s Social Poster to schedule your posts in advance.

Create Content and Grow Your Brand

Creating effective content takes time. 

But with the right approach and tools, you can build a strong content presence that connects with your audience and grows your brand.

Semrush’s Content Toolkit is particularly helpful for creating high-quality content that gains visibility among searchers. 

Try it today.