The definitive guide to content creation
Content should inform and inspire. Whether it’s online content, printed content, or anything in between, it should embody everything your brand is about and follow its goal.
Content is the basis of almost every marketing tool and brand touch point. Whether you’re reaching new customers on Facebook or contacting returning customers via email, the right content delivers the right message to the right people.
What does content creation involve?
When we talk about content creation we’re talking about copywriting and image creation, and it’s more complex than putting words on a page. It’s storytelling: creating content and copy that is meaningful, informative and persuasive.
As a business you need your customer to do something, whether that’s buying a product, sharing your information, signing up, or engaging with your brand. To get customers to act, you need the right words and the right images in the right places, to inspire them and motivate them to choose you.
The three steps to the best copy
- Idea: it all starts with an idea. We get creative, research, and storyboard.
- Plan: we work out the strategy and consider how to make the content reach the audience.
- Create: we create content that is organic, on-brand, and optimised for you to publish and drive traffic.
There’s another aspect you should always consider: SEO. Optimised content is especially important for website copy, because it helps you rank and therefore be seen. For a local business, that means content built around the services you offer and the areas you serve.
What content creation covers
Titles, page content, blogs, articles, product and service descriptions, images, meta data, emails, social media posts, video, infographics, white papers, case studies and more. It’s all about getting creative and communicating the right message.
Why choose Local Territory for content?
Our expert, UK-native SEO copywriters carefully curate content that’s right for your brand, to drive traffic and sales. The team embodies your brand to talk to your buyers, and we can support you with everything from full content strategies to one-off pieces.
Content is also the raw material of answer engine optimisation: the businesses with clear, genuinely useful answers on their pages are the ones AI assistants quote. One more reason to do it properly.
Start with the questions, not the calendar
The most common content mistake a local business makes is deciding to publish something every week and then working out what. It produces a library of articles that nobody was looking for, because the topic was chosen to fill a slot rather than to answer a question someone had.
The alternative is to start from what you already know. Every business has a list of questions it answers on the phone ten times a week: what does it cost, how long will it take, do you cover my area, do I need permission, what happens if it goes wrong. Those questions are being typed into Google and into assistants every day in your area, and most of your competitors have not answered them in writing.
The pages that actually earn their keep
Service pages, one per service. Not one page listing nine things. A page for each service you want more of, written about that service specifically, is the single highest-return content a local business can build.
Area pages, where they are real. A page for an area you genuinely serve, with something specific to say about serving it, works. A page generated by swapping a town name into a template does not, and has not for years.
Cost and process pages. The two things every prospective customer wants and most sites avoid. Publishing a realistic range and explaining what moves it is more persuasive than any amount of reassurance, and it filters out enquiries that were never going to convert.
Question pages. Individual answers to individual questions, written so the answer arrives in the first paragraph. These are what AI assistants quote.
How to write so a machine will quote you
Answer first, then explain. A page that opens with two paragraphs of context before reaching the point will not be quoted, because there is no self-contained passage to lift. Put the direct answer in the opening lines, in plain language, and then take as long as you like to justify it.
Be specific. Numbers, timescales, named areas and concrete conditions are quotable in a way that adjectives are not. 'We are fast' says nothing. 'Most installations are finished in a day, two if the existing pipework needs replacing' can be repeated by an assistant to a customer.
How much is enough
Fewer, better pages beat more, thinner ones every time. A local business with twenty genuinely useful pages covering its services, areas and common questions is in a stronger position than one with two hundred pages of filler, and it is a far more achievable target. Once the core is built, a realistic ongoing rhythm for most local businesses is one solid piece a month, not one a week.
