In the digital age, healthy bottom lines and great content marketing strategies go hand in hand and with good reason.
Today’s consumers want more from the brands they buy from than outstanding service and reliable products.
They also want personal relationships that feel worthwhile, meaningful, and beneficial on more than one level.
That’s where adding educational content to your existing digital marketing repertoire comes in.
Educational content is an incredible way to make your brand more visible and build authority in your field while giving your audience that additional level of value they crave.
Keep reading to learn all about it.
What is Educational Content?
People aren’t just doing a lot more of their shopping and socializing online these days. The internet is also usually the first place someone turns when they need information.
Whether they’re doing deep research on a serious topic of interest or just need a quick question answered, they know whatever they’re looking for is never more than a Google search (and a few great pieces of content) away.
Educational content is any type of content that aims to bring value to an audience by teaching them something new.
It can be as simple as a series of quick how-to guides or a short TikTok tutorial or as complicated as a full-scale e-learning course or in-depth ebook.
The idea is to teach your audience something they’re looking to learn.
The Benefits of Educational Content for Your Brand
Whether you’re looking to build an online course to help your audience master a new skill or simply add value to your existing blog, embracing educational content can take your marketing efforts to another level.
Here’s a closer look at some of the benefits:
- Giving your website visitors and potential customers the value they’re looking for helps support a positive brand image.
- Useful, valuable resources can help drive traffic to your site, generate new leads, or help convert existing leads.
- Educational content can support existing products and services by helping your customer get more out of the user experience.
- Many types of educational content (including detailed e-courses) present an opportunity to create an online community around your brand.
In other words, when you teach people something they need to know in an approachable, helpful way, it pays off.
They’ll stick around to check out more of your content, not to mention your products. And if they are really into what you’re offering, they’ll likely become a customer one day, as well.
6 Tips for Creating the Best Educational Content
Now that you understand the “why” of educational content creation, it’s time to find out about the “how” so you can get down to business.
Here are a few must-know tips for creating killer educational content that really resonates with your audience and helps move you forward toward your digital marketing goals.
1. Make content that’s relevant to your audience
This may seem self-explanatory, but it’s important enough to warrant discussion.
Many brand owners mistakenly assume the content they want to create is also the content their audiences want to consume.
Then they’re left wondering why they’re not getting the results they hoped for.
Educational content must be relevant to your target audience, so take a moment to think about who those people are.
What are their pain points, and what answers are they out there looking for? And most importantly, how can you give them what they need as it relates to your brand focus?
2. Maintain a consistent voice and tone
Brands are just like people in that they have voices and personalities. So take a moment to consider this in regards to your brand.
For example, are you looking to address complicated, serious topics that call for a more formal tone, or is your brand personality more fun and relatable?
You’ll also want to consider the voice you use to speak to your audience.
Do you want to talk directly to them in a person-to-person manner, or does it make more sense to approach your topics from a third-person perspective?
Whatever approach you choose, keep it consistent across all of your content pieces and sharing channels.
3. Treat your audience to the unexpected
While it’s true that there’s pretty much nothing that hasn’t been done before in the great, big world of content creation, there’s always another angle from which to approach things.
Keep in mind that an audience searching for a specific solution has probably already been through a sea of tired content rehashing the same information.
A unique approach is all it takes to make them sit up and take notice.
So don’t be afraid to think outside the box and get creative. Check out what’s already out there regarding the kind of educational content you want to produce.
Look for gaps you can fill and ways to use your brand’s unique voice to fill them. Answer the burning questions your audience has before they even think to ask them.
4. Break your content up with user-friendly formatting
Keep in mind that while some folks who discover your content will consume it from start to finish, that’s not how the average web user searches for information.
Most will find it, scan it quickly to see if it’s what they’re looking for, and then concentrate on the portions relevant to their issue or question.
Making sure this is easy for your audience to do not only makes your educational content more helpful to them but also helps boost your website’s SEO.
Always organize your content into handy sections that make it easy to follow and skim.
When producing classic written content, break it up into nice, neat chunks with headings, subheadings, bullets lists, and so forth.
When creating video content, use features like title cards and time markers to split it into bite-sized chapters.
Dress up blog posts and social media content by adding images, videos, interactive infographics, and other visuals where it makes sense.
5. Enrich your content with additional links
Clickable links are another helpful feature to add to your educational content to benefit your audience.
And like other types of formatting, links also support stellar SEO for your work, so definitely use them when and where appropriate.
Add internal links to related content on your website to increase user dwell time and enrich the audience experience.
Also, use external links to other authority sites to add credibility to your work and cite statistics for those who might want more information.
6. Get more mileage out of your content by repurposing it
A great piece of content doesn’t have to be a one-off unless you want it to be.
Nearly all content can easily be repurposed, revamped, or revisited in a variety of ways, so don’t miss out on opportunities to get more out of yours.
Here are some suggestions to consider:
- Repurposing ebooks by revamping sections into individual blog posts, articles, or infographics.
- Revisiting older posts that were successful and updating them with new information.
- Approaching covered topics from new angles and sending them out as newsletter or email content.
- Adapting content that was successful on one platform into focused content in other formats to share elsewhere.
And don’t forget to make all of your amazing educational content easy to share.
Include social media buttons that make it a snap to share to someone’s platform of choice. And don’t forget to share your content on your own social pages, as well.
Educational Content Examples
These days, you’ve really got your options open when it comes to the type of resources you create, as successful educational content comes in many different formats.
Here are a few popular options to consider.
Blogs Posts
Even this year, there’s still nothing quite like the quintessential blog post to teach an audience what you want them to know. Blog posts are versatile, easy to share, and great for improving your site’s SEO.
Video Lessons
Whether you decide to start a YouTube channel for your brand or something else entirely, video content is another highly effective option for teaching or educating an audience.
Produce a series of how-to tutorials, create playlists, and more. You may also want to consider hosting live lessons on YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram for a truly interactive experience.
Full-Scale Courses
Complete educational courses on membership platforms like Teachable or Thinkific are great ways to offer your audience a deep dive into a particular topic of interest.
Courses are also fantastic for brands looking to combine imagery, video, blog posts, and other interactive tools to create a truly unique user experience.
Email Newsletters
Newsletters are back in vogue in a big way, thanks to user-friendly platforms like Substack that make managing, sending, and subscribing simple. You can use your newsletter to offer online courses, subscription-based services, and more.
(Speaking of newsletters, are you subscribed to ours?)
Wrap Up: Start Creating The Best Educational Content This Year
Not sure where to start? No problem! WriterAccess is the perfect platform to help you streamline your educational content production, combining the efficiency of AI with the creativity of human writers.
Why not give WriterAccess a try today? Sign up now and get 14 days of free access to our network of expert writers. Discover for yourself what great educational content can do for your business!
