Audrey Pilcher, AssignmentHelperCreating high-quality content is the foundation of successful content marketing. However, companies are so busy with keeping the content coming that the quality of it starts to suffer.According to Forbes, each day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data, but the quality of most of it is very questionable. The Internet is full of average content, which doesn’t serve well to your business’s content marketing strategy.There’s a chance too that the majority of the content you create presents little value to your readers. But if you want to be successful in your industry, you need to create content that is way above average and that presents a certain value to your target audience.After working for several years in content creation industry, I’ve figured out for myself 5 ways to make your content better than your industry averages, and I’m ready to gladly share them with all my fellow writers and content creators.

1. Keep an Eye on Your Competitors

No matter, what industry your business belongs to, you will always have competitors. But instead of treating them as a threat, you can learn a lot from their success as well as their mistakes.Keeping up with the current activities of your competitors is a job you need to do on a daily basis if you want your business to thrive in the industry. And while you can automate this job by using various tools to track the activity of your competitors, you need to do some things by yourself as well:

• Check your competitor’s content performance. How often do your competitors upload their content? How many social shares does their content get? Check these factors as well as analyze how they put links in their content. This will give you enough information about the sources your competitors work with. As a result, you’ll figure out a way to benefit from it.
• Social media activity. The popularity of content today partly depends on its social media exposure. Analyze how your competitors use their social media accounts to promote their content and learn from them. If their tricks work, apply them to your social media strategy and figure out how to improve it even more.

I believe that your competitors are the greatest teachers you could possibly find. So start creating better content by learning from them.

2. Work on the Characteristics of Your Content

Every content creator knows that there are three basic components of a good content:

• Length: the length of your content solely depends on the medium you place it on. In general, referencing several scientific sources, Torque claims that the longer content is, the more shares it gets. So if you want your written content to go viral, you need to create articles that average at least 1,500-2,000 words per post. If you’re running a news blog, your posts can be shorter, depending on the topic. My
• Visual content: this is a vital part of your content’s success. For better content, insert relevant videos or images, create infographics to make your posts more informative.
• SEO or keyword optimization: this is a shrine every content creator needs to worship as it helps your content score higher in search results.

These are the three keystones of a good content and you need to keep them in mind if you want to create content that is above average.

3. Create a New Outlet for Your Content

Do what your competitors are missing at: create a funnel for your content that no one else uses. Off the top of my head I could come up with the following things:

• Start a podcast: seems like a rather time-consuming job, but it’s a great outlet for you, which you can use to answer the questions of your customers and tell them more about your business. One of the benefits of having a podcast for your business is being able to attract high-profile customers, as you create a rather unusual type of content, which people are more interested in.
• Create a course: engage some of your customers as well as those who are interested in studying how your industry works. This is a revolutionary way to attract new clients which will help you dominate your industry.You can come up with whatever funnels that suit the needs of your business. I ensure you that they will work as long as you stay creative.

4. Get Attention with Catchy Meta Descriptions

Before someone actually gets to read your post, they might check a short description of it that appears in a search engine, which actually is the meta description.A meta description should be a short description of your post but informative enough to let your readers know the key issue you’re covering in it.If you want to create better content, pay attention to your meta descriptions. I ensure you that most of your competitors don’t pay attention to this powerful SEO tool, but it will help you content score hither in the search engine results.

5. Ask Your Readers

Instead of sweating over topics for your content, ask your readers what they are interested in. We live in a consumer-oriented world, where personalization governs all industries. To ask your customers for their opinion, create a poll or a survey using tools like Survey Monkey or Google Forms,, ask them on your website using a pop-up window or on your social media page. This way you’ll make sure that your content will certainly bring value to your target audience.

Always Try to Beat the Average

There is a lot of average content on the Internet. But if you know for sure that your readers deserve the best, this already makes your content above average. Hopefully, the tips I’ve shared will help you create better content.