Three Top Tips for Better Content

June 18, 2013

In the next few months, I’m going to be speaking to and advising a handful of clients about content marketing, advertising copywriting and general business communication. It occurred to me that readers here could benefit from some of the lessons the big fish are paying me to share.

So, for the one-time low price of your attention span, here are three top tips for clearer content. If you’d like more tips and/or would like to retain me to keynote your event or speak to your team, use the contact form right here on the blog.

Thanks!

1 – Have a goal in mind whenever you write or create content

Without a clear goal, your content isn’t do any work for you. Presumably, you’re not independently wealthy. So, your content is being crafted to reach and motivate an audience. Ensure that your words, audio, video and images do just that by thinking about a call to action and a goal you’d like your content to help you achieve.

2 – Never run out of content ideas – keep an ongoing brainstorm or topics list

The biggest issue writers, bloggers and other content producers approach me with is their inability to come up with new ideas. These ideas are all around us. But if you don’t jot them down when they occur to you, they might be lost forever. Take notes, take photos, record your thoughts. Then, when it’s deadline time for your next post, newsletter or video, you’ll have ideas aplenty.

3 – Use deadlines to drive content

A friend of mine has never posted a complete column on his blog because he feels the content isn’t quite perfect. Let me tell you a secret, if everyone waited until content was perfect, there’d be a whole lot less of it out there.

So, create and then stick to your deadlines. When the deadline comes, your article, blog post or other thought better be complete or darn close. Put some finishing touches on it and hit publish. That’s what thousands of news journalists do every day…deadlines drive the news, allow deadlines to drive your content, too. Or else you’ll never create anything.

There are many more tips I can share about creating content, but why don’t you give me a few of your favorite tips in the comments? Let me know what works for you and maybe I’ll use it in my next blog post or even a training session or book.

Be well!