3 steps to creating quality content
“More content is better.” That’s what most people think about digital content. But that simply isn’t true.
The quantity of your content isn’t important. Quality is what matters. And there’s one way to ensure that you’re creating quality content.
Ask “Why?”Ruthlessly.
If you’ll commit to this practice, the benefits will be massive:
- Your content will be purposeful
- You’ll spend less time (and money) creating content
- Your website’s usability will skyrocket
So where do you start?
Define what success looks like
The first step toward quality content is defining success.
That means that you need a set of business objectives.
Business objectives are clear and measurable goals for your digital efforts. Every nonprofit needs them. Without a concrete way to measure your efforts, it’s impossible to be purposeful with your time and money.
Some objectives could include:
- X number of unique visitors per month
- $X raised during a specified time period
- X number of child sponsorships in a quarter or year
Do you have specific objectives like these already? Great.
If not, take some time to sit down with the decision makers in your organization and list out your goals. Then establish some metrics to measure success.
Understand what your constituents want
Business objectives are good, but they’re only one side of the coin.
You also need to understand your constituents. They have specific desires and motivations, and if you don’t structure your content for them there’s no way you’ll accomplish your objectives.
That means that you need do research, conduct focus groups and take a deep look into your website analytics. Then use these findings to develop user personas. Sticky Content’s blog wrote a great explanation of how to develop user personas.
Then take the time to meld together your constituent’s desires and your organization’s objectives.
Decide which content ideas to pursue
After defining your business objectives and taking time to understand your constituents, you’ll have the filter you need to decide whether or not to pursue every content idea.
All you have to do is ask “Why?”
If the answer is something other than “it will help accomplish one of our business objectives,” then you probably shouldn’t pursue the idea.
You don’t have to be captive to every cool content idea. You can be set free by asking “Why?”
To dive a little deeper into the anatomy of quality content check out Erin Kissane’s Checklist for Content Work.