Once upon a time, content was king for getting traffic on the internet. Oh wait… it still is. Creating good content doesn’t need to be difficult. Many people on the internet today make it out like you need an advanced math degree to build good content.
Some of the best content I have ever produced starts between 7pm and 8pm every night. For instance, just the other night it was bed time for my daughter. She’s five and loves stories. I sat next to her bed and made up a story for her from the deepest, cartoon land depths, of my mind.
It was fun and entertaining for her (She had a smile on her face and had questions about the scene), it allowed me to teach something (There’s always a message in my stories), but after it was over, the most amazing thing happens. I’m more creative when I sit down to write or do tasks that require out of the box thinking.
There is an article recently published that describes an easy method for building good content. I’ll get to that in a moment because the first thing you must always do is have a purpose. If you don’t know what the purpose of your content is, then you’re left with a limp noodle of information that does nothing but possibly educate and irritate.
Once you have your purpose, it’s time to begin the content development process. Here’s a clip from the original article.
Content Development Process
If you don’t have a content development process, then get one. It will make life a lot easier if you develop a method for gathering, organizing, and deploying content for your site. I recommend the following steps:
- Brainstorm
- Organize and filter
- Design and develop
- Deploy
- Measure and maintain
Original content: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2035435/web-content-development-101
That’s pretty much it. Of course you will want to dive into each of these steps with some depth but don’t make it difficult. Understand the purpose of the step and do it. Don’t over think it. Grab a piece of paper, get on the computer and use mind mapping software, or however you like to write and begin…
Brainstorm – get it out of your head. It does nothing useful in there. Get it out so that you can work with it. It’s like working with clay. You can’t mold it until you have a hunk of it in front of you. Creating good content for the web is no different.
Organize and Filter – To me this is where you take all the concepts you’ve just dumped out and make sense of it all. Put common things together. Link distinct ideas that need linking. Get rid of anything that is not needed. This is time to analyze. But do it quickly.
Design and Develop – Yep, this is where things start to take shape. Put some form to your creation. Add a picture. Re-read your content out loud to make sure it reads well. Edit and edit again.
Deploy – Now this is the step that 80% of the people out there fail on. Many people, including me for a few projects, get information ready to go and then stall. I’m not sure what it is but the content never makes it where it is supposed to go. Just get it out there and be done with it.
Measure – This is important. Let your content sit for a few days. You’ll want to check your analytics, your blog comments, or whatever mechanism you are going to use to find out if the content did its job. You might not need to measure, maybe your content was designed to fill a gap and you are not interested in feedback. That’s fine, just know that going in.
That’s all there is to creating content. It’s not rocket science and doesn’t require much thought. That’s especially true if it’s a topic that you are familiar with. You know, like telling stories. Content is still king and is needed if you’re going to get online traffic from Google or any of the other search engines.
Jay
PS- The End. 
