Yesterday we talked about creating your content plan, but I probably did things a little backwards because I’m thinking we really should have started with figuring out a purpose for your content. So here are a few questions you can ask yourself about the content you’re creating…

Who Are You Creating the Content For?

Use your audience persona, or a customer persona to help you focus yourself on the content you’re creating. The material you create for people on your list will depend on how they signed up for the list, which freebie they downloaded, which product they purchased, and what your goals are for that list segment. What you create for the audience you have that has never purchased or converted in any way will be different.

Where is The Content Going?

Where you’re publishing makes a big difference too. If you’re publishing it on your blog it will be different than if you’re sending it via email. A blog post can be very long, while an email shouldn’t be. Also, the page it’s going on your site is important too. Is it a blog post, part of your about me page, or another page? What is the purpose of the page it’s going on or the list it’s going to?

What Are You Trying to Communicate?

When you sit down to create, ask yourself this question and start brainstorming the answers. That way you can keep looking at that as you’re creating your product or blog post, for example. Try to keep it to one topic instead of spreading it too thin. You should have one overarching message you want the viewer to take away from what they’re consuming.

How Does the Content Fit with What You Have?

Before creating anything new, you should always go through the content you already have so that you can find out what you’ve already published about that topic. You may be able to take bits and pieces of what you’ve already created to make it into something new. If it’s totally new content with a totally new angle how does it fit in with what you have and make it better?

What is The Goal of the Content?

Every bit of content you publish needs a point. Do you want to educate, inform, inspire or engage with your audience or a combination of these options? When you think about the goal you want to achieve, you will have an easier time creating it to do what you want it to do.

What Do You Want Viewers to Do?

Finally, you want to know exactly what you want your viewer to do once they’ve consumed the material. You need to remember the call to action throughout the content, especially at the end by directing them in what you want them to do by telling them what to do. Don’t hint, don’t just put a sign-up box at the end, instead tell them what you want them to do.

Once these questions are answered you’ll have a much better idea about the direction to go with every piece of content you create because it’s going to fit in with your overall “big hairy” goal as well as the goal you have for the individual piece of content such as list building for example. 

One way to make creating products and supporting material easier is to start with a package of done for you content such as the Year’s Worth of Content* package that’s available at Ekit Hub. This pack will give you a cohesive set of material to work with based around one theme, that will make answering these questions much easier than if you had to start from scratch.

*Note: This post includes affiliate links, for which I will receive a small commission should you make a purchase.