Taking The Fear Out of Content Creation

By Cynthia Lockrey

By now you have probably heard this saying more times than you would like. If you have a corporate or personal website, social media page, newsletter or any other communications channel, you know you need to produce content to keep it relevant. But how much content and how often is the tricky part.

There was once a time when there were unwritten set minimums for how often you should update your information. For example, on Facebook the suggested amount of minimum updates was anywhere from one to 10 per day, depending on the size of your organization. As a result of this "rule," social media channels were filled with information, with quantity being more important than quality. And, as you can imagine, readers started getting overwhelmed and tuning out.

This mad drive for content did the exact opposite effect - it turned people away versus bringing them in.

While content is still important to maximize your SEO (search engine optimization), the focus is now on producing quality content that will resonate with your target audience. So instead of having one blog post a day, maybe you have one blog post a week or every couple of weeks. You are better off waiting until inspiration strikes and you have something interesting to say, then trying to fill 200-300 words of space.

And if you aren't a great writer, or struggle finding the time to carefully craft your words, grab your cell phone and create a short video. But don't just pick up your phone and hit record and start chatting away. Rather take some time, write out your key points, formulate your ideas on what message you want to convey, to whom and why, then start recording. Otherwise you are just becoming more noise on an already noisy platform.

There are many resources out there to help you develop your content. Once great resource for beginners is the book The Content Planner by Angela Crocker. This will help get you started in planning and creating content in a meaningful versus scattered way.

Book time in your calendar to write your content, making it a regular part of your work week. This way you set aside the time needed to research the content your audience responds best to, creating the content as well as reviewing it before posting. By doing this you can also determine the frequency that works best not only for you, but your audience.

To learn more about how to create content your audience will actually read by fine tuning your message and improve your communications skills, visit http://www.howtocommunications.com.