7 Main Issues When Creating Online Content
7 Main Issues When Creating Online Content
(1) Topic. Should it be about a current popular topic or an evergreen one? Current topic (e.g., “2017 Tax Bill Signed in December 2017”) will garner a lot of interest but will be forgotten soon. An evergreen topic (“e.g., “How to lose weight”) will never be out of style but the competition will be fierce. Should I write about a low-competition topic that people will forget soon? Or write about a topic that people will always be interested in by facing a stiff competition from other content creators?
(2) Granularity. How granular and detailed my treatment should be? Should I use jargon? Who is my audience? What do they want and need? What kind of time and energy I should invest in the details and for what kind of reward? What is the reward-cost ratio for this piece?
(3) Delivery. Where should I publish it and why? What’s my purpose and who is my audience? Should I publish it on Medium where it’s very hard to get promoted on the first page? Or should I distribute it to my in-house mail list which is not that large? Or should I do both?
(4) Voice. What kind of voice should I have for this specific content? Should it come across as humorous? Swaggering? Lecturing? Praying? Soulful? Analytical? Rhetorical? Ideological? Obstinate and argumentative? Conciliatory and soothing? Even though the content itself may not change, such change in the voice will make a lot of difference in the way the final product is consumed and retained.
(5) Media Mix. Should this be just text or text and video? Or only as YouTube video? Perhaps only a slide presentation? Or Pinterest infographic? Should I publish this as a podcast, with me alone or as I interview someone else? Should I capture it as a webinar proceeding, accompanied by PDF transcription of the whole session? Choices choices…
(6) Social Media (SM) Footprint. How should I integrate this with my social media footprint? Should I publish it simultaneously on all my SM accounts or release gradually, according to a schedule, with different accounts delegated different priorities? Should I follow a classic “launch” strategy or do it less ostentatiously? Should this be an “interactive happening” or top-down delivery?
(7) Analytics. How to I measure the “success” of my content? By number of clicks — what kind of clicks? How should I calculate ROI? Should I use Google Analytics (yes)? For what kind of period should I monitor the analytics? How can I use the metrics collected for the next phase of content release? What kind of split-testing I should apply? What are the “Lessons Learned”?
