Like, love or loathe the digital space, content is the one component that cuts across the digital landscape, home to good, bad and ugly content.

To be clear, content is loosely defined here as the ‘written’ word. Your content should do more than take up space. It needs to be doing its job for your digital place in the world. The next time you add content, consider the following.

Your content needs a purpose

Ask yourself this, why are you creating the content? All content needs to be useful, timely, and informative. Before hitting the keyboard, have your thought this about your new content:

• What’s in it for your visitors, your website, your organisation?
• What’s your message?
• Is the content necessary?
• Is the content useful, helpful or informative?
• Does your audience need this content?
• What’s the call to action?
• Have you checked to see if it already exists elsewhere?

Who writes you?

Your content is for your visitors, nobody else. It should speak only to your audience/s.
Do you know who they are?

• Have you written your content for them?
• Is it concise and easy to read?
• What’s the thing you want your visitor to do?
• Do the images help the content, do they add value?
• Have you tagged and described your content properly for search?

All of the above will go a long way towards making your content relevant and valuable to your visitors.

Even now, some 400 years on, these words still ring true …

“Nothing will come of nothing” – William Shakespeare

Photo by Mark Rasmuson on Unsplash