If I could redo all of my content marketing, from every company I’ve ever worked on, I would keep this single, simple mantra in mind:
The content you publish should feel like you’re giving a gift.
I certainly don’t feel that about everything I’ve published. Perhaps the closest I’ve gotten to that is the book I wrote. I spent a lot of time on it and put a lot of planning into it. Outlines, research, conversations with people. That’s probably what it takes to feel like I’m really giving something valuable.
This is certainly aspirational. I don’t expect to achieve this bar every time I click publish but I should be aware of when I don’t reach that threshold. It’s a good marker to go after.
To get closer to it more often, I’ll try to follow this process for future blog posts:
- Write an outline first
- Write in multiple sittings
- Do a final reading before publishing
If I did this with every blog post, not only would I publish better content, I think over time it would make me a better writer.
This post, perhaps ironically, did not have an outline but did get written over multiple sittings and did get a read-through. The first draft was kind of an outline, though. I can give myself credit for that.