Why Are You Publishing That Content?

Look at your last 10 posts, do they fit into your content strategy? Have you ever thought about your content strategy?

If a new reader dropped by your site would they be able to tell what the general focus of your site is?

You don’t need to have a one single focus and only write about one thing all the time. This site certainly hits a couple of themes, but I do stay true to writing about search, social media and people who inspire me.

Each piece of content should have a purpose, if it doesn’t, why are you spending time working on it?

Look at the last piece of content you invested some time in and published and answer these questions:

1. This content is important because…
2. The goal of this piece of content is…
3. This content has a lifespan of…
4. People reading this content should…
5. The focus of this content is…

If you find yourself wandering it’s not too late. You can always rework old content, or you can just make a resolution that future work will have more focus. If you have trouble keeping focused, cheat. Here’s some good tricks to keep focused on what’s important:

1. Keep a post-it note on your monitor with a key phrase that you would like your work associated with.
2. Write down 13 topics you can write about that would fit nicely into your content strategy, then write them. If you can’t think of 13 things you can write about maybe that’s a problem.
3. Look at the content you share. Take the best of it each week and write about the reasons you shared it. This will also help you see what you’re sharing and evaluate if it’s worth sharing in the first place.
4. Ask people to describe your job/company/blog or whatever in one word. The answers may surprise you.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments what 1 word you associate with me or this blog.

The tree image comes from another good article on content strategy at Connected Marketer by Barbra Gago