What makes content valuable?
Everybody wants their content to sparkle. But there’s more to valuable content than perfectly polished sentences. Let’s dive into the Checklist of valuable content.
The checklist defines valuable content using five benchmarks:
- Findable
- Readable
- Understandable
- Actionable
- Shareable
- Findable content: People need a way to discover your content. Make sure you follow SEO guidelines to create findable content. TIP: Before creating findable content, perform keyword research based on your goals and user research.
- Readable content: Remember, readers scan until they find the content they need. Respect the person’s time. Put the most important facts at the top and the least important at the bottom.
- Understandable content: Creating content that users understand can be challenging with complex topics. My agency does a lot of health-care content creation. Many times, we write on an eighth-grade reading level. Even that might be too elevated for some readers.
- Actionable content: You create content because you want readers to act. Include a list of actionable items for the user at the top of lengthy content. For example, a long-form article on diabetes care could include three bullets at the top defining diabetes and explaining how to control it.
Shareable content: People trust peers more than brands. Allow users to personalize the share. For instance, when Aha Media Group retweets things, we add hashtags and reference other sources.