Is your content valuable or just interesting? A simple way to find out: Before you publish it, ask yourself: “What can someone DO after consuming this content that they couldn’t do before?” If the answer is nothing... Your content may be interesting, but it’s probably not valuable. Valuable is actionable.
Another way (may be a bit tedious) to find out: Ask for feedback on your content to ensure its value. This can help improve your content and make it more valuable for your audience.
I have always struggled with understanding what creating value is. And the advice around value is everywhere: "Make sure you bring value," but no one really tells you what that looks like. This clarifies it a lot, thank you.
Let me think. What can I do now that I couldn't do before reading your post? Ok, I can reassess my content. Will do. thanks!
Wow, talk about walking the walk with this post prompting action! You made me review my LIn posts from the past few months (and then groan and roll my eyes at myself). Finally found ONE valuable one to repost. Thanks for this Josh Spector!!
The nonprofit I lead (Dakota Resources) is shifting our social media and newsletter in a big way. The language you’ve given us here is super helpful. Our goal is to shift to 70% actionable value for the rural economic developers we support, and no more than 30% interestingness. This would be a flip from about 80% interesting and newsy stuff about ourselves and rural communities we help. We’re keeping the 30% because that seems to be best for our secondary target market—funders and partners. What do you think the right ratio could be for us?
I think something "creators" or the marketing team behind the keyword research and the writing should do is to have a "why" behind their content. Why are they targeting this keyword? What's the business goal it could achieve? Is it informational— is it what they need to target right now? Do they want to use a CTA that hopefully converts readers— how will they do that? Is it part of pillar content strategy? I think these questions are what should be answered while creating the content strategy so they won't bother about alignment with biz goals after "creation".
What about changing someone's perspective? They might not DO something tangible but THINK differently. 🤔
Love this
Great question!
Want more clients from your content? I'll show you how.
10moAlso: Using this question as a guide also leads you to create more specific content instead of generic content which is also a good thing.