When you are writing you content, be it for your social media, blogs or even podcasts make sure you remind yourself of what its like to talk to that friend that takes the long way around by the story.
The story sounds great at first, but it takes a left turn to when they met their partner and swiftly dips into that time, they ate to much in the fourth grade, you know there is a point in the somewhere but by the time you figure it out, you’re so bored that you wish the story will put you out of your misery and just end
“No really, that’s very interesting, please go on.”
One mistake we see repeatedly is content that is actually very good and well written gets ruined by the fact that it’s all over and feels almost pointless.
It’s boring and annoying, so let’s do some simple things to make sure your audience doesn’t feel way about your content.
Start with the end in mind
Before you start writing, have your end goal in mind, this give you clear path to the point you are trying to get across to your audience. There are two questions to ask yourself to make this happen:
- What are your goals for this piece of content?
- What is the one message your audience should take away from it?
“What will they be able to do, become, have, change, or avoid after they’ve read it? What transformation are you presenting to them?”
Instead of your content running around like a chicken without a head trying to figure out where it wants to be, make sure you understand exactly where your single point of importance is and focus on that.
It’s time for a draft
Now that you have asked the questions and you have the answers, let’s get drafting.
Writing a draft is much like indulging yourself, write whatever you feel is needed and get all the fluff and tangents out of your system. The more you write, the better it gives you more raw content to work with once you get to the next step.
Draft day is the one day you don’t need to overthink your content, it’s the day you get to spill it all out onto the page so that you have plenty of content for editing, quality editing.
Let is rest
This might be one of the most important things you could do for yourself. Letting your content rest and coming back to it at a later stage, maybe later the day or the next day, allows you to come back to it with a fresh pair of eyes to make sure you can notice all the fluff you added and making sure only the juicy bits stay behind.
“Whatever your content creation process looks like, deciding on your goals before you write, then revisiting them during your edit and polish, will make sure that your content gets to the point … and stays there.”
After this, you have the content you want, and you didn’t go the long route to get your message across. Easy peasy right? Let us know how this worked for you.