You’ve probably heard this saying more times than you would like. If you have a corporate or personal website, social media page, newsletter, or any other communication channel, you know that you need to produce content to keep it relevant. But how much content and how often is the tricky part.
There was a time when there were unwritten set minimums on how often you should update your information. For example, on Facebook, the suggested minimum number of updates ranged from one to ten per day, depending on the size of your organization. As a result of this “rule”, social media channels were filled with information, quantity being more important than quality. And, as you can imagine, readers began to feel overwhelmed and to tune out.
This crazy drive for content had the exact opposite effect – it drove people away instead of attracting them.
While content is still important to maximize your SEO (search engine optimization), the focus now is on producing quality content that will resonate with your target audience. So instead of having a blog post a day, maybe you have a blog post a week or every other week. You better wait until inspiration strikes and you have something interesting to say, and then try to fill 200-300 words of space.
And if you are not a great writer, or have a hard time finding the time to carefully compose your words, grab your cell phone and create a short video. But don’t just pick up your phone and hit record and start chatting. Rather, take some time, write down your key points, formulate your ideas about what message you want to convey, to whom, and why, then start recording. Otherwise you are getting louder on an already loud rig.
There are many resources available to help you develop your content. Once a great resource for beginners is Angela Crocker’s book The Content Planner. This will help you start planning and creating content in a meaningful rather than scattered way.
Set aside time on your calendar to write your content, making it a regular part of your work week. In this way, you reserve the time necessary to research the content that your audience responds to best, creating the content and reviewing it before publishing it. By doing this, you can also determine the frequency that works best not only for you, but also for your audience.