Original content creation is a key component of social brand building for both corporations and individuals. Developing a disciplined approach to the content creation process is imperative to ensure a consistent flow of relevant and relatable content for your audience.

4 Brain-Writing Questions

At Socially Savvy, we facilitate many original content creation workshops. To spur the creative process, we conduct brain-writing exercises with participants to gather ideas for blogs and posts.

Leveraging post it notes and writing utensils, below are four sample questions that we utilize during our 3 minute brain-writing exercises.

What are some terms of industry that your customers do not understand? (Definitions)
What key questions have your clients asked you in the past six (6) months?
What do your customers need to do to be successful? What are they not doing today? (Problem Diagnosis /Action-oriented Recommendations)
What has changed in the last 6-12 months in your industry? What do you anticipate will change in the next 6-12 months? (Historical / Future Trends)

Once we de-dupe the ideas and conduct a prioritization exercise, the output of the session becomes the baseline ingredient for the content calendar.

Inspiring Readership and Loyalty

In order for your customers to engage with and maintain interest in your content, your blogs and posts must be consumable and snackable. This translates to being the right length (short or long form), impactful, scannable and readable. Below are suggestions to improve the readership of your content and loyalty of your followers.

When framing a concept in your title, use less than 7 words (less is more).
Utilize numbers in your title, as appropriate.
Use imagery in your heading to engage your reader and introduce your topic.
Leverage bold formatting in your section headings to clearly delineate one topical focus from the next.
Include definitions, quotes and statistics from reputable and respected industry sources to inspire engagement, interest and create stickiness with your content.
Include dynamic content such as a SlideShare presentation, video or infographics.
Close your content with a section that instructs or summarizes, such as Insights or Take Aways.
Include a call to action. By providing valuable content, you earn the right to share ways in which to further engage with you as a brand.

Final Thought

Compelling original content creation is a team effort. Applying a structured approach to harness the value locked up in your employees knowledge and intimacy with the market and customers will lead to success.