{"id":1138,"date":"2013-02-15T13:38:27","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T18:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.customedialabs.com\/blog\/?p=1138"},"modified":"2018-02-27T13:24:47","modified_gmt":"2018-02-27T18:24:47","slug":"3-lessons-your-college-professor-secretly-taught-you-about-creating-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.customedialabs.com\/blog\/3-lessons-your-college-professor-secretly-taught-you-about-creating-content\/","title":{"rendered":"3 Lessons Your College Professor Secretly Taught You About Creating Content"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, I\u2019ve stumbled on some fresh conversations about the <a href=\"http:\/\/contentmarketinginstitute.com\/2013\/02\/content-marketing-fallacy-more-better\/\">amount of content<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thesaleslion.com\/long-blog-posts-content-marketing\/#comments\">length of content<\/a> that marketers should strive to create. \u00a0Questions of content quantity (say that 10x fast) are an ongoing debate.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Is more always better or is less sometimes more?<\/li>\n<li>Are people more likely to read short, digestible content or long, valuable content?<\/li>\n<li>Where is the industry trending?<\/li>\n<li><strong>Just tell me &#8211; how much content should I be creating???<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To quote many a college professor: <strong>\u201cas much as you need to create\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I know, I know.<\/p>\n<p>I also hated that answer.\u00a0 I mean, I just wanted to know if my essay had to be 2-3 pages or 10-12.\u00a0 And it always seemed to me that the answer \u201cas much as you need to write\u201d was really a passive way of requiring a long essay.<\/p>\n<p>But as I have grown as a writer, I\u2019ve come to understand that my professors weren\u2019t just trying to guilt me into a 20-page essay, they were trying to teach me important lessons about content creation.<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. Don\u2019t start with \u201chow much?\u201d. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve read short content that I wished was longer. I\u2019ve given up on long content that I wished was shorter. I\u2019ve been overwhelmed and confused by too much content. And I\u2019ve been disappointed by not having enough content.<\/p>\n<p>Word count, page count, number of posts, or other methods of measuring content have a place in the content creation process \u2013 but it\u2019s not the first step.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. Start with \u201cwhy?\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Who are you talking to? How are you helping them? What story are you trying to tell? What business goal are you trying to meet?<\/p>\n<p>Write a thesis or document a mission statement. But whatever you do, always start by figuring out your purpose.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. <\/strong><strong>End with \u201cdid it work?\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Did you convert\/inspire\/grow\/teach\/build\/prove whatever it was you were trying to do?<\/p>\n<p>If the answer is yes, stop right there;\u00a0you&#8217;ve\u00a0created just the right amount of content. \u00a0Because the truth is, creating content is not about quantity, it&#8217;s about quality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, I\u2019ve stumbled on some fresh conversations about the amount of content and the length of content that marketers should strive to create. \u00a0Questions of content quantity (say that 10x fast) are an ongoing debate. Is more always better or is less sometimes more? Are people more likely to read short, digestible content or long, [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1139,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[181],"tags":[101],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customedialabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customedialabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customedialabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customedialabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customedialabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.customedialabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1142,"href":"https:\/\/www.customedialabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions\/1142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customedialabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customedialabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customedialabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customedialabs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}