Carinne Bird - It's All About Content

In my experience one of the best content building times for me was when I shared a real experience. Recently I attended a fantastic Industry event that simply blew me away. I arrived 30 minutes early to find a mile long queue of millenniums that had me intrigued to start with! As I entered I felt like I was on a different planet as I did not recognize one industry player in the pre-event surround. Main tent was phenomenal, never have I experienced a series of presentations by the host’s clients sharing their solutions, using the host’s offerings, with passion and excitement. It was just the best endorsement. I was so alive when I left I couldn’t wait to share my experience, in writing, with overseas colleagues. My communication so landed that my email became viral and was broadly shared. Capturing hearts and minds requires you sharing yourself, your passion and emotion. Below are three ideas to help you design your content - 

1. Reason to listen – you need to start by identifying your target audience and then ask yourself…. “WHY is this topic relevant and how can it add value” to my audience. I would start with three bullet points that very simplistically outlines the purpose of your message and then add a further three bullets that outline how this message adds value.
2. Socially Write/Speak/Video – next is determining the Social Media medium for your message? The big thing this year is video and if you have the capability of producing a quality video it should be a definite consideration. Podcasts are another option but are not likely to be as effective as video or the power of the written word. If writing always add a visual – it’s more engaging!
3. Concise is King – I would allow yourself to simply write! Completely empty your brain of all your thoughts that meet both your purpose and value in any way that best works for you. Once you have your brain dump on paper you can start to sort your thoughts and shape your message. If you have a great deal of content, consider breaking up your message into short segments that when linked together make up a total message. Each individual message needs to be short and concise with no more than 3-4 take away points. If your aim is to post on Blog sites / LinkedIn / Facebook I would aim to keep each message around half A4 page or less and if making a video, no more than 3 minutes otherwise people will tune out. If you want to leverage Twitter pick out your best one liners and complement your blogs with tweets.