Hi, it’s me, I haven’t updated my blog for awhile - haven’t had much to say.
I suppose it’s because a lot of the work I’ve been doing is about cutting out the noise and clutter - you know, taking long, wordy pieces of writing and ruthlessly cutting it down until the message is clear.
I wonder if that’s the main difference between quality writing and rambling blogs or quality video versus the large amount of crap in the 25+ hours of content uploaded to Youtube ever minute?
In today’s digital age creating content is easy BUT creating good content is harder than ever. Below is a snapshot of the amount of content created in 60 seconds - it's bamboozling and makes you wonder how you can create cut through?
The analogy I often use is the best designs are those that appear simple - the iphone comes to mind; a duck gliding across the water - below the surface there’s a whole lot going on.
Infographic by- Shanghai Web Designers
Did You Know That - In 60 SECONDS
- Search engine Google serves more that 694,445 queries
- 6,600+ pictures are uploaded on Flickr
- 600 videos are uploaded on YouTube videos, amounting to 25+ hours of content
- 695,000 status updates, 79,364 wall posts and 510,040 comments are published on Social Networking site Facebook
- 70 New domains are registered
- 168,000,000+ emails are sent
- 320 new accounts and 98,000 tweets are generated on Social Networking site Twitter
- iPhone applications are downloaded more than13,000 times
- 20,000 new posts are published on Micro-blogging platform tumbler
- Popular web browser FireFox is downloaded more than 1700 times
- Popular blogging platform Wordpress is downloaded more than 50 times
- WordPress Plugins aredownloaded more than 125 times
- 100 accounts are created on professional networking site LinkedIn
- 40 new Questions are asked on YahooAnswers.com
- 100+ questions are asked on Answers.com
- 1 new article is published on Associated Content, the world’s largest source of community-created content
- 1 new definition is added on UrbanDictionary.com
- 1,200+ new ads are created on Craigslist
- 370,000+ minutes of voice calls done by Skype users
- 13,000+ hours of music streaming is done by personalized Internet radio provider Pandora
- 1,600+ reads are made on Scribd, the largest social reading publishing company
Creating Compelling Content
Here’s five tips for creating content that hopefully engages and shares
- What's your objective? Is it just to express your personal opinion OR does it have some other objective?
- Who is your audience and what are their needs? You can't be all things to everyone so visualise the types of readers you want and understand what they want.
- In terms of content there are six key questions to work with - Who, What, When, Where, How Much and Why? What answers are important for your reader.
- Tone: Is easier to be yourself - be real, natural and conversational - we’re all becoming highly tuned at filtering irrelevant BS. As a reader I want to get to know you - your opinions.
- Is the content likely to be shared? Does it have a call to action? Does it entertain? Does it have a logical flow so that it is easy to read? Write - proofread (something I'm guilty of often neglecting) - rewrite - cut - post.
