How to Stop Overthinking Your Content and Start Writing What Your Customers Love. You might find it hard to believe, but content doesn’t have to be game-changing to perform well and achieve its objectives. For example, don’t say create “viral” or “shareable” content, say you want to create something that is “thought-provoking,” “controversial,” “amusing,” or “surprising.” Striving for perfection can mean you never start Sometimes a marketer or business owner will talk to me about creating a blog, or if they already have a blog, they say how they want to create content more regularly. When I ask what’s stopping them, I almost always know what they’re going to say: They can’t think of what content to create. While you shouldn’t lower your standards to the point of creating just anything, something has to change if attaining a mythical ideal stops you from creating anything at all. The first step you need to take to stop overthinking content, and start writing what your customers love, is this: Stop trying to live up to unrealistic standards. According to BuzzSumo, BuzzFeed’s most successful article was shared 1.8 million times on Facebook and more than 50,000 times on Twitter. Instead of focusing on BuzzFeed’s top article of the week (or whatever site or sites you look to for content inspiration) look at the performance of your brand’s content. The more time users spend on a page, the more engaged you can assume them to be. What does this mean for your content?
You might find it hard to believe, but content doesn’t have to be game-changing to perform well and achieve its objectives. In my experience, a lot of marketers are fixated on creating that “perfect” piece of content. They tell themselves they won’t settle for anything less, but the reality is that what they wind up creating is rarely as revolutionary as they hoped it would be.
There are a few reasons why.
Perfectionism isn’t healthy
It causes stress, which in turn can cause high blood pressure, cardiovascular problems, and increased susceptibility to infection, and much more.
If that’s not enough to worry you, consider this: However hard we try – perfection is unattainable.
Perfecting your content is unhealthy, and on top of that, you’re setting yourself up for failure.
That brings me nicely to this next point.
‘Create the best content ever’ isn’t a tangible goal
If you tell yourself and your team you need to create something really awesome, something that makes people sit up and take notice, you’re not really saying anything at all. Those platitudes don’t tell your team what they’re supposed to achieve, how they’re going to achieve it, or what success actually entails.
Instead, when you describe what you want from your content, use words with substantive meaning. For example, don’t say create “viral” or “shareable” content, say you want to create something that is “thought-provoking,” “controversial,” “amusing,” or “surprising.”
Striving for perfection can mean you never start
Sometimes a marketer or business owner will talk to me about creating a blog, or if they already have a blog, they say how they want to create content more regularly. When I ask what’s stopping them, I almost always know what they’re going to say: They can’t think of what content to create.
If that sounds like a different problem than what’s up for discussion here, it isn’t – most of the time, at least.
When someone says they can’t think of anything to write about, what they usually mean is they can’t think of anything they believe is good enough for them to write about.
While you shouldn’t lower your standards to the point of creating just anything, something has to change if attaining a mythical ideal stops you from creating anything at all.
The first step you need to take to stop overthinking content, and start writing what your customers love, is this:
Stop trying to live up to unrealistic standards. Set tangible, measurable, and achievable goals.
Look at what’s working for you
Looking to other content creators is great for inspiration and figuring out what audiences respond to in general. But, whoever they are and whatever they do, they’re not you. And they don’t share your same audience.
Stop comparing yourself to them.
Not only is there no guarantee that a concept that worked for someone else will work for you, but if you measure your brand’s performance against that of say, BuzzFeed, you’re going to be disappointed.
According to BuzzSumo, BuzzFeed’s most successful article was shared 1.8 million times on Facebook and more than 50,000 times on Twitter.
Does that mean that something similar would perform as well for you? Of course not.
BuzzFeed gets more than 200 million monthly unique visitors. You can’t compare yourself to that, and you shouldn’t try.
Instead of focusing on BuzzFeed’s top article of the week (or whatever site or sites you look to for content inspiration) look at the performance of your brand’s content.
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