Creating Value: The Formulation of Content Creation

Let's Start

How do you create engaging content? How do you add value to your viewer?

In this digital age, everyone seems to have an audience, and everybody equally has the chance of being heard and noticed.  YouTube, Twitter, Google+ (I think there might be one more, but I cant remember the name of it) are all platforms tailored for engagement.  In this post i'll step you through my ultimate equation to creating value, and in turn engagement.  

Math To The Rescue!

Math can't rescue all things, But I think this equation works well for this very problem we have. 

Value = Return - Investment

Pretty simple,  only 3 variables in the equation. Lets talk about each one individually, but start at the end.  

Investment

Investment is probably where we all should begin.

So an easy way to BEGIN to determine investment is price.  Is your content free? If you are talking social media, then it most likely is, but that is not the only type of content. This equation works for all.  Books, Apps, Coaching, Food, you name it.  

Price is not the only factor for investment though.  Lets break it down with an example.  Say you just bought a candy bar for a dollar.  Investment could be a number of things, like $1.00, the time it takes to eat it,  the risk of cavities, getting chocolate on your clothes (if you are a clumsy eater), you might even choke on a peanut and die!  So to say that a YouTube video, or a blog post has no investment you are wrong.  This article, for example, you did not pay to read it, but you are taking the time.  You are reading, sharing and commenting (well hopefully) and that then sends signals out to your friends that you support and/or endorse this blog. This is a kind of SOCIAL investment.  This is also why some people have a hard time getting into social media, they don't want to plant their flag anywhere, they hate to take sides.  So in basic, the higher the investment, the lower the value. 

Return

This one is a bit harder to determine.  Return is completely based on the viewer, which you have no idea what they are thinking.  This is where knowing your audience comes in.  If you were not interested in creating content,  internet marketing, social media, or even just YouTube, there might not be a lot that you get out of this article. Therefor you would have little return.  The smaller the return, the smaller the value.  

How do you know your audience? You could start by asking them.  You see this all of the time on YouTube.  "Please comment" "what video would you like to see" "what questions do you have" these are all things you here often in the videos of successful youtube stars.  Another way to know your audience is to be the one to define and create it in the first place.  Join groups and communities around a niche topic.  Use keywords and optimize your content for them.  If you are keywording your content for Skin Care or Makeup Tutorials  chances are you won't get hardcore biker dudes following your posts.  By doing some simple SEO, you can determine that most of your audience will be somewhat pre-determined to enjoy your content, and get a high value of return from it. 

Calculating Value

Now to put it all together is as simple doing the subtraction.  Take your return (what you got out of it) and subtracted the investment (what you put into it) and there you have your value.  If people put more into your content then they get out, will they engage? Will they comment? Will they share? Absolutely not.  

Conclusion

So, in order to create more value, we need to either increase the return, or decrease the investment.  I believe the best option is to do a little bit of both.  Add more tips, tricks,  or killer content.  Have more pictures to make it fun to read, and keeping a fun light tone (if the content permits) are ways of increasing the Return.  Discounting (if you are charging) your content,  have the content more concise and shorter, and require less hoops to jump through in order to get the content (i'm looking at you internet marketer) are ways of decreasing investment.  So basically, better content for less investment.  THAT is what people will read, share, comment and love to engage with.  

I hope you enjoy my little insight to content creation.  Feel free to connect with me (Google+ is my preferred network), comment, or share this post.  Really, I wont mind.