CalculatorWhether you are writing for yourself or helping a client manage an editorial calendar most digital professionals are trying to manage content creation. Blogs, Tweets, videos, presentations, comments, ratings, you name it – there only so much that can be done. The challenge is knowing where to begin and consistently focusing on the effort that will be most beneficial.

Content Prioritization Calculator

Content Prioritization Calculator

Brainstorming and Organization

As a team or by yourself make a list of every topic you want to create content for. Don’t over think it, put everything down. Once you have exhausted all your ideas look for logical categories for the content. This could be categories such as “Breaking News”, “Reports”, and “Research”. It could be topical such as “Diet”, “Workout”, “Stretching” and “Meditation”. Typically there’s an organizing structure that can group your content in a way that is meaningful to your audience.

Rating and Prioritizing

For any type of prioritization matrix you need to define business drivers or attributes that represent the potential value or success factors for what’s being evaluated. For content creation we are typically looking to share insights that add value to the target community and we need to produce content frequently. We want to create content that doesn’t exceed the budgeted time, that is interesting to our audience, that is interested to the producer of the content (hopefully) and that helps expand our knowledge, credibility and insights. Based on that I’ve chosen the following attributes for this simple calculator.

  1. Effort: The less effort the better. The fact is most of us are wired to appreciate immediate gratification. When it comes to content quite often its brief insightful articles have far more reach that long winded scholarly reports. Less time and effort means the content can be published sooner, its more current/relevant and there’s less risk. When a task requires much work such as research, writing, interviews etc., the greater the time it takes to produce, the more contingencies, higher the likelihood the author may lose interest, may be less inspired, the topic become irrelevant and the greater the probability for failure.
  2. Buzz: Buzz may seem like a self seeking attribute for prioritization but the fact is if its not worthy of buzz that it may not be necessary as a blog article or other shared content. Perhaps when you have nothing to do you can create this content for your memoirs. I’m often disappointed to realize that a topic I want to write about never makes the short list.
  3. Fun: Sometime fun isn’t an option when producing brand related content. In the best scenario the person creating the content is passionate about the subject matter. If this is the case there’s a much higher likelihood for success should the writer be excited about the production. If its a topic worthy of publication then it will be difficult to exhaust the fun topic ideas but if you do you can move onto ones that are less fun. Chances are there are other distinct benefits to creating the piece or it wouldn’t be on the list.
  4. Value: The overall value can be in terms of the benefit you receive from expanding your knowledge and sharing insights with your readers. It could be that the work will help you establish or extend credibility for you or your brand. It could be an article that addresses a topic important to your readers that has come up repeatedly and now gives you a written reference for clarification.

You can use as many rating criteria as you like. You can rate 1-5 or 1-10 where the item scores higher when it meets the criteria desirably. For a blog that takes a great deal of effort the value should be low because we want the content to be produced affordably in the best case. If the score is two or less than we should consider turning this into a full blown research project; and not listing it with regular production content.

Always focus on your highest rated content; if you get it all down move down to the yellow items I’d suggest you continue to add new topics and ideas and always reevaluate your list. If you can divide your tasks into “high-priority” and “all the rest” the trick to being really successful is to only work on the “high-priority” items.

Download the calculator and try it out for yourself. I look forward to your thoughts.