As you plan your content strategy, the Five Ws of journalism can serve as a helpful rubric. If you remember back to your journalism class, the “5 Ws” (also called the “Five Ws and one H” or the “Six Ws”) are:
- Who is it about?
- What happened?
- When did it take place?
- Where did it take place?
- Why did it happen?
- How did it happen?
Your journalistic piece is clear and complete when it has answered each of these questions. This approach can work for your content strategy, too. Let’s adapt these somewhat for creating educational content:
Who is your intended audience? If content is connection, then this is the first and most important question you can ask.
- Students. This may be obvious, since you are an instructor. But whose students? Start with your own classroom as a point of reference. But then how can you adjust your content to make it valuable to students in other classrooms?
- Instructors. Your content has little chance of reaching other students if it’s not useful to other instructors. How does that change the way you think about constructing your content?
What are you creating? Educational content comes in many forms. What’s the best way to illuminate a topic or cement a concept? In the digital world, you are unbridled. Choice of format should be governed by one measure—does it achieve the intended result?
- Format. Is it a narrative piece? Bulleted list? Static image? Animation? Video? Podcast? Maybe it requires more than one format to get the idea across.
- Scope. Simple is better—use as few words as you can. Small, sharable pieces of informational content are easier for the end user to consume, sequence, and adapt. However, if your concept requires a more elaborate expression, what’s stopping you?
Why are you creating it? As a Real Teacher, this answer is probably self-evident. You teach. That’s what you do. But why are you sharing it more widely? What’s driving you?
- Impact. Is it simply to have a wider impact? To reach more students than in your own courses? This is often cited as a reason for instructors to create MOOCs. Or, maybe it’s to build your own authority as an educator or a subject matter expert.
- Sharing. Maybe you believe you offer the best explanation of the topic at hand and you simply have to share it. Others could benefit, right? Or, maybe it’s to correct a widely held misconception? You can help with that.
When do you release it? Timing is everything. It’s a cliché for a reason. But your audience has a say in this, too.
- Timing. How do you choose the best time to release your content? There are many factors to consider here, which I will get into in a subsequent post.
- Frequency. How often does your audience want to hear from you? How do you strike the right balance?
Where do you release it? Good Content delivered in the wrong medium will not connect. You have some important choices to make or you risk minimizing the impact of your work.
- Platform. What’s the best way to deliver your content, so that it has the best chance of connecting? There are countless options now. Which one is best for your content and your audience?
- Flexibility. Can your content be presented in multiple modalities? The very design of your content will determine whether others can use it as they wish. Do you want to allow that? It’s your choice.
How do you release it? There are a lot of things to consider here. These nuances are the fun part for me when I’m advising writers. Let’s start with a couple of basic issues first.
- Discoverability. How do you get your content found? Organizing your content via tagging, optimizing it for search, using the right language—these things are all essential in meeting the expectations of your audience.
- Copyright. What license will you choose? By default, it is all rights reserved. Do you want to offer your users more control of your content? If so, maybe an open license would be better? Which one?
I look forward to diving deeper into each of these topics in the coming weeks. Stay tuned, and let me hear from you. What are your best practices for creating Good Content?
About Michael Boezi
Michael Boezi is an Independent Advisor and Content Strategist, specializing in helping authors and publishers make the Shift to Digital. He is a longtime publishing veteran who has always been at the forefront of the industry by applying the lessons of the traditional to the process of innovation, mixing the ideal with the practical. He was Vice President of Content and Community at Flat World Knowledge, where he was responsible for all aspects of content acquisition and development, and built a catalog of 100+ peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks across various subjects. Prior to that, he published history books at Pearson Education. He writes a blog about current issues and trends in the EdTech industry, which you can find at http://michaelboezi.com, along with a full portfolio and more detail on consulting services for content creators, content owners, and investors. Connect with him on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+.
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