A simple content value test

People spend a lot of time worrying about whether their content is valuable. This is a good thing, generally, as it means they’re legitimately interested in providing good content. That said, most of what gets produced isn’t good content or great content; at best, it’s mediocre or downright bad content.

How do you fix this? Let me offer a simple test that I use to judge whether my content is any good.

If I didn’t do one of these three things:

Laugh
Learn
Love

… when I was creating the content, then it doesn’t pass the value test.

Laugh: did I laugh or at least chuckle when I was creating the content? If it was funny to me, chances are it’s at least mildly funny to someone else.
Learn: did I learn something when I was creating the content? If I didn’t find or create something new, then chances are no one else will get anything new or educational out of it.
Love: did I love what I have created? If I’m not delighted with what I made, if I feel like it’s average, or I feel like I’m just creating something to hit an arbitrary deadline, I know that it will be less valuable than something I love.

Put your content to this test and see if it passes. If it doesn’t, it’s time to revise and rework it until it passes one of the three criteria. Obviously, if you can hit all three, you’ve got a winner for sure, but even one of the three is a terrific start when most other content is bad.

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