HOW I APPROACH CONTENT CREATION
With a detailed understanding of the audience, a thorough content review, and a clear message—I am ready to create a clear content strategy.
UNDERSTAND MY AUDIENCE
Applying a design thinking approach, my first step is always creating an empathy map to understand my audience; This results in an effective content strategy that resonates with target audiences and drives measurable action.
WHAT'S THE MESSAGE
Once I know my target audience, it's time to determine the message I need to communicate, staying consistent with the tone of voice, personality, and language style the project calls for. A detailed messaging document created at the beginning of a project guides communication tactics and content development.
REVIEW CONTENT
I review existing and previous content, examining what worked and what could be improved. This lets me identify gaps and document a content strategy.
HOW I APPROACH STORY DEVELOPMENT
In my experience, great storytelling leads with people. Why? Because it’s through people that we foster connections with an audience. Three main character traits that maximize the audience’s relationship with our story’s main character are:
DESIRE
What does the person in our story want? Desire is what connects us with the right people.
COMPLEXITY
Why does the person in our story want what they want? Think of complexity as the “why” behind a person’s desire. A person’s complexity is what sustains our attention to their story.
UNIQUENESS
What makes the person in our story different? It’s a person’s uniqueness that helps pull us into their story.
The first step I take is to consider whether I want to tell the story through a singular person or whether I want to personify a product or service as a whole. If I’m leading my story with a singular person, I ask the following prompts of the person being interviewed:
What’s the most significant effect you hope to create by doing this work?
Why do you do what you do? What is the deeper motivation that drives your work?
What makes you, or your product or service, different from others?
If I’m leading my story with a personified product or service, I change these prompts slightly below:
What does the product or service want to deliver for its users or customers?
What is the deeper why behind the product or service’s Desire?
What makes the product or service genuinely different from others in the field?
Next, I channel the main characters’ desire and complexity traits to craft my story’s impetus. I leverage the three main traits to create a solid plot. This plot has a familiar universal structure:
A person with a strong desire runs into a conflict, and this conflict leads to a journey to overcome it. Our conflict is what we are up against.
If I am personifying a product, the structure is seen this way:
A user has a task to complete, and this user runs into a conflict that leads to a journey to overcome this conflict. How our product or service transforms the user’s journey is how our plot develops.