Using the Valuable Content Checklist: A Step-by-Step Guide for Different Content Types

By AHAVA LEIBTAG | Published: APRIL 6, 2011

We are all looking for the silver bullet that will make our content sparkle. What if from the time of content creation we already had the benchmarks in place that we know forms valuable content?

Yesterday, I introduced the Creating Valuable Content Checklist, which I use to quantify what makes content valuable to our content consumers.  Today I’ll explain the steps in each of these benchmarks. 

Download the Creating Valuable Content Checklist™. [PDF]

Findable content

When creating your content, you must remember that unless something is emailed to users, they probably need to find it (and even then things can get lost in an inbox!). Therefore, you must make sure that you’ve done everything in your power to use the right SEO best practices to write or create findable content.

The steps below assume that you have already done keyword research on your project. Based on the goals and user research, you should choose the keywords that you think will be most effective for your content. If you need help finding the right keywords, check out this post on how to find the right keywords for your content marketing efforts.

For text on web pages

• Use only one h1 and multiple h2 tags on your web pages because  they benefit search engines ranking and they help break up text on a page. Make sure you highlight them in the copy deck (or whatever system you use to move content from creation into production) so that the person laying out the content understands how they should be encoded. Use h3 tags if necessary, but understand they won’t get you the same bang for your buck in terms of SEO results that h1 and h2 tags will.
• Customize the metadata (title tag, keywords and descriptor tag) so it describes the content on the page, according to your keyword research.
• Include links to other pages on the site to increase the content value that search engine spiders assign to your pages (spiders are the robots that crawl through your site).
• Include alt tags on your photos and other images so they appear in image searches.Describe the picture in the image (because alt tags were first designed for the visually impaired) but also use them to plug your content. For instance, if you have a picture of doctors performing surgery, the alt tag could be“The doctors at Sweet Valley Hospital in Sweet Valley, California, are experts in separating identical twins in a surgery,  known as identical separation, shown in this photo.”

For video

Post your video on YouTube and/or Facebook to increase the likelihood it will be seen. I like using YouTube because it allows you to accurately count the views. Regardless of what platform you use, you need to tag the content so it can be found:

• Include possible keywords in your title.
• Provide  a detailed, keyword-rich summary.

For audio

• Consider distributing your audio in different formats, such as mp3, wav and wiff so it’s available to different audiences.  If your potential customer doesn’t have the required format to listen to the audio file, then your whole goal of creating and distributing the content has been stymied during delivery.
• Create a detailed summary and title where the content will be downloaded. For some delivery vehicles, that’s the system it’s stored in, like iTunes. For others, it might be the page you post the file on.
• House each audio clip on a relevant content page, so the text and audio support each other in SEO efforts by demonstrating relevant content to the search engines.

Readable content

Once users find your content, do they consider it to be readable? While this only applies to written content, this is the primary way people consume info, so it’s an incredibly important category.

When considering readability, the most important thing to consider is that users scan until they find the content they need. Any great Web conversation with your user respects their time. Therefore, consider using:

• The inverted pyramid style of writing:  The most important facts should be at the top. For an example of this, see the figure produced using eyetracking software.  You can see where the user’s eyes scanned on the page:  see how that shape follows an inverted pyramid?
• Chunking: Keep paragraphs short. I follow the rule of three:  no more than three sentences in a paragraph, and no more than three paragraphs under one heading.
• Bullets and numbered lists:  When people want to consume information quickly, lists and bullets are helpful.
• Consistent language: By keeping content consistent, you avoid confusing your users.  For example, how do you refer to your business, company or institution on a page? If you keep switching back and forth from your name to the use of the term “us,” it’s going to confuse your customers. Keep it consistent. Use a style guide to help everyone get on the same page.

Understandable content

Creating content that users really understand is challenging when subjects are complex. In healthcare, where I do a tremendous amount of consulting and content creation, I am very aware of this. Many times I write on an eighth grade reading level, and even that might be too elevated for my readers.

So how can  you create understandable content, no matter what industry you are in?

• Choose the right content type. For example, if users have an “aha” moment when seeing something sketched out, use a visual medium such as a video or a slideshow instead of written text.
• Create user personas for your different user audiences, and match the level of the content’s complexity to the user’s ability to understand it.
• Always provide context. Even if you think it might sound condescending, consider explaining even the most basic concepts to your users. You never know where someone is jumping in on the conversation.  Build a contextual roadmap into your content at all times.
• Apply a standard reading level to your content for each project and stick to it. This should be based on your users’ personas and market research. There is a function in Word for testing reading levels—you may want to experiment with that scoring. Or, find a person on that reading level and test them. You may be surprised to hear what they do and don’t understand.
• Provide valuable information to the user. This could be new information or a new way of articulating an existing idea. Sometimes metaphors help people understand better.

Actionable content

Obviously, you are creating content so your users act upon it. How can you ensure this while creating content?

• Include an obvious call to action.
• Make it easy for users to comment and ask questions, both publicly and privately. For instance, enable blog comments or direct people your company’s Facebook page.  If you accept comments via your “Contact Us” page, make this page easily accessible. Ask your users to share the content by including: “Please share this content with those you think might enjoy it.”
• Provide links to relevant content or program your content management system (CMS) to provide options to other content that users have liked.
• Include a list of actionable items at the top if the content is long (remember the inverted pyramid style of writing that helps make content more readable). For example, if you are writing about diabetes care, add three bullets at the top that define diabetes and explain how you can control it.

Shareable content

One of the best ways to have your content spread is to have your readers share it because people trust their peers more than brands. How can you entice more of your users to share content?

• Consider provoking an emotional response in your readers. When I first started writing articles on content marketing, one of my editors told me, “People are more likely share controversial stuff.”
• Provide a reason to share—perhaps you actually illustrate the benefit of sharing the content within the story of the content. For example, you may to tell a story about how sharing health information with each other helped one family increase their exercise efforts.
• Ask them to share.
• Make sharing easy. (Work with your developers to research and decide on which sharing widget is best for your organization).
• Allow users to personalize the share. For instance, when I retweet things, I like to edit them, so I can add hashtags or reference another source. If I can’t, I feel frustrated.

As Gawande explained, most professions are resistant to checklists because “we believe our jobs are too complicated to reduce to a checklist.” If doctors, project managers of major construction projects and the World Health Organization were convinced by the use of checklists, then why shouldn’t we be?

Download the Creating Valuable Content Checklist™ [PDF]

Do you have experience using checklists in your content marketing? I’d love to see your examples. Or, let me know what you may change in this checklist.

Three Handy Content Checklists

from Colleen Jones' Content Science

April 6, 2011

Sometimes, a checklist is just what you need to move your project or your practice forward.

A Checklist for Content Work
This excerpt from the new book The Elements of Content Strategy covers the essentials.

Checklist for Valuable Content
This checklist covers key attributes for effective content. It reminds us of www.heardable.com, too.

Content Quality Checklist
We created this interactive checklist in answer to that tough question "What makes content good?"

Testing Content: Early, Often, & Well

Insightful case study by my friend Colleen Jones...

Testing Content: Early, Often, & Well

View more presentations from Colleen Jones.

Testing Content

by ANGELA COLTER

• Published in: Content Strategy
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Nobody needs to convince you that it’s important to test your website’s design and interaction with the people who will use it, right? But if that’s all you do, you’re missing out on feedback about the most important part of your site: the content.

Whether the purpose of your site is to convince people to do something, to buy something, or simply to inform, testing only whether they can find information or complete transactions is a missed opportunity: Is the content appropriate for the audience? Can they read and understand what you’ve written?

A tale of two audiences

Consider a health information site with two sets of fact sheets: A simplified version for the lay audience and a technical version for physicians. During testing, a physician participant reading the technical version stopped to say, “Look. I have five minutes in between patients to get the gist of this information. I’m not conducting research on the topic, I just want to learn enough to talk to my patients about it. If I can’t figure it out quickly, I can’t use it.” We’d made some incorrect assumptions about each audience’s needs and we would have missed this important revelation had we not tested the content.

You’re doing it wrong

Have you ever asked a user the following questions about your content?

How did you like that information?

Did you understand what you read?

It’s tempting to ask these questions, but they won’t help you assess whether your content is appropriate for your audience. The “like” question is popular—particularly in market research—but it’s irrelevant in design research because whether you like something has little to do with whether you understand it or will use it. Dan Formosa provides a great explanation about why you should avoid asking people what they like during user research. For what’s wrong with the “understand” question, it helps to know a little bit about how people read.

The reading process

Reading is a product of two simultaneous cognitive elements: decoding and comprehension.

When we first begin to read, we learn that certain symbols stand for concepts. We start by recognizing letters and associating the forms with the sounds they represent. Then we move to recognizing entire words and what they mean. Once we’ve processed those individual words, we can move on to comprehension: Figuring out what the writer meant by stringing those words together. It’s difficult work, particularly if you’re just learning to read or you’re one of the nearly 50% of the population who have low literacy skills.

While it’s tempting to have someone read your text and ask them if they understood it, you shouldn’t rely on a simple “yes” answer. It’s possible to recognize every word (decode), yet misunderstand the intended meaning (comprehend). You’ve probably experienced this yourself: Ever read something only to reach the end and realize you don’t understand what you just read? You recognize every word, but because the writing isn’t clear, or you’re tired, the meaning of the passage escapes you. Remember, too, that if someone misinterpreted what they read, there’s no way to know unless you ask questions to assess their comprehension.

So how do you find out whether your content will work for your users? Let’s look at how to predict whether it will work (without users) and test whether it does work (with users).

Estimate it

Readability formulas measure the elements of writing that can be quantified, such as the length of words and sentences, to predict the skill level required to understand them. They can be a quick, easy, and cheap way to estimate whether a text will be too difficult for the intended audience. The results are easy to understand: many state the approximate U.S. grade level of the text.

You can buy readability software. There are also free online tools from Added Bytes, Juicy Studio, and Edit Central; and there’s always the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level formula in Microsoft Word.

But there is a big problem with readability formulas: Most features that make text easy to understand—like content, organization, and layout—can’t be measured mathematically. Using short words and simple sentences doesn’t guarantee that your text will be readable. Nor do readability formulas assess meaning. Not at all. For example, take the following sentence from A List Apart’s About page and plug it into a readability formula. The SMOG Indexestimates that you need a third grade education to understand it:

We get more mail in a day than we could read in a week.

Now, rearrange the words into something nonsensical. The result: still third grade.

In day we mail than a week get more in a could we read.

Readability formulas can help you predict the difficulty level of text and help you argue for funding to test it with users. But don’t rely on them as your only evaluation method. And don’t rewrite just to satisfy a formula. Remember, readability formulas estimate how difficult a piece of writing is. They can’t teach you how to write understandable copy.

Do a moderated usability test

To find out whether people understand your content, have them read it and apply their new knowledge. In other words, do a usability test! Here’s how to create task scenarios where participants interpret and use what they read:

• Identify the issues that are critical to users and the business.
• Create tasks that test user knowledge of these issues.
• Tell participants that they’re not being tested; the content is.

Let’s say you’re testing SEPTA, a mass transit website. It offers several types of monthly passes that vary based on the mode of transportation used and distance traveled: For example, a TransPass lets you ride on the subway, bus or trolley. A TrailPass also lets you ride the train, etc. If you only wanted to test the interface, you might phrase the task like this:

Buy a monthly TrailPass.

But you want to test how well the content explains the difference between each pass so that people can choose the one that’s right for them. So phrase your task like this:

Buy the cheapest pass that suits your needs.

See the difference? The first version doesn’t require participants to consider the content at all. It just tells them what to choose. The second version asks them to use the content to determine which option is the best choice for them. Just make sure to get your participants to articulate what their needs are so you can judge whether they chose the right one.

Ask participants to think aloud while they read the content. You’ll get some good insight on what they find confusing and why. Ideally, you want readers to understand the text after a single reading. If they have to re-read anything, you must clarify the text. Also, ask them to paraphrase some sections; if they don’t get the gist, you’d better rewrite it.

To successfully test content with task scenarios and paraphrasing, you’ve got to know what the correct answer looks like. If you need to, work with a subject matter expert to create an answer key before you conduct the sessions. You can conduct live moderated usability tests either in person or remotely. But, there are also asynchronous methods you can use.

Do an unmoderated usability test

If you need a larger sample size, you’re on a small budget, or you’re squeezed for time, try a remote unmoderated study. Send people to the unmoderated user testing tool of your choice like Loop11 or OpenHallway, give them tasks, and record their feedback. You can even use something like SurveyMonkey and set up your study as a multiple-choice test: It takes more work up front than than open-ended questions because you must define the possible answers beforehand, but it will take less time for you to score.

The key to a successful multiple-choice test is creating strong multiple choice questions.

• State the question in a positive, not negative, form.
• Include only one correct or clearly best answer.
• Come up with two–four incorrect answers (distractors) that would be plausible if you didn’t understand the text.
• Keep the alternatives mutually exclusive.
• Avoid giving clues in any of the answers.
• Avoid “all of the above” and “none of the above” as choices.
• Avoid using “never,” “always,” and “only.”

You may also want to add an option for “I don’t know” to reduce guessing. This isn't the SATafter all. A lucky guess won’t help you assess your content.

Task scenario:

You want to buy traveler's checks with your credit card. Which percentage rate applies to the purchase?

Possible answers:

• The Standard APR of 10.99%
• The Cash Advance APR of 24.24%*
• The Penalty APR of 29.99%
• I don’t know

(*This is the correct answer, based on my own credit card company’s cardmember agreement.)

As with moderated testing, make it clear to participants that they’re not being tested, the content is.

Use a Cloze test

A Cloze test removes certain words from a sample of your text and asks users to fill in the missing words. Your test participants must rely on the context as well as their prior knowledge of the subject to identify the deleted words. It’s based on the Gestalt theory of closure—where the brain tries to fill in missing pieces—and applies it to written text.

It looks something like this:

If you want to __________ out whether your site __________ understand your content, you __________ test it with them.

It looks a lot like a Mad Lib, doesn’t it? Instead of coming up with a sentence that sounds funny or strange or interesting, participants must guess the exact word the author used. While Cloze tests are uncommon in the user experience field, educators have used them for decades to assess whether a text is appropriate for their students, particularly in English-as-an-additional-language instruction.

Here’s how to do it:

• Take a sample of text—about 125-250 words or so.
• Remove every fifth word, replacing it with a blank space.
• Ask participants to fill in each space with the word they think was removed.
• Score the answers by counting the number of correct answers and dividing that by the total number of blanks.

A score of 60% or better indicates the text is appropriate for the audience. Participants who score 40-60%, will have some difficulty understanding the original text. It’s not a deal breaker, but it does mean that the audience may need some additional help to understand your content. A score of less than 40% means that the text will frustrate readers and should be rewritten.

It might sound far fetched, but give this method a try before you dismiss it. In a government study on healthcare information readability, an expert panel categorized health articles as either easy or difficult. We ran a Cloze test using those articles with participants—who had low to average literacy skills—and found that the results reflected the expert panel’s findings. The average score for the “easy” version was 60, indicating the article was written at an appropriate level for these readers. The average score for the “difficult” version was 39: too hard for this audience.

Cloze tests are simple to create, administer, and score. They give you a good idea as to whether the content is right for the intended audience. If you use Cloze tests—either on their own or with more traditional usability testing methods—know that it takes a lot of cognitive effort to figure out those missing words. Aim for at least 25 blanks to get good feedback on your text; more than 50 can be very tiring.

When to test

Test your content at any point in your site development process. As long as you have content to test, you can test it. Need to convince your boss to budget for content testing? Run it through a readability formula. Got content but no wireframes or visual design? Run a Cloze test to evaluate content appropriateness. Is understanding the content key to a task or workflow? Display it in context during usability testing.

What to test

You can’t test every sentence on your site, nor do you need to. Focus on tasks that are critical to your users and your business. For example, does your help desk get calls about things the site should communicate? Test the content to find out if and where the site falls short.

So get to it

While usability testing watches what users do, not what they say they do, content testing determines what users understand, not what they say they understand.

Whatever your budget, timeline, and access to users, there’s a method to test whether your content is appropriate for the people reading it. So test! And then, either rest assured that your content works, or get cracking on that rewrite. 

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