The Craft and Graft of Content Creation

Creating best-in-class content is a labor of love. It requires craft, the necessary skills to produce the piece. And it requires graft, the discipline of applying oneself to a project and continuing until the project is complete. No content really worth your attention was produced without perseverance. 

Nobody ever said that hard work was supposed to be easy. But, with the right planning and organization hard work will become easier over time.

Nobody ever said that hard work was supposed to be easy. But, with the right planning and organization hard work will become easier over time.

This is clearly the case for large content projects: movies, documentaries, books, seminars, websites, an ebook series. Each initiative not only needs a stated purpose - what does this project entail and why are we committing to it? - but also a clear roadmap covering the preparation and execution. These projects span weeks, months and sometimes year.

Smaller content projects - a bite-sized infographic, a blog post, a short video, a new landing page - equally require effort and preparation. Not only does each content item need forethought in the planning and skill in the execution, they must live within an overall framework as specified in your content plan. They are pieces in a larger mosaic.

Sometimes the smaller pieces become more complex to produce over time because the potential for the strategic plan to get lost in the detail of a thousand mini-projects is greater.

BUILDING YOUR CONTENT ARCHITECTURE

In either scenario, big or small, the skill of creative execution must be fueled by an ongoing commitment from everyone on the team to keep going until the project is complete.      

Think of it in terms of architecture. It takes a lot of time and resource to plan and build a structure. Strong planning is vital, but the building only comes to life in its stage-by-stage execution. Raising a building is the embodiment of skill and application, of craft and graft. And so it goes with content.