How to create great content

Nehal Rajvanshi is a content and communications professional and has been working in the Indian heritage, history, and arts sector for more than four years now. A trained Kathak dancer, who in her free time enjoys spending some quality time ‘me time’ , cleaning and organising cupboards as well as desks or reading. For Nehal, content has been at the core of what she has been doing in the last four years. “With changing times, I have also transformed from starting out working with print media, journals, newsletters, books to now being totally into digital media websites, blogs, social media. But the beauty of content is its ability to fit into any format you like.” In this interview, the Apeejay Stya University (ASU) alumna highlights what fascinates her about digital media or digital content, important tips and more. Read edited excerpts: 

If an individual wants to establish his/her career in content? How should one start?

First, one should have an inclination towards writing and in consuming content. If you don’t read, you won’t be able to write – that’s the thumb rule. I think it’s very important to understand the medium you are writing for and understand your audience as well as the goal you wish to achieve through your writing. Say, it’s just copywriting for a social media post, it may look simple but there are so many factors that revolve around it. You need to understand the purpose of this social media post – if it is just engagement with the audience or sharing information. You should not never state the obvious. Great research skills play the key role. So, it’s important to create content that is unique. Do fact-checking before pushing out your content.

What fascinates you about digital media or digital content? 

It is evolving so quickly that you have to keep up your pace with it because otherwise you will just lose out. Every day the trends are changing, and one day the world is talking about sometime and next day it’s something else. That is probably the most fascinating thing about digital media. Another thing is the power that content has today. Imagine a situation when a simple brand tagline has gone viral, and people have talked about it. So it is the kind of impact content leaves today and how dynamically it is evolving. 

Effective content writing is critical in turning site visitors into satisfied customers/viewers. Your thoughts?

Of course! We have moved on from that point when you only needed good content to attract viewers. I think if it’s a website, there is so much more that is required than just content. You need to provide a great user experience, people should be able to navigate through your site easily. It should be visually appealing. Yes, you also need to have great content, impactful message – you can’t have very dull sounding sentences or sentences with grammatical errors as these divert the attention of any reader. All these together play a critical role in turning site visitors into satisfied customers/viewers.