The Karmic Wheel of Writing

Encountering outdated content is like discovering a hillock of dirty laundry in my teen’s room. Is that karma? I don’t know, I just to get out of there.

Image created by the writer. Karma’s there, somewhere.

Let moldering content hang out there for everyone to see, and some sort of karmic reckoning will bite you. Readers will lose trust and interest in your work. And you’ll lose readers. Hopefully you’re already convinced of the need to regularly update any evergreen content (see Your Work is Rotting), especially if you’ve got paying customers. Regardless, we should always treat readers with the same respect we’d treat a customer, because in essence that’s what they are.

Looking at the wheel shown above, let’s dive into each stage.

• Ideate → Only you can tell you where to get great ideas. To get those creative juices flowing, do you need to meditate? Eat a tasty muffin at your favorite cafe? Skydive? I don’t know, only that the best ideas usually come from what you’re already expert at, or your experiences, or your interests. And curiosity. Or take equal parts knowledge, experience, research (be open to learning), imagination, blend until smooth. Write down ideas whenever the lightbulb goes on so you don’t forget. I’ve gotten good ideas while folding laundry because it’s a terribly boring chore and my mind needs something to do. (Because teenagers won’t fold laundry.)
• Plan → This is where being systematic first shows itself to be crucial. Exactly how you plan isn’t as important as just planning effectively so that you have a clear way forward. Use spreadsheets, outlines, checklists, flowcharts, whatever tools you’re most comfortable with. Just be able to produce a plan that answers the question What and how long is it going to take to make this idea real? Draw a timeline while accepting that you may have to change it. Once you begin to execute, anything might happen, but you’ll have plans to update instead of panic to deal with.
• Create → Now comes the part where the writing happens. Once the real work begins, don’t let plans get in the way. Plans are there to facilitate the work, not put it in a straight jacket, so be flexible. Whether you’re writing a single blog or managing the creation of content for an entire website, let the unfolding experiences of the creative and administrative processes guide you. And, if necessary, change the plans based on what those experiences teach you.
• Edit → This is where you go over your own work and polish it to perfection. Again. And again. As many times as necessary. But not so many times that you’re never done. (Remember the timeline?) You might have heard that it’s good to lay down the writing and come back to it at a later time with fresh eyes. Good advice if that works for you.
• Review → One last time (or a few last times), go over the writing, the plans, the timeline, the is-everything-ready-to-proceed. There should, if at all possible, be someone else editing your work and looking over the plans. That provides both a reality check and a learning opportunity for you.
• Publish and Market → I’m not going to go over these. They should be part of the plans you worked on earlier and they’ll be specific to your ways, means, and goals. Also, I’m not an expert at these, so if pressed I’ll just mumble “social media” or something.
• Measure and Evaluate → You must collect data about the work you’re publishing, or else you won’t know what success is. That data is often referred to as metrics, numbers that say something about the success of your work. I’ll have more to say about some common metrics in another post.
• Evaluate → What are those metrics telling you? Have a process for analyzing the data you collect. In that post on metrics I’ll talk about some common ways of analyzing those common metrics. But evaluate is also about looking at the content itself for signs that it needs to be refreshed or retired.
• Deprecate → Don’t let your work rot. That’s bad for success because it’s a reflection on you or your business. There’s no need to erase it from existence, just archive old work to where you can get to it but the general public can’t. If it just needs updating and you can’t get to it in a timely manner, add a note to the published content to let the reader know. People will appreciate that as long as you don’t take too much time to finish the update.

Does creating and maintaining content have to have 9 stages?! No, at least not at first. You can start with a small wheel, with just evaluating your published content for freshness. Add more stages as you can. Steadily work your way to a more systematic approach to completing writing projects. Think about how you’ll measure success. One karmic step at a time.