So how do we create quality content? It’s simple. You can start with just a basic idea and turn it into an entire series of content. Write down right now the biggest problem you solve for your customer, the pain that you heal from your marketplace. If you are a chiropractor that means you relieve physical pain, if you are a financial planner then you relieve the pain of money problems down the road for your clients, and if you’re a TV repair person, well, then you solve the problem of my television that isn’t working. Anyone in any type of business can create content around marketplace pain.

Let’s take the example of the TV repair person. Simply by coming up with a top five list for your marketplace, you can start down the road of separating your company from your competition. By providing useful content, you go from being a service provider with a ton of competition to an expert in the industry. I would only call a TV repair person when my TV is broken, but I can learn from an expert in the TV business at any time. It changes my opportunity to engage with you from only during those critical pain points to placing you in front of me all the time.

This is where you want to be in any business—in front of your market positioned as an expert. You could write a list of the top five things to look out for when buying a new TV. On that list you could include the main concerns everybody has when making such a large purchase. For example, should I buy an extended warranty from the store? What’s the difference between plasma and LCD? What size of TV should I get for the type of room I have? Please notice that we are talking about creating knowledge-based content around the pain points of your market.

Now that you have your idea it’s time to write something down. Here are the three simple steps for writing great content on any subject: Use the three Ps, Point, Prove it, Perform it.

Point means just that you state your main point. So if I were a financial planner writing an article about the top five ways to save money for my retirement, I might start by talking about putting away a percentage of each pay check into a separate account. So that’s the first “P.” That’s my point.

Prove means that you give an example or scenario of the point. So when you are writing about the financial world you would show an example or case study of Mr. and Mrs. Jones who put away $100 per pay every year for 20 years and ended up with lots of money.

Now you need to tell your readers how they can learn from the proof and make it happen for themselves. For the “perform it” section of your article you would give an easy way for your readers to execute the same action. In the financial planner scenario you could mention that any bank will set up an automated biweekly deduction from your bank account to put into a low-risk investment fund.

And there we have great content! What’s your point, prove it to me as a reader, and then show me how to perform it.

Our chiropractor could specialize in athletes, and come up with the best five stretches to do before a game so you won’t get hurt. He then would mention a certain hamstring stretch, show a visual example of it to prove it, and then tell you how to perform it yourself. Using this simple method you can create one heck of a top-5 or top-10 list that not only is informative but also practical for the reader. String a few of these together on your blog, and without even knowing it you have positioned yourself as a darn good expert and you don’t even have to call yourself one. ☺

If you need help in organizing your ideas, I would suggest using something like a mind map that will visually help you organize anything from a blog post to an entire 60,000-word book like I did for the one you are reading. I use a free program called FreeMind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net), which allows me to use an organizational chart to organize thoughts and ideas. The software is amazing, free, easy to use, and really helpful when putting together articles, blog posts, even planning videos. If you don’t want to use a computer program to organize your ideas, just pick up a pen and paper. Map out some ideas for the projects you are currently working on and for those in the future. You can set up a plan and create content for quite a long time. For example, the mind map I used for this book is at www.un-marketing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/mindmap.jpg.