The complete quality content development checklist

By Lorna Walker

19 Essential Questions to Ask Before Creating Content

Good quality content is critical when trying to attract prospects and enhance your image as experts in your field. However, creating content is time consuming and can also be expensive so it's important that you focus your efforts on developing content that will help you achieve your goals. Generally, the goal of any piece of content is to move people along in their relationship with you towards the point where they buy something from you. If a new piece of content doesn't do this then producing it is likely to be a waste of your time.

Here is a comprehensive list of questions to ask yourself when considering ideas for content generation and how you might use such content in your marketing strategy. We've organized these into logical categories to help you evaluate your content systematically.

Reader Goals and Value

The foundation of any successful content strategy is understanding and serving your audience's needs. Before creating any piece of content, you must be crystal clear about who you're writing for and what value you're providing them.

Does it help your readers accomplish their goals by providing them with the information that they are expecting to find?

Your content should directly address the specific problem, question, or need that brought your reader to it in the first place. This means conducting thorough research into your audience's pain points and search intent. For example, if someone searches for "how to improve website speed," they expect actionable technical advice, not a sales pitch for your services. Understanding search intent and user behavior patterns is essential for creating content that truly serves your audience.

Does the title of the material reflect accurately what the content is and is it designed to attract the right people to the content?

Your title serves two critical functions: it must accurately represent the content within (to meet user expectations and comply with search engine guidelines) and it must be compelling enough to earn the click. Misleading titles damage trust and increase bounce rates, which negatively impacts your search rankings. Consider using power words and clear benefit statements while remaining truthful about what the content delivers. A/B testing different title formats can help you understand what resonates with your specific audience.

Does it anticipate your readers' needs?

Truly valuable content goes beyond answering the immediate question to address related concerns and follow-up questions your reader might have. This demonstrates expertise and keeps readers engaged longer. For instance, an article about choosing web hosting should also address common concerns about migration, uptime guarantees, and technical support. By anticipating these needs, you position yourself as a trusted advisor rather than just another information source.

Is it based on a good understanding of readers' goals and behaviours?

Effective content creation requires data-driven insights about your audience. Use analytics tools to understand how people currently interact with your site, what pages they visit, how long they stay, and where they drop off. Customer surveys, support ticket analysis, and social media listening can provide invaluable insights into what your audience truly cares about. This evidence-based approach ensures your content strategy is built on reality rather than assumptions.

Does it give the reader the option of seeing more information if they are interested?

Content should be layered to accommodate different levels of reader interest and expertise. Use a progressive disclosure approach: provide the essential information upfront, then offer opportunities to dive deeper through internal links, downloadable resources, or related articles. This respects both the casual browser's time and the serious researcher's need for comprehensive information. Internal linking not only improves user experience but also helps search engines understand your site's structure and content relationships.

Are there obvious and clear 'next steps' that someone can take once they've engaged with the content?

Every piece of content should guide readers toward a logical next action, whether that's reading another article, downloading a resource, signing up for your newsletter, or contacting you for services. Make these calls-to-action contextually relevant and easy to find. The next step should feel like a natural progression of the reader's journey rather than an aggressive sales push. Track which calls-to-action perform best and refine your approach based on this data.

Does it move someone along the path towards becoming your customer (or deepen your relationship with existing customers)?

Map your content to different stages of the buyer's journey. Awareness-stage content addresses broad problems and educates potential customers. Consideration-stage content compares different solution approaches. Decision-stage content helps prospects choose between specific vendors or products. Each piece should naturally lead readers toward the next stage while providing genuine value at their current position. This strategic approach ensures your content works as part of a cohesive marketing funnel rather than existing in isolation.

Content clarity and organisation

Even the most valuable information fails if it's not presented clearly and accessibly. These questions help ensure your content is actually usable by your target audience.

Does the content speak to people using their language rather than your language?

Avoid industry jargon and internal terminology that your audience may not understand. Write the way your customers talk about their problems, not the way you talk about your solutions internally. This doesn't mean dumbing down content, but rather making it accessible and relatable. Research the actual words and phrases your target audience uses when searching for solutions like yours and incorporate this language naturally into your content.

Is it clearly written?

Clear writing uses short sentences, active voice, and simple words where possible. Break up text with headings, bullet points, and white space. Each paragraph should convey one main idea. Avoid unnecessary complexity that might confuse readers or obscure your key messages. Tools like readability scores can help you gauge whether your writing is appropriately pitched for your audience, though these should be used as guidelines rather than rigid rules.

Is it organised in ways that make it easy to use?

Structure your content with clear hierarchies using headings and subheadings. Use formatting elements like bullet points, numbered lists, tables, and callout boxes to make information scannable. Most web readers scan rather than read word-for-word, so your organizational structure should support this behavior. Consider using a table of contents for longer pieces to allow readers to jump directly to relevant sections.

Is the language used consistent?

Maintain consistency in terminology throughout your content and across your website. If you refer to something as a "dashboard" in one place, don't call it a "control panel" elsewhere. This consistency reduces cognitive load and makes your content more professional. Develop a style guide for your content that covers terminology, spelling conventions (UK vs US English), and preferred phrasings to ensure consistency across all content creators.

Is the tone appropriate for your brand and for your audience?

Your content's tone should reflect your brand personality while resonating with your target audience. A law firm might adopt a more formal, authoritative tone, while a creative agency might be more casual and playful. However, even within a brand's overall tone, you might adjust slightly depending on the content type and audience segment. The key is maintaining authenticity while ensuring the tone serves both your brand positioning and audience expectations.

Is it concise?

Respect your readers' time by eliminating redundancy and unnecessary words. However, conciseness doesn't mean brevity at the expense of completeness. The ideal length is whatever it takes to thoroughly address the topic without padding or repetition. Every sentence should earn its place by adding value. That said, comprehensive coverage of a topic often requires longer content, and search engines generally favor thorough, in-depth content over superficial treatments of topics.

Business alignment and strategy

Content must serve your business objectives while remaining genuinely useful to your audience. These questions ensure your content strategy aligns with your broader business goals.

Is it appropriate for your business and its goals?

Content should align with your business positioning, values, and objectives. If you're positioning your company as a premium service provider, creating budget-focused content might attract the wrong audience. Consider whether each piece of content reinforces the market position you want to occupy. Every piece of content is a reflection of your business, so ensure it supports rather than undermines your strategic positioning.

Is it sustainable? Can it be created and managed without huge cost or time investment?

Consider the ongoing maintenance requirements of your content. Some content types (like news or trend-focused pieces) require constant updates, while evergreen content remains valuable for years. Factor in the resources needed not just for initial creation but also for updates, monitoring, and promotion. An overly ambitious content strategy that cannot be maintained is worse than a modest but sustainable approach. Start with what you can reliably produce and scale as you build capabilities and resources.

Does the content have a clear and specific purpose that it can be evaluated against?

Define success metrics for each piece of content before you create it. This might include page views, time on page, conversion rates, backlinks earned, social shares, or other KPIs relevant to your goals. Without clear success criteria, you cannot determine what's working and what isn't. Regularly review your content's performance against these metrics and use these insights to inform future content decisions. This data-driven approach helps you continuously improve your content strategy.

Content quality and accuracy

Quality and accuracy are non-negotiable aspects of content that establish your expertise and build trust with your audience and with search engines.

Are the facts up to date? Still correct?

Information becomes outdated quickly in many fields. Inaccurate information damages your credibility and can harm your audience. Establish a review schedule for your content, particularly for topics prone to change like technology guides, legal information, or industry statistics. Update outdated content or add notes indicating when information was accurate. Consider adding "last updated" dates to articles to help readers judge currency. Regular content audits are essential for maintaining the quality and relevance of your content library.

Is the content time-sensitive and, if so, how will you know when to remove it?

Some content has a natural expiration date - event announcements, seasonal promotions, or news commentary. Have a system for reviewing and updating or removing time-sensitive content when it's no longer relevant. Outdated promotional content or announced events that have passed can make your site look neglected and damage user experience. Calendar reminders or content management workflows can help ensure time-sensitive content is addressed appropriately when it expires.

Content repurposing and efficiency

Maximise the return on your content creation investment by thinking strategically about how each piece can be adapted and reused across multiple channels and formats.

Can it be used in multiple different ways and 'sliced and diced' into different media?

The most efficient content strategies involve creating comprehensive core content that can be repurposed into multiple formats. A single in-depth research report could become a series of blog posts, an infographic, multiple social media posts, a webinar, a podcast episode, and email newsletter content. When planning content, consider its potential for adaptation from the start. This approach maximises your content ROI and helps you maintain a consistent presence across multiple channels without constantly creating new content from scratch.

For example, a comprehensive guide to WordPress security could be broken down into individual blog posts covering specific security measures, transformed into a checklist infographic for social media, used as the basis for a webinar series, and condensed into bite-sized tips for ongoing social media content. This approach ensures you're getting maximum value from the research and expertise that goes into each piece of substantial content you create.

Getting started with your content strategy

Applying these questions to your content planning process will significantly improve the effectiveness of your content marketing efforts. We recommend using this as a checklist during your content planning sessions, evaluating each proposed piece of content against these criteria before committing resources to its creation.

Remember that not every piece of content needs to score perfectly on every question - the relative importance of each factor will vary depending on your specific goals and context. However, if a proposed piece of content fails on multiple key questions, it's worth reconsidering whether it's the right investment of your limited time and resources.

Based on our experience working with businesses across various industries, we've found that companies who systematically apply these evaluation criteria produce more effective content with better ROI compared to those who create content based purely on intuition or ad-hoc inspiration.

If you're struggling for content ideas or want to develop a more strategic approach to content creation, you might find our Implementing a successful content development strategy webinar to be useful. This training draws on our practical experience helping businesses develop and execute content strategies that deliver measurable results.