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Content Quality Checklist

Before you publish a piece of business content, ask yourself these 10 questions. Doing so assures you’ll publish high-quality material.

1. Does the content address a specific audience need? Can you describe this need in writing?
2. Is the content an exercise in company ego gratification?  Or does it serve the audience’s needs?
3. Do you speak to the audience in their voice, not yours?
4. Does your content encourage a specific audience response?
5. Do you communicate in language well suited to the audience’s education, culture, and business context?
6. Is your content ethical and truthful?  Do you ask the reader to do something that isn’t right?  Do you avoid product claims that aren’t supported by fact?
7. Have you made the content useful to the audience?  Does it make an impact on them?
8. Is you content logical?  Does each point flow logically to the next?
9. Is your content easy to digest?  Is it broken down into granular segments?
10. Is your content linked to company strategy and business objectives?  Does it support where your business is headed or impede its progress?

And here are three bonus questions.

1. First, if your content is for the web, does it adhere to the Nielsen readability guidelines?
2. Is it optimized for search engines? 
3. And finally, whether online or off, do you enjoy reading it?  If not, no one else will, either.

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