What’s the purpose of your organization? What are your core values? How does your content best reflect your purpose and core values? Answers to these questions will help you figure out what themes your content can be about.
1. What is your piece really about? Write a one to two sentence statement answering that question. Be specific. Then ask yourself if you can be more specific. Is there something else this story could be about? Try several different ideas. Which one best serves your purpose? If possible, express an opinion so that you can prove your point by telling the rest of the story.
2. What’s the most interesting part of this piece? If you are interested, your readers will be, too. What’s unexpected? Can you surprise your readers? What will they learn by reading your piece on your platform that they won’t learn anywhere else?
3. Point of view: Whose story is it? Who gets to tell it? Patrick tells you about meeting Peter at a Speak Out summer camp for college students in Slovakia who want to learn English. You interview Peter who tells you how he became a Christian at Speak Out camp and continued to grow in his faith. Today, he’s a Cru staff member in Slovakia. He tells you about two other students who are now leading movements on their campuses.
Which person gets to tell the story? I chose Peter and told how he came to Christ and joined Cru. I mentioned the other two Slovakian students. I left Patrick out of the story completely. Our core value is establishing movements everywhere. Peter helped the other two students start movements on their campuses, so I chose him to tell the story.
4. Audience: Who is reading your words? Why? What are they hoping to find when they read your content? Are you answering a question for them? Providing information they didn’t previously have? What value do they gain because they read your content?
When you decide what your piece is really about, make sure every other piece of content relates to your focus statement. If it doesn’t relate, it can’t stay in your piece.