I get a lot of emails asking  me to review their sites, blogs and articles. Almost every time, I end up giving advice that brings their quality from a negative to a zero. Which means, I’m spending more time telling people about what they should do to make their masterpieces bearable, rather than make it great! Here are 5 things you should keep in mind before throwing content out there:

1. Write with an objective

9 out 10 people will start to write about their how to groom their dog and end up talking about what a b***h their neighbour is. I’m not saying ‘love thy neighbour’ – but people – please focus on the topic!

2. No big blocks of content

This just makes everything harder to read. Break it up into bullets, paragraphs. You’re not going to run out of web space!

3. Compelling headlines

This is key- this is the first thing people are going to look at. Hell, even I review articles that have interesting headlines first and then move on to the rest!

4. Clean design

Keep your content design clean – make it readable. Don’t over underline, over bold, over color, go for readability vs looks. Keep in mind, design is not just a logo or color, it’s the sum total of presentation, color and copy which creates compelling design.

5. Review. Review. Review.

I said this once, and I’ll say it a 1000 times, review your work before publishing. You might say, it’s not a deal breaker if you’re writing about your pet cat and it’s litter on a personal blog  – but it is – it’s a deal breaker for yourself, when you revisit that piece of content a few days later and realize the mistakes you’ve made. I’ve done this enough times to realize to review. Heck – case in point – this article has not been reviewed AT ALL!. So go through it and see the number of mistakes you can find – and just think if the entire WWW was like this?

Remember a thumb rule – always write keeping in mind you’re addressing someones question. Don’t put out half facts, don’t put out incomplete thoughts, if you have nothing to write about, don’t fabricate things.