Identify the purpose

All content needs to have a purpose. The more you think about the aims and messages of your content, the easier it will be to stay focused while writing. Ask yourself questions such as:

  • What does this content aim to achieve? Is it to inform, persuade, instruct, amuse or warn?
  • What is the most important information to convey? What should I write about first?
  • What do my users need to know and remember?
  • Is what I’m writing contributing to my users’ understanding and what they want or need to know?

The answers to these questions tell you which content to include.

You are writing a first aid manual, so you need to focus on which incidents and treatments to include, and what illustrations will best help readers understand what they need to do. 

For example, users must be able to find out how to do CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation). They do not need to know how CPR has changed over time or how long someone might be in the hospital for after an incident.

Push versus pull

Be clear about what you want to say versus what your users want to know. What you want to say is a push – you are pushing the information onto the reader. What they want to know is a pull – they pull it in. These are not always the same thing.

Thinking about the pull of the user, as well as the information you want to push, can make your content more useful to readers. Think about what your users are interested in, what drives them and what questions they really want answered. If you have user research or personas, refer to these to make sure your content stays focused on user needs (see Understanding your users).

Balancing user and business needs

Often, content needs to fulfil both business goals and user needs. You may find that content for your business needs fit ‘push’ and content for users needs is more ‘pull’. It’s important to balance both.

You are writing about healthcare regulation for a consumer user group. Your users are not likely to be wondering ‘How does healthcare regulation work in Australia?’. They are more likely to be asking ‘How do I know my hospital is safe?’ 

The content of your answer may be similar for both questions, but focusing on user needs and the pull will result in content that speaks to your users better.

You are writing about an important environmental project that involved many organisations that you want to mention (push), as these collaborations are important to your organisation. But your users want to know more about what the project achieved (pull). 

This means that you should write about the project’s achievements first, and then write about the collaborators as a lower priority on the page.