A 5-step recipe to cook up delicious content

As an avid baker myself, I love these cliché analogies, so it was only a matter of time before I recognized the similarities between baking a cake and creating valuable, share-worthy content.

Anyone who has followed a homemade cake or cookie recipe knows every recipe starts with the ingredients. If you don’t have all the ingredients, you won’t get the anticipated result. Baking is concise chemistry, and the ingredients—and the intensity/quantity of each—have a specific purpose in the recipe.

Ingredients:

Content strategy: This is your pan. Your content strategy will determine the shape and size of your content cake.

Style guide: This is your egg. It holds everything together and keeps the cake from drying out.

Data and research: This is your sugar. It will make the cake delectable and worth reading.

A skilled writer or writing team: This is your flour. It gives body and structure to the cake.

An efficient editor or editing team: This is the butter of the content cake. The editor makes the cake smooth and eliminates lumps in the batter.