Digital content principles | Quilter Global Experience Language

Our digital content principles:
1. Always define a purpose	Why are we creating this content? What audience or service need does it fulfil? Knowing this helps us gauge success.
2. Know the space and make a plan	What’s the plan for this content? What are the points for review and retiring? Where will we share it? How are we differentiating from our peers?
3. Be mindful of context of use	Where are people accessing our site? What devices are they using? How much time do they have? We must provide content that supports different browsing needs, from longer reads to short synopses.
4. Think mobile first	The world is mobile. Think about word counts and whether it is easy to spot the next logical step on a small screen.
5. Strike the right tone of voice	Actual conversations are conducted in an open, natural and first-person voice. Our tone should also be upbeat and positive, using active verbs to engage audiences.
6. Find your hook	Having a clear hook or central idea is key to creating content people want to share. A hook can be tonal, based on choice of content format or even the person writing it, giving the content a human face.
7. Edit ruthlessly and aid scanning	Reading text online is slow, so people tend to scan read – picking out keywords, headings, sentences and paragraphs of interest. We need to edit and edit again, simplifying sentences and making every word count.
8. Meaningful search engine optimisation (SEO)	SEO is important but it is also vital to create quality content that is meaningful for audiences. Always write flowing, logical content that makes good use of synonyms and related terms first and foremost; this will aid SEO.
9. Clear calls to action	Ask yourself: What do I want the user to do next - register, share, download, enquire, view, comment, read more? Never leave people asking what they should do, give them clear calls to action to guide their journeys.
10. Know what success looks like	Measurement is the big advantage of digital. We can watch and learn from audience behaviour, shaping the content to fit what people naturally choose to read, watch and do (but we need to define what we’ll measure first).