As an Internet Marketing Consultant, I have been really good about telling people what to do.  The funny thing is I probably need to listen to myself more.  :D  It's not that I think what I say is right, rather it is because I, myself, am NOT doing what I am telling people to do.

The biggest case in point is regarding content creation.  I preach day and night about creating great content on consistent basis. Many of us and most definitely my clients realize that content is THE MOST important thing in internet marketing success.

Well, in any case, if you take a look at my company blog, you can easily tell we are anything but consistent.  At the moment, I am the only person blogging on our English language website that is geared towards foreign companies and managers based in Mongolia or somewhere completely different (such as US, UK, etc).  And, I have been very bad at updating my company blog on consistent basis.

Oddly enough, my personal blog about Mongolia, business, personal growth, etc is actually being updated somewhat consistently.  So what gives?  I think I am myself falling into a "waiting and preparing trap" that many people fall in trying to create great content.

Well, what is this trap?

This trap happens when people start to realize the importance of great content and they try to make great content or none at all.  While I am not too worried about trying to create great content, I have most definitely been delaying creation of content in order to create better quality content.  This has resulted in me waiting to produce content and thus our blog being a bit outdated so often.  So, what is the lesson learned?

The lesson learned: create content without delay.  Even if the content is short, "strike when the iron is hot".  As the Nike ads used to say, "just do it".

The second most important aspect to creating content is consistency (the first important thing is great content).  This can be achieved by having a new content at minimum once a week.  We are all busy creatures and some weeks are busier than others.  As such, I think the key is scheduling.  As Susan Bratton, David Meerman Scott, the folks at Hubspot, and many others agree, we can create tons of content when we are "in the zone" for churning out blogs.  We can then schedule them to be released over time.

In summary, create content when in zone and schedule the publication dates into the future for consistent delivery of content.  My personal goal now is to have one content created at 3pm of every Friday for this year and beyond for WebGuru.  It is also good to always have one or two pieces of content saved for rainy day.  This way, when you are really busy, you can publish the content to make sure you still are consistently creating content.

BTW, content can be in any form -- in text format as news article or blog post, in photo or image format, in video format to be viewed on your site or on something like YouTube, in feed format to be read via Google Reader, or in audio/video podcast to be digested over iTunes or your iPod.

Let me leave you with a few quick tips on creating great content:

1. write something useful for your target market
2. make it insightful or entertaining - make it worthwhile for your audience
3. write something that makes people WANT TO share with people and friends