How To Write Actionable Content

The Framework I Learned While Writing For 99U

Think about was the last blog post that someone thanked you for sharing. Did it help them to get something done? According to “The Psychology of Sharing: Why Do People Share Online?” — a study by The New York Times Customer Insight Group in conjunction with Latitude Research — 94% of people share blog content because they think it might be useful to other people. This insight leaves no doubt that useful content is inherently shareable.

It also explains why LinkedIn has devolved into a gigantic broetry slam! In trying to create valuable content, well-intentioned creators are getting distracted by the desire to inspire and end up veering off into self-aggrandizement. They fail to realize that inspiration is the byproduct of being truly (and consistently) valuable. I’ve learned that most valuable content is actionable. It’s all about you — the reader. It’s about helping you to solve a specific problem.

From 2014–2015, I had the privilege of writing for Adobe’s 99U imprint. I specifically contributed to their “Workbook” publication, which was aimed at helping creatives to unlock breakthrough productivity. Mentored by the masterful Sasha VanHoven, I learned of simple and timeless framework for writing actionable content:

• Hook: Grab the reader’s attention with an intriguing insight.

• Problem: Clearly and succinctly articulate the reader’s problem.

• Solution: Tease a solution to the reader’s problem.

• Discovery: Explore the solution w/ real-world examples.

• Deep Dive: Address potential counter-arguments.

• Conclusion: Reiterate the reader’s problem and summarize your solution.

• Call-to-Action: Make your solution immediately actionable.

I’m going to explain each of these steps by reverse-engineering one of my top-performing posts, “Is This Meeting Necessary?”

Hook

You’ve got only a matter of seconds to capture the reader’s attention, so make it count. Lead with narrative, hyperbole, statistics, humour, quotes, or insights. In my article, I led with a combination of them for added impact:

Incredible things can happen when great minds meet. (←Hyperbole)Unfortunately, most meetings are anything but great. Organizations are generally reckless about how they use their scarcest resource: people’s time. Research reveals that half the time spent in your nearly 62 meetings every month is wasted — that’s nearly 31 hours of your life. With 73% of workers choosing to do other tasks during meetings, and 91% of workers simply daydreaming through them, the annual salary cost of unnecessary meetings for U.S. businesses is approximately $3.7 billion! (←Statistics)

Problem

Now articulate the problem that the reader is facing (or will eventually face). Let it flow naturally from the attunement you’ve earned through the hook. Keep it short for maximum impact; it should feel like an immovable object:

It’s obvious that bad meetings need to stop. But justifying if a meeting is necessary is easier said than done.

Solution

Tease the solution. Give just enough information to intrigue the reader, but not all of it so as to dissuade them from reading onwards. For 99U, I used to frame the ideas of other experts. The solution can just as easily be your own:

To help us confidently arrive at the conclusion that a meeting is required, Elizabeth Grace Saunders, author of How to Invest Your Time Like Money, proposes four easy questions:

Exploration

Go ahead and unpack the solution. And don’t hold back! Back up your claims with research and real-world examples. Remember: this is the secret sauce that your reader came for:

“Have I thought through this situation?”
If not: Set aside some time with yourself to do some strategic thinking. During that time you can evaluate the scope of the project, the current status, the potential milestones, and lay out a plan of action for making meaningful progress.

“Do I need outside input to make progress?”
If you find yourself in this place, don’t schedule a meeting; update your to-do list and take action instead.

“Does moving forward require a real-time conversation?”
It’s much more efficient for everyone involved if you send over items that they can look at on their own (while you’re not awkwardly watching them read during an in-person meeting) and then shoot you back feedback.

“Does this necessitate a face-to-face meeting?”
An online chat can help you answer questions quickly, or for more in-depth conversations, scheduling a phone call or video conference can work well.

Deep Dive

Sasha implemented the “deep dive” mid-way through the publication’s lifecycle. It offered a way to preempt the inevitable criticisms we’d sometimes receive in the comments, while also establishing a stronger editorial voice:

By the end of this sequence if you decide that you still need face-to-face, in-person communication, then go right ahead and schedule that meeting. It’s worth noting, however, that the responsibility for protecting people’s time doesn’t fall solely on the shoulders of the one calling the meeting. The onus of asking “is this meeting necessary” should also be on the attendee. The questions posed by Saunders can be flipped as follows:

“Have you fully thought through this situation without me?

“Do you need my specific input to move this forward?”

“Do we need to have this conversation in real-time?”

“Do we need to meet face-to-face, or can we do this this online?”

Conclusion

With no stone left unturned, you can now bring the piece full-circle by re-articulating the problem. Here, I underscored the problem through a quote from a thought leader:

Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel, once wrote, “Just as you would not permit a fellow employee to steal a piece of office equipment, you shouldn’t let anyone walk away with [your] time.”

Call-To-Action

This is the true test of whether or not you’ve created actionable content. Give your reader “marching orders” — think about a single action that the reader can take, and remind them of the outcome that awaits:

With the right decision-making process, you can dramatically reduce the number of meetings you attend. (←Action) And when you do eventually have your meetings, they’ll be the necessary types of meetings: ones that promote alignment, unlock creativity, and help you and your team reach the epiphany moment (and get back to work) faster. (←Outcome)

Now, you might be wondering if this formula translates into different types of content. Yes, it absolutely does — you simply need to stretch these sections out over several hundred pages, or shrink them down to 140 characters. Shorter posts will naturally lack nuance, but you’ll be fine as long as you give readers the secret sauce. And yes, you can always go back to your older pieces of content and retrofit them with the missing pieces from this formula.

So the next time you want to create a piece of content that truly helps people (and is much more likely to get shared), come back to this framework and use it as a checklist. Heck, I did the same thing for this entire post.