Minimum Viable Content: What It Is and How to Create It

Stop worrying about making your content perfect. You don’t need:

❌ A professionally designed featured image

❌ Fancy infographics, charts, or graphs

❌ Expert quotes

❌ 5,000+ words

Sure, all of these things are nice and can make your content more engaging and helpful.

But the most important thing about content marketing is to start doing it as soon as possible.

Because the sooner you start publishing content, the sooner it’s going to rank and start driving conversions.

So, instead of striving for perfection, focus on creating MVC (Minimum Viable Content) instead:

1. Satisfy search intent

The main thing your content needs to accomplish in order to rank is to satisfy search intent (i.e., help solve the searcher’s problem).

Usually, searchers will be looking to do one of three things: find information, compare different products or services, or make a purchase.

The search intent will sometimes be fairly obvious.

Other times, you’ll need to analyze the top-ranking pages to understand the search intent for a specific keyword.

2. Address your target audience

It’s crucial that your content speaks to your target audience specifically.

After reading through your content, readers should feel heard and understood.

To accomplish this, you’ll need to have an in-depth understanding of your target customers, their pain points, and their day-to-day.

And use language they understand and can relate to.

3. Be genuinely helpful

In order to be effective, your content needs to be genuinely helpful.

It can’t just be a self-promotional piece masquerading as educational content.

Stay objective and help readers find the best solution to their problem based on their specific needs.

Even if that means recommending a competing product or service.

4. Embed your product into the content

We don’t want our content just to rank—we want it to drive conversions.

And the best way to do that is to embed the product into the content itself.

In other words, don’t just mention that your product can help with solving a specific pain point.

Actually show readers how to fix the problem they’re having by using your product (ideally, with step-by-step instructions and screenshots or photos included).

Publish it and move on

Accomplish these four things to create your Minimum Viable Content.

Then, publish it and move on to the next piece.

Give your content 3 to 6 months and see where it’s able to rank.

A lot of the time, you’ll see that your MVC was able to rank on the first page just fine.

If it hasn’t managed to reach page 1, look for ways to improve it further (and build a few links to it!)