Providing Unique Value

16 Jan 2015

A while back, I found this video from DigitalPoint.com, an industry news site about business software. The number one rule of business (as I have recognized) is to create value. But how do you know if you’re creating something valuable? Well this video seemed to explain just that. The video focuses on SEO, but the value of the content here is much more than that.

Below, I will be revealing my personalized summary of this video.

Notes

What does unique value really mean?

Modern Criteria for Content

1. One-of-a-kind - The content itself must be original; it does not appear elsewhere.

2. Relevant - The content must match the intent of the reader. You can sometimes have words that match a user’s search query, but unless the topic of your content matches the same topic that’s in the user’s head, it won’t be relevant.

3. Helpful - You must resolve the query of the reader in a useful and efficient manner. You have to provide that feeling you get when you search for an answer to something and you get just the page you were looking for.

4. Uniquely Valuable - Provide something that is “unavailable or hard to get elsewhere”. The rest of the summary talks about this.

5. Great UX - The content must be “easy and pleasurable to consume anywhere on any device”

Unique Value

The most difficult part of the above checklist is unique value.

1. A massive upgrade in aggregation, accessibility and design - You want to be creating something that is so understandable, so accessible, and so well-designed that the user might say to themselves, “I’ve seen this before, but never like this”. Create an enjoyable experience around something that people may, in the past, have had to take the time to search around and read a lot to find it. Give it all to them in one spot.

2. Provide information that is available nowhere else - Information is not the same as data. The same data might be out there already, but information is a much broader concept: it’s the idea inside a person’s head. It’s not about having a specific number or specific sentence or phrase, but it’s about giving the user the ability to say, “without this site, I never would have found the answers I sought!” The data was out there, but the information was not available until now. This might be formed by unique novel way of aggregation or presentation.
   • An example is Walk Score, which scored the ease of living in certain locations by using walking as a primary form of transportation. It aggregated a lot of data, but it also allowed you to easily compare between cities. This was its unique value proposition that you could not get anywhere else.
3. Content that is presented with a massively differentiated voice or style - This can be viewed as a writer or artist’s individual voice or style. The content must emotionally resonate in a unique way. The is the differece between something like an ASAP Science video on YouTube versus reading a Wikipedia article on the same topic. The information is the same, but the voice is different (and much more enjoyable to take in).

You don’t have to tackle all three at once, but you need to be aiming for at least one of these three if you want to be uniquely valuable. Ask yourself if what you are making hits the above points, if it doesn’t then ask yourself if it is really worth doing. To truly provide value, it’s not enough to just publish, you have to create something people actually want.