Medical Content Creation: The What...What?!?!

We’ve made it through the “why” and “how” of medical content creation. This section is aimed at discussing the “what”. Of all the sections that I’ve discussed, this is the one that interests me the most because I find it to be the most challenging. Creating content that is unique, interesting, creative, fresh, personally gratifying, innovative, or state-of-the-art is often tough to generate consistently and in high volume. I am still learning and always looking for sources of inspiration to create content that is exceptional.

It often feels like everything has already been said or created. But, know that your voice is unique and others deserve to hear from you and benefit from your perspective. You can build on what has already been published or say something in a different way. There are always opportunities for innovation and creativity with regard to content creation.

Just make sure that you don’t plagiarize or blatantly copy content. If you do use someone else’s material, make sure to give them credit and reference them. There is room for sharing credit. You don’t want to get in trouble with copyright infringements or get a reputation for using others’ content and presenting it as your own. Besides, if you are creating content and referencing others who may have had a hand in the creation of the initial content renditions, you run the chance of developing relationships with them and future collaborations which will benefit you far more than stealing their content. Collaborating with others will get you farther in the content creation process and will make the work more fun and enjoyable anyway. The purpose of creating an online presence should be aimed at creating community because the ultimate goal is to share content with others and not just keep it to yourself.

Sometimes, we get stuck, the ideas dry up, and we need something to inspire new content for our communities. The impetus for this series of articles was actually from my own writer’s block. I was having a tough time finding ideas for content and actually looked online to see if there were any books written on the subject of content creation. There were many idea prompting books, but none for the medical content creator. So, this series grew out of my own need to figure out how to break through those times when I had trouble creating material for myself. This series of articles has actually been a good way for me to explore my own creative process and, subsequently, outline a roadmap for others in the medical content creation process as well.

With all of that said, the questions that I end up asking myself about the “what” of medical content creation include:

Where do I get ideas for content?

What do I want to say?

Why is it important?

My hope is to discuss answers to these questions, in detail, with many future articles. I want to create a resource for those who desire to spark their own content creation process and break through those times when there is a feeling of an idea drought. The reason that I say “feeling” is because it is one’s perception that there is a lack of ideas and not the reality. Ideas are plentiful and everywhere. You just need to know how to open your mind and let them flood in!