From search algorithms to people shopping in a bookstore—everyone and everything is looking for the absolute best content. For a writer, creating copy, in whatever format and for whatever audience, is all part of the job. But condensing, targeting and refining content is the key to setting your work apart from your peers and for driving more exposure and readers to your sector.

From grade school, writers have been instructed to consider the audience — write for who will be reading. That’s a fine initial approach, but classifying the reading public in 2014 isn’t as easy as it once was. You absolutely have to dig deep into any writing arena and understand the platform on which you will be presenting copy.

For instance, if you are creating online content for a website, you should investigatewhat kind of website you are writing for — professional, portfolio, humorous? Are you taking into account how the search engines crawl, look for and reward relevant content? Or if you are creating for social media, research the social site you are writing for. How do people share content on that site? If a blog, for example, is getting thousands of hits a day, take into account the average length of the posts, the font used, whether pictures are used to add to the copy, whether the blog is hosted on a very large third party site, etc.

Once you’ve narrowed your focus, examine your content and ask yourself if the content is going to be engaging and why. All too often writers unconsciously assume that the reader knows as much as the writer. Will your average reader a totally understand what you’ve written and actually want to keep reading? The mirror test of one’s own work is the hardest and most beneficial process.

That last step to ensure you have amazing content is to be willing to take constructive (and even blatant and borderline offensive) criticism and use it to better your work. People will always have opinions and you can use those to propel your writing forward.