Podcast 91: How to Speed up Your Content Creation

content marketing ethical marketing marketing podcast Nov 18, 2021

Content marketing includes blogs, videos, podcasts, live videos, social media posts, graphics, emails, etc. – it’s the information you publish and distribute online to share your information.

Creating content is critical if you want to find clients and work online. It’s also key to getting your website found in Google.

Sharing regular content will demonstrate your expertise as well as help your audience. See content is an asset for your business that can be used over, and over again.

Creating regular content was why I was offered a book deal and it’s helped me to be invited to speak at conferences and opened up other opportunities for me. It’s also provided me with the draft copy for my book, presentations, workbooks and training.

Practitioners often procrastinate over creating content for their business, but there are ways to streamline the process:

Pick your core content

Whilst there are a lot of different types of content, you can’t do them all – you’re one person and even attempting to do everything just won’t work. Unless you have a team of people around you, you need to work to your strengths.

If you try and force yourself to create content in a format you hate, you simply won’t keep it up. By creating content in a way, you find easy, or fun, you’re more likely to be consistent.

Check out the blog and podcast 87 which is about marketing to your strengths.

Pick one main core type of content you’re going to be creating and work out how regularly you will do this. Now make a commitment to yourself and book the time in your diary to create it.

Content Ideas

Get into the habit of keeping a list (in one place) of ideas for your content. This will be priceless for when you come to plan and create content – it means you won’t be searching for ideas.

If you haven’t got a list, take 5-minutes to write down all the questions you’re regularly asked by clients. If you’re being asked these, people will also be searching for the answers online.

Another great place to find regularly asked questions is in community groups, e.g. Facebook groups, where your ideal clients hang out.

Get inspired by other peoples’ content that interests you and you think would be useful for your clients too. This can be in any format but it’s not about copying the content, it’s about using it to spark ideas and opinions of your own.

Think about what’s happening in the world on the news, or look at the different seasons, holidays, and awareness days for inspiration.

Create a content plan

This can be done on one sheet of paper - simply knowing what topics you’re going to be creating content on will stop you from staring at a blank page or screen.

Take a few minutes to consider what’s going to be happening in your business over the next few months. Your content is there to support what you want to achieve in your business so make it meaningful and create content to support your offers.

Having a focus on what you want your content to achieve will help you to decide what topics to create. For example, if you offer natural skincare products and it’s coming up in the summer, you could talk about how to prepare your skin for a summer holiday and sell products that relate to that.

Even if you offer the same thing all year round, consider the different times of the year and the different ways you can communicate. So, a nutritionist specialising in weight loss may talk about sticking to New Year’s resolutions, or how to drop a dress size and feel healthy for summer, or how to avoid overindulging at Christmas.

Now, list down 12 topics or titles for your core content (or 6 if you’re doing one piece every other week). Base them around the things you want to offer too, and your marketing will all start to work together. You now have your ideas sorted for the next 3-months.

Create a draft outline

Take your first topic and spend 5-minutes downloading everything you can think of on the topic - it doesn’t matter if it’s in the right order, just note down what you want to cover.

Once you have your ideas, you simply re-order them so it flows - you now have an outline for your content.

The points can become subheadings or bullet points for written content that you expand upon, or you can use them as talking points for a video or podcast.

Written content

Even if you’re producing videos or podcasts, it’s good practice to have written copy alongside them whether that’s on your website or social media.

To speed up your writing, write first and edit later. This way you will find yourself flowing with the content rather than overthinking each section.

Take a break between writing and editing as it will help to clear your head and give you a clear perspective on what you’re creating.

Once you’ve edited the content, do a final read out loud – it will really help you to understand the flow of your copy and identify any errors that have been missed.

Set a time limit

Have you noticed jobs expand to fill the time allotted to them? If you give yourself a day to do something – it will take a day. If you give yourself 2-hours, you will get it done in 2-hours (assuming it’s a reasonable time frame).

This is Parkinson’s Law in action – “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.

I find blocking out set times in my diary with this in mind helps. I have also discovered a great app called Toggl which tracks the time you spend doing things – this has been an eyeopener but also, it helps to keep me focussed on the task at hand.

This is relevant to whatever type of content you’re creating - it will keep you focussed and stop it from spilling out into your week.

Creating regular content is part of having an online business. If anyone is researching you, they want to get to know you and see that you’re an expert in your area. Your content will help you demonstrate this.

Content Creation Made Simple - Masterclass

It’s happening live on Tuesday 23 November 2022 at 6pm GMT.

During this practical masterclass, I will walk you through picking your core platform, finding and creating your content ideas and you'll finish with your content planned and ready to start creating regular, consistent content in 2022. It includes a comprehensive workbook for you to complete, templates and a calendar of health and wellbeing awareness days, weeks and months for 2022.