We’re in an period the place if you’re making an attempt to create a private model on-line or share your work, you try this by creating content material — and creating content material is a improbable solution to construct your model, make new connections, and stage up your information. Whenever you add all of it up, although, it may be a whole lot of content material to create, even with the proper instruments in place. If you happen to don’t have the proper programs, it may be simple to fall off the content material creation tracks.
I’ve handled this myself at Buffer — I work at an organization that builds instruments to assist individuals construct their model on-line — and I used to be nonetheless struggling to submit content material constantly. I by no means had bother arising with concepts, however I’d both submit these concepts sporadically or depend on taking the time to schedule my posts “finally.” Neither of these choices are long-term, stable plans, and neither of them can really assist with creating constant content material that result in reaching success on-line.
For a number of years, I’ve been engaged on refining a system for capturing concepts for content material and turning these concepts into posts I truly publish. Right here is that system.
Artwork is just not about pondering one thing up. It’s in regards to the reverse—getting one thing down. ― Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Method: A Non secular Path to Larger Creativity
Seize: Use one place to maintain concepts
I as soon as bought bathe markers as a result of I stored having all of my greatest concepts within the bathe. As a substitute of grabbing my telephone, or a pocket book, I began writing all my concepts on my bathe wall. I’d then take an image of the bathe concepts, later put them someplace on my laptop, and doubtlessly finally put them into an Evernote file. On the similar time, I stored an ongoing Apple Be aware with completely different concepts I had for social posts, and I’d typically begin a submit instantly on a social community after which reserve it as a draft.
After I write all of it down like that, it’s fairly clear that that is an inefficient system, however within the second, it appeared like I used to be doing the proper factor — jotting down my concepts once I had them.The piece of the puzzle I used to be lacking was that it wasn’t solely the act of writing concepts down but additionally the place these concepts have been captured. Crucially, if you happen to, like me, try to create a long-term and scalable system for creating content material, then concepts have to be captured in just one place.
Tiago Forte, who wrote the e-book Constructing a Second Mind about organizing your digital life, shares related recommendation relating to capturing data, information, or perception. In a abstract of the ideas in his e-book, he additionally expressed the necessity for only one place for storing data, “we simply have to preserve it in a single, centralized place.”
What place you select to make use of to seize concepts is totally as much as you — I’d suggest someplace you may entry rapidly at anytime (not bathe markers) and someplace digital as a result of that’s the place this content material might be shared in its finish state. A number of good choices for capturing concepts for content material embody:
Whatever the place you select, it’s vital to stay with that one location so that each one your concepts are centralized. By conserving all of your concepts in a single place, you may simply entry them while you’re prepared to show them into content material.
Categorize: Arrange concepts by matter and social community
Capturing your concepts in a single place is barely the start; the subsequent step to ensure these concepts don’t change into an amazing pile that’s tough to comb by way of is to categorize them.The best manner I’ve discovered to categorize is by content material pillar, content material kind, and social community.
- Content material Pillar: Your content material pillars are the primary subjects or themes that your content material revolves round. For instance, if you happen to’re a meals blogger, your content material pillars may embody recipes, meal planning, and cooking suggestions.
- Content material Kind: Is your content material text-based, audio, or video? Figuring out the content material kind for every thought may help you intend out your content material calendar and make sure that you are creating a wide range of content material sorts.
- Social Community: Lastly, you may wish to categorize every thought by the social community the place you intend to share it. Every social community has a novel viewers and particular necessities, so it is vital to customise your content material for each.
You should use tags or shorthand to point the content material pillar, content material kind, and social community for every thought. For instance, you may use the tags #recipes, #video, and #Instagram to point that an thought is a recipe video to be shared on Instagram.
Categorizing your concepts is a key step within the content material creation course of. By sorting your ideas into distinct classes, you may make sure that you do not overlook any vital concepts and may simply entry them when creating content material.
Organizing your concepts may additionally assist you establish patterns or connections between seemingly unrelated subjects, resulting in much more artistic concepts and a extra cohesive total social media technique. This holds true for Phill Agnew, certainly one of our Product Advertising and marketing Managers at Buffer.
Along with his work at Buffer, Phill runs a podcast referred to as Nudge and is nice at constantly posting to social media. When speaking about his system for brainstorming, Phill shared “As soon as I’ve each thought in entrance of me it makes it a lot simpler to brainstorm new issues to provide you with. I discover my greatest concepts come from piecing various things collectively and discovering patterns.”
Create: Flip concepts into content material
I’ve lengthy wished to submit extra on social media and create extra content material generally, however then I additionally had a observe on my telephone with concepts I by no means acquired round to posting. The issue wasn’t an absence of concepts — it was an absence of reminders and motion. Having an enormous, stunning checklist of content material concepts gained’t get you wherever if you happen to don’t return and switch these concepts into content material.
You have to create programs so that you’re deliberately checking your concepts and turning them into content material. How typically you select to verify your concepts and create content material will depend on your content material calendar, your present targets, and the technique you might have in place.
For me, I’m utilizing social media to proceed constructing a private model. I attempt to submit each day to Twitter and a number of other occasions per week to LinkedIn. I’ve a recurring reminder in my to-do checklist app to undergo my content material tab in Buffer each Friday to overview the concepts I’ve captured all through the week and schedule them for the upcoming week.
By organizing your concepts into classes, you may plan out your content material calendar upfront and see at a look if you’re creating a wide range of content material sorts throughout your social networks. You too can use your categorized concepts to batch-create content material; for instance, you might movie a number of TikTok movies in a row.
Do all of it once more
After getting arrange a system for capturing your concepts in a single place, categorizing them rapidly, and checking them later while you create content material — do it yet again. Your system ought to be simply repeatable for you so to keep constant and profit from the entire concepts you might have.
I hope this may help anybody who, like me, has struggled with posting constantly on social media and with turning concepts into social posts.
I’ll depart you with a quote from certainly one of my favourite authors, Julia Cameron, who wrote in The Artist’s Method, “We should belief our course of, look past “outcomes.”
