James Walker Today, content creation is essential for everyone who wants to establish a presence online or distribute their work, and it also serves as a great means of expanding one’s network and gaining expertise. But when you put it all up, even with the correct tools, it can be a lot of material to develop. It’s easy to lose your content generating momentum if you don’t have the proper processes in place.
Even though I work for a firm that creates tools to assist individuals in establishing their online identities, I found it difficult to maintain a regular cadence of content posting before I discovered Buffer. I never had a problem thinking of things to write about, but I was inconsistent in posting them, often saying that I would get around to scheduling them “eventually.” Neither of those choices is sustainable over the long run, and neither of them will help you produce the kind of consistent content that will help you succeed in the digital space.
To record: to store in a single location
Having all of my brightest moments in the shower led me to finally buy shower markers. When I couldn’t decide whether to use my phone or a notebook, I started jotting down notes on the tile of my bathroom’s shower. After the shower, I would snap a photo of the notes and store them on my computer, maybe even in an Evernote notebook. At the same time, I maintained a running Apple Note where I listed potential topics for social media postings, and I occasionally began posts immediately within a network, saving them as draughts for later.
Even though I now understand that writing down my thoughts as they come to me is a waste of time, at the time it felt like the best course of action.What I didn’t realise was that it wasn’t only the act of jotting down thoughts, but also the medium through which they were recorded. If you’re aiming for, as I am, a sustainable and scalable content creation system, then it’s crucial that you save all of your ideas in one place.
Classify: Sort information into relevant groups based on shared interests
Not only is it important to write down your thoughts, but you should also organise them so that you can find what you need quickly and easily.I’ve found that breaking things down into content pillars, content types, and social media platforms works well.
- Content pillars are the foundational concepts around which your content is built. If you run a food blog, your content pillars may centre on things like recipes, menu plans, and how-to guides.
- Do you have text, audio, or video for your content? You can better organise your content creation schedule if you know in advance the form each idea will take.
- Finally, you should sort your ideas by the social media platform you intend to promote them on. It’s crucial to tailor your content to each social media platform because each has its own distinct user base and set of rules.
Each thought may be categorised according to its content pillar, content type, and social network using tags or shorthand. To signal that an idea is a video about cooking recipes for Instagram, you may include the hashtags “#recipes,” “#video,” and “#Instagram,” for instance.
Organising your thoughts into relevant categories is essential while developing content. You may keep from losing track of vital concepts and have quick access to them when writing by classifying your ideas into various groups.
Just start again again
Repeat the process you just went through of writing down your thoughts in one spot, sorting them into relevant categories, and checking back on them later while you’re creating content. Your system should be simple to replicate, allowing you to be consistent and make the most of your many brilliant ideas.
If you, like me, have ever had trouble coming up with content to share on social media or staying motivated to post often, I hope this is helpful.
As a parting thought, I’ll share a passage from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, another of my favourite authors: “We must trust our process, look beyond “results.”