[ad_1]
We’re in an period the place in case you are attempting to create a personal brand on-line or share your work, you try this by creating content material — and creating content material is a improbable option to construct your model, make new connections, and degree up your data. Whenever you add all of it up, although, it may be lots of content material to create, even with the right tools in place. In the event you don’t have the appropriate techniques, it may be straightforward 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 publish content material persistently. I by no means had hassle arising with concepts, however I might both publish these concepts sporadically or depend on taking the time to schedule my posts “ultimately.” Neither of these choices are long-term, stable plans, and neither of them can actually assist with creating consistent content 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 really publish. Right here is that system.
Artwork shouldn’t be about pondering one thing up. It’s concerning the reverse—getting one thing down. ― Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Manner: 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 an alternative of grabbing my telephone, or a pocket book, I began writing all my concepts on my bathe wall. I might then take an image of the bathe concepts, later put them someplace on my laptop, and doubtlessly ultimately put them into an Evernote file. On the similar time, I stored an ongoing Apple Observe with totally different concepts I had for social posts, and I might generally begin a publish instantly on a social community after which reserve it as a draft.
Once 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 appropriate factor — jotting down my concepts after 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 had been captured. Crucially, in case you, like me, are attempting to create a long-term and scalable system for creating content material, then concepts should be captured in just one place.
Tiago Forte, who wrote the guide Building a Second Brain about organizing your digital life, shares related recommendation relating to capturing data, data, or perception. In a summary of the ideas in his guide, he additionally expressed the necessity for only one place for storing data, “we simply have to maintain it in a single, centralized place.”
What place you select to make use of to seize concepts is fully as much as you — I might advocate someplace you may entry rapidly at anytime (not bathe markers) and someplace digital as a result of that’s the place this content material will likely 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 every one your concepts are centralized. By maintaining all of your concepts in a single place, you may simply entry them once you’re prepared to show them into content material.
Categorize: Manage concepts by matter and social community
Capturing your concepts in a single place is just the start; the subsequent step to ensure these concepts don’t turn into an amazing pile that’s troublesome to comb by means of is to categorize them.The best approach 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 matters or themes that your content material revolves round. For instance, in case you’re a meals blogger, your content material pillars would possibly embody recipes, meal planning, and cooking ideas.
- Content material Sort: Is your content material text-based, audio, or video? Realizing the content material kind for every concept may help you propose out your content material calendar and be sure that you are creating quite a lot of content material sorts.
- Social Community: Lastly, you will need to categorize every concept by the social network the place you propose to share it. Every social community has a novel viewers and particular necessities, so it is vital to customise your content material for every one.
You need to use tags or shorthand to point the content material pillar, content material kind, and social community for every concept. For instance, you would possibly use the tags #recipes, #video, and #Instagram to point that an concept 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 be sure that you do not overlook any vital concepts and might simply entry them when creating content material.
Organizing your concepts may also enable you to determine patterns or connections between seemingly unrelated matters, resulting in much more artistic concepts and a extra cohesive general 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 called Nudge and is nice at persistently posting to social media. When speaking about his system for brainstorming, Phill shared “As soon as I’ve each concept 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 publish extra on social media and create extra content material basically, however then I additionally had a observe on my telephone with concepts I by no means received round to posting. The issue wasn’t a scarcity of concepts — it was a scarcity of reminders and motion. Having a giant, stunning record of content material concepts received’t get you wherever in case you don’t return and switch these concepts into content material.
It is advisable create techniques so that you’re deliberately checking your concepts and turning them into content material. How typically you select to examine your concepts and create content material depends upon your content calendar, your present targets, and the technique you have got in place.
For me, I’m utilizing social media to proceed constructing a private model. I attempt to publish day by day to Twitter and several other instances per week to LinkedIn. I’ve a recurring reminder in my to-do list app to undergo my content material tab in Buffer each Friday to assessment 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 prematurely and see at a look in case you are creating quite a lot of content material sorts throughout your social networks. It’s also possible to use your categorized concepts to batch-create content; for instance, you would movie a number of TikTok movies in a row.
Do all of it once more
After you have arrange a system for capturing your concepts in a single place, categorizing them rapidly, and checking them later once you create content material — do it another time. Your system ought to be simply repeatable for you so to keep constant and benefit from the entire concepts you have got.
I hope this may help anybody who, like me, has struggled with posting persistently on social media and with turning concepts into social posts.
I’ll go away you with a quote from certainly one of my favourite authors, Julia Cameron, who wrote in The Artist’s Way, “We should belief our course of, look past “outcomes.”
[ad_2]