We’re in an period the place in case you are making an attempt to create a private model on-line or share your work, you do this by creating content material — and creating content material is a improbable approach to construct your model, make new connections, and degree up your data. Once you add all of it up, although, it may be plenty of content material to create, even with the proper instruments in place. If you happen to don’t have the best programs, 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 folks construct their model on-line — and I used to be nonetheless struggling to publish content material constantly. I by no means had bother arising with concepts, however I might both publish 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 actually 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 really publish. Right here is that system.
Artwork isn’t about pondering one thing up. It’s concerning the reverse—getting one thing down. ― Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Method: A Religious 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 cellphone, 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 pc, and doubtlessly finally put them into an Evernote file. On the identical time, I stored an ongoing Apple Notice with totally different concepts I had for social posts, and I might typically begin a publish straight 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 best 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 have been captured. Crucially, in case you, like me, try to create a long-term and scalable system for creating content material, then concepts must 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 with regards to capturing data, data, 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 hold it in a single, centralized place.”
What place you select to make use of to seize concepts is solely as much as you — I might suggest someplace you’ll be able to entry rapidly at anytime (not bathe markers) and someplace digital as a result of that’s the place this content material will probably be shared in its finish state. A couple of good choices for capturing concepts for content material embrace:
Whatever the place you select, it’s essential to stay with that one location so that each one your concepts are centralized. By maintaining all of your concepts in a single place, you’ll be able to simply entry them if you’re prepared to show them into content material.
Categorize: Set up concepts by subject and social community
Capturing your concepts in a single place is just the start; the subsequent step to verify these concepts don’t grow to be an amazing pile that’s tough to comb by way of is to categorize them.The only manner I’ve discovered to categorize is by content material pillar, content material sort, 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 embrace recipes, meal planning, and cooking suggestions.
- Content material Sort: Is your content material text-based, audio, or video? Understanding the content material sort for every thought may help you intend out your content material calendar and be certain that you are creating quite a lot of content material varieties.
- Social Community: Lastly, you will need 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 essential to customise your content material for each.
You should utilize tags or shorthand to point the content material pillar, content material sort, and social community for every thought. For instance, you would possibly 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’ll be able to be certain that you do not overlook any essential concepts and might simply entry them when creating content material.
Organizing your concepts may also assist 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, one among 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 give you. 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 generally, however then I additionally had a observe on my cellphone with concepts I by no means bought round to posting. The issue wasn’t a scarcity of concepts — it was a scarcity of reminders and motion. Having an enormous, stunning checklist of content material concepts received’t get you anyplace in case you don’t return and switch these concepts into content material.
It is advisable to create programs so that you’re deliberately checking your concepts and turning them into content material. How typically you select to test your concepts and create content material depends upon 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 publish each day to Twitter and a number of other instances 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’ll be able to plan out your content material calendar prematurely and see at a look in case you are creating quite a lot of content material varieties throughout your social networks. You can even use your categorized concepts to batch-create content material; for instance, you possibly can 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 if you create content material — do it another time. Your system needs to be simply repeatable for you with the intention to keep constant and profit from all the 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 go away you with a quote from one among my favourite authors, Julia Cameron, who wrote in The Artist’s Method, “We should belief our course of, look past “outcomes.”
