With 6 tips from my desk to yours!
Content generation always seems to be a hurdle for businesses. Since I started The Yellow House, I have had lots of conversations with business owners who either love or hate writing. There are always hundreds of other things you could/should be doing that are more exciting. But it doesn't have to be this way!
Whether you are writing for social media, a blog post, website content, a white paper, that email to a client, a report...I follow a few simple things that help me pull my brain into the right state.
While there are no shortage of reasons why you should generate content to build your business, brand recognition and sales, yet I find, despite the benefits, it's still a huge hurdle for most businesses. With some careful planning, calendar blocking and some enlightened inspiration you will be off to the races in no time.
As a consultant, my role varies. I manage social media for some clients, write blogs for others, and for others I do end-to-end demand generation strategy. Regardless of the task, it all involves content generation. I saw this great social media post from UnboundB2B stating: “Content Marketing is the gap between what brands produce and what consumers actually want.”
Here are my tips that I use to help write content.
Tips to motivate your content generation
- Time block your calendar
I like to sit down at the beginning of the week and look at my meetings and then block my calendar with time to actually work. In this day and age, I find that everyone is busy, like too busy to do anything! Time blocking your calendar is a fantastic strategy for anyone trying to give themself structure and manage their time effectively. For my social media clients, I like to pick a day, schedule an hour or so and write out (and schedule) the next week’s content! I do this every week, same time, and that gets my brain in the right headspace to dedicate that time to that task.
- Schedule EVERYTHING
When it comes to social media, blogs, emails, I am a big fan of scheduling. This gives you time to review it but also gets it done! I like to bulk schedule where possible so you aren’t doing it everyday, which gets tedious! Instead, by sitting it down and doing it once a week, it doesn’t drain your energy as much.
- Inspiration research
I really like to become immersed in what I am doing, to become an expert or an authority on the subject. Whether that is beer, dry cleaning or marketing! I love to learn about the subject, think about questions I might have and often that helps develop a marketing strategy. Think about other brands in other industries you want to emulate and use them for a source of inspiration. Be careful here to never imitate or copy other people’s hard work. When looking for inspiration, I also think about my physical settings. Adding a rug, a photo of my daughter, a beautiful bouquet of flowers - things that bring me joy, make me happy and then I am happy to sit and write for ages! Another great source of inspiration has been mastermind or accountability groups. It’s great to surround yourself with individuals with various backgrounds and experience and bounce ideas off of them.
- Be genuine
This is an important point to follow Number 3 because you must always be true to your own voice and brand, especially while looking to others for inspiration. I often like to look outside of my box to other industries for inspiration versus competitors to avoid doing the same thing over and over. But in most cases, there are lots of amazing things that your brand is doing, and oftentimes you are too close to see it. For instance, who knew dry cleaning was super technologically advanced and really amazing for the planet? I learned this from visiting a client’s dry cleaning operation. And their website and social presence doesn’t reflect the fun things they are doing! To learn more about creating a genuine connection with your audience, I recently covered this topic in a blog article with 5 simple tips.
- Leverage your hashtags and keywords
It's one thing to develop a hashtag or keyword strategy. Its another thing to leverage it. When determining what content to write, go back to that research. Look at search intent and what keywords you are trying to optimize and use that as a source of motivation for your content. A content generation strategy should be fed by your hashtag and keyword planning. Haven't done it yet? Don’t just throw in some funny hashtags that you think might work. You need to research and make they are appropriate for your target audience. I like to have 4 categories of hashtags that represent what your post is about, your brand, your community and your industry. In fact, I have a whole post about it here.
- Relax!
Get a glass of water or cup of tea and create a peaceful environment. In some cases, I do my best writing or ideation while in the bath on my phone! Small screen, peaceful environment, no where else to go. Absolute bliss! You absolutely need to set the stage for yourself and you need to find out what works best for you!
If all else fails, find a professional copywriter!
All of this aside, if writing isn’t for you, I would HIGHLY recommend hiring a copywriter. They can help you target your ideal client with the right language. They can also edit the work that you have written, adding clarity, tone, professionalism and purpose to your piece! If you aren’t already connected with a Copywriter, let me know and I can point you in the right direction!
