Sep 26, 2019
Do you struggle with regular content creation? Do you start strong with a good idea for a book, blog, or newsletter, but then fizzle out and lack consistency in the producing of the blog posts, newsletters, or cookbooks?
Marketing yourself and your business require a strategy to build a relationship with your audience. Be it your future customers, current clients, possible publishers, or your ideal reader, they need to get to know you better to have a relationship with you and perhaps buy from you or publish your book. One of my superpowers over the years has been the ability to create consistent content in my business. Consistent content is queen. Customers like consistency. It’s trustworthy. Publishers like consistency. It’s dependable. Your readers like consistency. They want to hear from you. They like what you write about. In order to help you move from struggling and overwhelmed, I want to share my five secrets to consistent content creation.
- Decide if you want to create consistent content. You can do this if you want to. If your answer is yes, then let’s do it! If your answer is no, that’s ok. Quit beating yourself up and move on to another way to spend your time.
- Pick one day and a specific time: I write newsletter and blog post content once a week on Mondays. I spend no more than two hours to do this. I get it done and don’t have to worry about the newsletter or blog post until the next Monday. On Mondays, my sweet spot is between the hours of 8 – 10 am. I set myself up for success. I don’t schedule phone calls during this time. I don’t run errands during this time. I don’t go get coffee with a friend during this time. This time is for my content. Each and every Monday morning. For you, it might be midnight – 2 am. The time doesn’t matter. Just pick a time where you are awake, alert, focused. And I hear what you’re thinking: but I’ve got little kids, I have a job, I have so much to do, I’m so busy. If that’s the case, go back to #1 and decide. An added bonus secret is to record or write your content in batches. This means you create content for a few weeks at a time. Then you’re ahead of the game and each week it’s not a rush to create content for the next week.
- Get yourself in a good feeling place before you write. I like to show up on Mondays (and every day, quite frankly) refreshed and ready. For me, this means I have completed my morning routine and I’m cleaned up for the day. I can’t produce when I’m sitting around feeling and smelling like I just crawled out of bed. I work better when I’m clean, dressed, smell good, and my household tasks that I do on Monday mornings are underway.
- Show up at your computer or laptop. Sit down (or stand up if you want to), and write (or create). By the time I actually sit down, I have a topic in mind to write about. These topics pop into my head in a variety of ways, but most often they occur to me during my morning routine. (This routine is a no-brainer and consists of some quiet coffee time, breakfast with my son, clean up the kitchen, shower, and morning notebook time.) You’d be amazed at how many ideas pop into my head when I’m focused on other activities. The biggest take away here is to have a way to capture the ideas on your phone’s notepad or in a notebook. Creative ideas flow all the time. Write the ideas down. And then, when you sit down to write, you don’t have to think of ideas, all you have to do is expand on them.
- Control your brain. There are times when I sit down that my brain says, “OK, this is too much. You need to quit writing so much. Skip this one time – it’s not going to matter anyway. Head back to the kitchen. Get a snack. Watch some YouTube or scroll through Instagram. There’s no reason you should keep writing this much.” This is what our brains do. When we evolve, grow, write, create content, our brains think there’s danger lurking. It tells us the way we stay safe is to stay the same and not rock the boat. For a few minutes, I occasionally entertain my brain’s messages. I consider that I should stop writing newsletters, blog posts, and books. But I know better. I can outsmart my brain.
Give these secrets a try. My hope is that they take you from the feelings of struggle, overwhelm, and confusion, to feeling good, more consistent with your content, in control of your brain. If you master this, I know you can write that book or build the business you dream of building.
Things We Mention In This Episode:
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