Marketing and business expert Seth Godin has said that content marketing is all the marketing that’s left.
Content has become a critical variable in today’s sales and marketing environment. It must be prioritized by any business hoping to compete in the future.
Here are six tips to help you create more content for your business.
Tip No. 1
The first one is to schedule it. Things get done when they get put on your calendar, and that includes content creation.
Don’t leave content creation to chance. Create time slots on your calendar that you’ll be absolutely committed to adhering to. Schedule them and when the time comes, create content no matter whether you feel like it or not.
It’s a discipline, and that’s how things get done.
Tip No. 2
Constantly collect ideas.
The hard thing about creating content is sitting down and looking at a blank computer screen or a blank page. That’s why you always need to be collecting content ideas throughout your days as you’re talking to people, listening to podcasts, watching television, watching YouTube videos or reading blog posts online.
Anytime you come across a piece of content that gives you some ideas or inspires you, bookmark it or add it to a collection in Evernote.
It can be anywhere really, whatever’s easiest for you to save that content so that you can refer back to it when the time comes for you to create your content. That will give you some ideas to get started with and prompt your initial work getting done.
Tip No. 3
Tip number three is to outline your content.
Again, there’s nothing harder than sitting down to a blank computer screen or a blank piece of paper to try to create your content.
After you’ve collected ideas, you should create an initial outline of a piece of content first. That initial outline will give you some structure to work on so that you’re not starting from scratch and you’re not all over the place when creating your content.
Tip No. 4
You have to talk it out.
Most of us are much better talkers than we are ‘typers’. So instead of sitting down to try and type out your piece of content, we highly recommend that you do a recording of you speaking the content first.
When you have your outline, sit down at your computer or with a phone and use a recording application.
We highly recommend Rev to record yourself speaking your piece of content. Once that recording is done, send it for transcription with Rev and they’ll send you back a nicely organized and edited initial piece of content.
It will be a rough draft that needs editing, but now you’re starting from a 70% complete document rather than starting from scratch. It’s a much easier and more efficient way to create your content.
Tip No. 5
Get away from your desk.
If you follow the workflow outlined above, there’s no reason why you have to be sitting at a computer typing out your content. Instead, use a recorder on your phone to record the content first.
This gives you the ability to go mobile with your content creation process.
One of our favorite things to do is to go on a walk and talk out our content. Or to go find an inspiring piece of scenery that we can sit down and enjoy while creating our content and sending it for transcription.
It’s a much more enjoyable process than sitting at your computer and you might as well take advantage of it.
Tip No. 6
Our final tip is to separate creating and editing.
This is perhaps the most important tip for creating content quickly. And a very bad habit that people get into is editing their content while they’re creating it.
So you put a few words down on paper or record a quick segment of a video then decide that you don’t like what you did. You delete it, you start over. You modify it as you go. That process slows you down and kills the creative process.
The creative process requires that you’re not worried about making mistakes. You can just let it flow. So if you’re in editing mode, you’re essentially contradicting that creative process.
Create all of your content first, then at a later time shift into editing mode and do your editing. Keep those two functions separate.
Take action
That’s six tips for creating more content for our business. Schedule, collect ideas throughout the month, outline your content first, talk it out, get away from your desk, and separate creating and editing.
Follow these six tips and you’ll be creating more content for your business in no time.
