Learn how you can implement a system to help you generate endless content ideas and a workflow that helps you stay consistent and create content with confidence and ease.
Does your planning and publishing process fall apart within a week? Or are you really good with planning, but aren’t so great at sticking with the creation part?
If you feel like you’re constantly starting from scratch and are unable to maintain a consistent publishing schedule with your social media, then you’re going to want to take note of how you can flip this around. Here are three steps to help make content creation easier and make your content marketing process work.
Content Creation Made Easy: Planning and Creation Tips Share on X
1. capturing ideas
Start by identifying a place and a process on how you will capture your ideas. You can use a notebook or a notes app such as Evernote, Milanote, Google Keep, Notion or another notes app on your mobile or desktop device.
Whatever method you choose to capture ideas, make sure you commit to using that as your designated place and it will be your catch-all location whenever inspiration or ideas strike.
Your ideas might be quotes, questions, experiences, passages, books, ads, podcasts, articles, stories, etc. As you collect and capture your ideas, make sure you’re also able to categorize, subcategorize, label or tag your inspiration to reference later.
Pro Tip: As you capture ideas and other inspiration, draw connections from your best ideas and take note of any possible titles or headlines that could work.
Now that you know how you’re going to capture and store your content ideas, you’ll also want to establish a process for how you generate content ideas.
Here are some suggestions:
Look at your analytics: See which content is receiving the most engagement such as saves, comments, shares or likes. What resonated with your audience and why do you think it performed well? What sparked engagement in your content?
➜ Take note of the best performing content and try to recreate it again or repurpose it or share it again.
Questions from your audience: What are the most frequently asked questions from your audience? Or if you’re on a call with a client or customer, what are some of the roadblocks or issues they are experiencing that you guide them through? What are their concerns, reservations or objections about purchasing your product or investing in your services? How can you address their questions and earn their trust through your content?
➜ Identify topics you can expand on that will help address their common questions or objections.
Trending Topics or Industry News: Are there any trending or top of mind topics that you can discuss or apply to your current content? Think about topics or questions your audience is actively searching for.
➜ For example, if you’re a wellness coach and it’s the holiday season, you could incorporate content ideas such as, “Healthy Swaps to Make at a Holiday Party” or “Must-Have Exercise Gadgets to Buy this Holiday Season.”
Related: Tips and Tools to Help You Organize Your Content Marketing Ideas
Organize Your Content Marketing
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2. Planning Process
As you start to plan and plug in content and relevant dates in your content calendar, you’ll want to go through the process of ensuring you’re covering your bases. Here’s how you can start plugging content into your calendar.
- Key Promotional Dates: Identify any holidays, launches, promotions, partnerships, collaborations and announcement. For example, if you’re a guest on a podcast or a speaker at an event, you’ll want to make sure you identify when you want to promote and amplify that on your calendar. Some key holidays can also help generate timely content or launches.
- Macro Content: This is your long-form content that is packed with highly valuable and actionable tips or resources (e.g. blog post, podcast, YouTube).
- Micro Content: This is your opportunity to repurpose your macro content or create other standalone short-form content (e.g. Instagram Grid posts, Stories, Tweets or TikTok). Please note, you don’t need to be everywhere. It’s OK to start off with one micro piece of content for one platform and expand as you become more and more consistent. Don’t overwhelm yourself and become inconsistent again. We’re not doing that anymore.
- Other Curated Content: This can be your newsletter or any other platform where you’re actively promoting and amplifying your products and services (e.g. Newsletter, Patreon, etc).
Related: 7 Ways to Create Content More Consistently
Content Calendar Template
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3. Recurring Planning and Scheduling
Make sure you set a recurring task for you to do monthly planning and then aim to stay at least 1-2 weeks ahead of your editorial schedule so that you’re not falling behind with your content marketing. If you want to be consistent, you need to plan ahead.
Recurring tasks to help you maintain a consistent publishing schedule:
- Identify Your Goal: On a quarterly or monthly basis, set aside time to get clear on your content marketing goal. Do you want to drive more traffic to your site, increase email subscribers, boost sales, etc. Be clear about what your goal is so that your content is intentionally designed to support your goal.
- Plan on a Monthly Basis: Be intentional and strategic. No more random content. Remember, you don’t need more content, you need effective content. Plan on the first of the month for the rest of the month and dedicate an hour or so for your planning.
- Content Creation: Stay 1-2 weeks ahead of your content calendar. No more scrambling the day-of to figure out what you’re going to share. Remember you don’t have to be extreme, just aim to be consistent. Practice batching your work to improve your content creation process.
Related: How to Use Asana to Maximize Your Projects and Tasks for Success
Which content planning tip will you implement first?
