If you’ve spent much time with me talking about business, you’ll know that I LOVE blogging. I think it’s one of the best ways to boost your SEO for your website and to share your expertise. But I know a ton of creatives really struggle with blogging and with content creation in general. SO many talented people think that they have nothing to share, nothing to teach, or nothing that their audience will find interesting.
Nothing could be further from the truth!! If you’re a creative entrepreneur, you ARE an expert at something. You wouldn’t have a thriving business if you didn’t. Where I see people falling short is by failing to recognize their talent, by not having confidence in what they know, and by being too afraid to put it out there. Fear of rejection is a real thing! How would you feel if you worked long and hard on something only to have it criticized? Not very good.
But, rest assured, that doesn’t happen!! Well, except maybe if you’re a Youtuber hah! But the good news is, blogging is not Youtube. I have seen nothing but support in the creative entrepreneur community on blogs.
But blogging is not the only content that you can get out to your audience. There’s so much more! There are videos, behind the scenes clips or photos, social media posts, personal updates, Pinterest posts, and MORE. All of these things count as content creation, and each one will help build your brand and connect with your audience more.
I have to be honest. I haven’t put out content in a while because I’ve been afraid. I’ve been afraid of rejection, I’ve been unsure of my skills, and I’ve thought that if everyone else is writing content why should I? But that place is not where I want to stay!!! With the coronavirus outbreak, I’ve realized that if I don’t put my content out there I’m holding myself back from future growth, from realizing my calling, and from connecting with someone who might need to hear it.
Tips for Brainstorming Content Creation
Recognize that you have a unique voice and you are an expert.
Okay, so this is two tips in one. 🙂 But the first thing to remember when it comes to content creation is that you have a unique audience and a unique voice. Even if there are a million other people out there doing the same thing that you’re doing, they don’t have the same followers and there is someone in your audience that needs to hear what you have to say! So don’t let fear hold you back!
Secondly, remember you’re doing what you’re doing because you love it and because you’ve worked hard at your craft. You ARE an expert and you deserve to be heard.
Think about what you know now that you didn’t know when you first started
If you stop to think about it, I bet there is a TON of stuff that you know now that you didn’t know when you first started. If you’re a photographer, maybe you can talk about what ISO sensitivity is, or how you decided on a camera model, or things like that! The possibilities are really endless.
Think about what you know now that you didn’t know 2 years ago
I think there are phases of our business. There is the phase where we are first starting out and we really didn’t know anything. You can write to that audience and be such a help to them! But there is also a period of time where we know the basics, but we still don’t know some basic things that maybe people who are more experienced than us would know. For example, is there a software that’s saved you tons of time? Write about it! Are you involved in a community like the Rising Tide society that you are so grateful for? Write about it! Or maybe you want to start sharing about marketing and where you really saw your business grow.
Think about Topics to Boost your SEO
I would like to write a full blog post soon about blogging for SEO purposes, but this is a great way to help brainstorm content. If your business is specific to a location, a great way to boost your SEO is to have location-specific blog posts. Some of my best clients came because they found me from my blog posts on my favorite locations for photoshoots or for weddings I blogged from certain venues.
This can be especially helpful if you are just starting out and don’t have a ton of content. You could write a blog post on “Top 10 Engagement Session Locations in Greenville, SC” or highlight different venues that you want to photograph but haven’t yet. Not only could this get your post showing in search results, but you could even build relationships with those vendors through it! Just think about what your client might be searching for in Google and write a blog post on it!
Write down literally everything that you know how to do that’s specific to your business
Another approach would be to literally list everything you know that’s specific to your craft. Do a brain dump session and get it all out there! I think you will be surprised at what you know. If you knit handmade items as your business, you know what needles are best for which types of projects, you know how to distinguish between a good yarn and a cheap yard, you know a ton of different patterns on how to make things and you know how to create your own work and get away from the patterns. You also know the basics of setting up a way to sell your products and maybe how to get accepted into craft fairs. And that is just one example and I didn’t even list everything that they might know!
Break down larger topics into smaller pieces of content
If you want to teach the basics of manual mode in a course or over a series of videos on IGTV or YouTube, that would probably take a long time. If you have a lot of content on one topic, you can break it into multiple pieces.
Repurpose content for different platforms/mediums
Let’s say you’re an artist and you create a piece of art. You can post a photo of the art to Instagram. You could also post a behind the scenes video of you working on it. You could write a blog post about your process or your inspiration. You could make a “how to” image for Pinterest. You can also post about how you chose the paint, what paints you used, what brushes you used, etc. And that’s all from just ONE piece of art that you created!
Schedule your ideas on a content calendar
One thing that has helped me SO MUCH is writing out my ideas and then GETTING THEM ON THE CALENDAR. I have a specific time each week that I write content (Tuesday afternoons!), and I sit down once a month and plan out all of my content for the month. I pull from the list of content ideas that I have and just write them onto my content calendar with the date they will come out. For me, I have a blog post, a podcast episode, and now a video coming out every week. So on Tuesdays I look at what’s coming up for the next week and I write the copy for the blog post, write my notes for my podcast episode, and then I write my script for my videos. Having a plan and putting it on your calendar is the best way to ensure it gets done. I use Trello and then schedule social media posts through Later, but there are other tools as well!
POST IT
This is sometimes the hardest part!!! Don’t worry about whether or not it’s perfect, and don’t allow yourself the time to second guess yourself. How many times have you been excited about something and then never posted it because you chickened out? How did you feel about that? Probably not good. So know that your audience needs to hear what you have to say and HIT THAT PUBLISH BUTTON. You’ll feel so much better afterwards and you can rest knowing that you are moving your business forward with your content!
Check out more education topics here: https://christijohnsoncreative.com/category/education
These are great tips! I often find myself running out of ideas than feeling lke I should be an expert but you’re so right and it’s normal to have unsuccessful content brainstorming sessions but I also forget to remind myself, the topics that I may think have no value may help someone. Like the ISO sensitivity, I would totally read that. Thanks for sharing.
Hey Ashley! Thank you so much for reading! Glad this was helpful for you! That is absolutely true! I like to ask myself, “what kinds of things would my audience be searching for on the internet?” and write on those topics. And remember, you don’t have to be an expert to teach! You just have to be a little bit further ahead than the people you are teaching. I’m cheering for you!