When embarking on the journey of Inbound Marketing*, one of the first steps can be a challenging one—creating sufficient content to drive your blog, Facebook page, tweets, and/or all your other social networking platforms of choice.
Upon being assigned a writing task, most of us sit on it for ages, procrastinating under the pretense of “looking for inspiration”. But when you’re required to upkeep your blog regularly (say, 3x a week), procrastination isn’t the solution. Efficiency is.
To ease the troubles of trying to consistently create content for your blog day after day, week after week, here are 4 tips that will help you easily create content ideas, and transpose them into blog posts that will keep your readers interested, since blogging is an essential part of Inbound Marketing.
1. Allow your writing to be incomprehensible at first
Sometimes, when we are so fixated on coming across as comprehensive and professional through our writing, we tend to lose track of our ideas, leading to what some call writer’s block. When this happens, take a step back from the writing, and focus on the idea you have in mind. Dissect this idea and lay it out in front of you, whether it is in completely incoherent sentences, bullet points, or even mind maps. What is important is that you understand it. When your ideas are all penned down, you will find it much easier to form a comprehensive flow of ideas, i.e. an article/blog post.
2. Pull topics from everywhere
Much of the stuff you read, hear about from people, or see on the internet actually makes for great content, except it’s not always obvious unless you are actively searching for inspiration. One secret to always having something to write about is to always be on the lookout for topics. It is said that everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t. Pay attention to everything you come across and think about whether it makes for good content. By pulling topics from your surroundings, you save yourself the pain of racking your brain when the time comes for a blog post.
3. Bookmark your ideas
When you’re out for a meal or watching TV after work, an idea may pop into your head. It may not be the time of the week to submit a blog post, but that time will come eventually. So whenever you come across something that may potentially make for blog content, bookmark it, on your web browser, mobile browser, key it into your mobile Notes app, or jot it down in a notebook. When its time for a blog post, you’ll already have an idea (or many ideas) ready for writing.
4. Remove yourself from distractions
Let’s face it, when tasked with something difficult, we find a thousand reasons to do it later—a new Facebook notification, a new email, a new tweet to read. Remove yourself from distractions and you will find that you can now write at twice the speed (and if you don’t have enough self discipline, there are downloadable apps such as SelfControl that will block you from accessing distracting websites for any set time).
* Inbound marketing is a form of digital marketing that involves SEO, social media, blog and landing pages to generate sales leads.
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