We’re in an period the place in case you are attempting to create a personal brand on-line or share your work, you do this by creating content material — and creating content material is a unbelievable method to construct your model, make new connections, and degree up your information. Whenever you add all of it up, although, it may be loads of content material to create, even with the right tools in place. When you don’t have the fitting methods, it may be straightforward to fall off the content material creation tracks.

I’ve handled this myself at Buffer — I work at an organization that builds instruments to assist individuals construct their model on-line — and I used to be nonetheless struggling to submit content material persistently. I by no means had hassle arising with concepts, however I might both submit these concepts sporadically or depend on taking the time to schedule my posts “ultimately.” Neither of these choices are long-term, stable plans, and neither of them can really assist with creating consistent content that result in attaining success on-line.

For a number of years, I’ve been engaged on refining a system for capturing concepts for content material and turning these concepts into posts I truly publish. Right here is that system.

Artwork will not be about considering one thing up. It’s in regards to the reverse—getting one thing down. ― Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Approach: A Religious Path to Increased Creativity

Seize: Use one place to maintain concepts

I as soon as bought bathe markers as a result of I stored having all of my greatest concepts within the bathe. As an alternative of grabbing my cellphone, or a pocket book, I began writing all my concepts on my bathe wall. I might then take an image of the bathe concepts, later put them someplace on my laptop, and probably ultimately put them into an Evernote file. On the identical time, I stored an ongoing Apple Be aware with completely different concepts I had for social posts, and I might generally begin a submit instantly on a social community after which put it aside as a draft.

Once I write all of it down like that, it’s fairly clear that that is an inefficient system, however within the second, it appeared like I used to be doing the fitting factor — jotting down my concepts once I had them.The piece of the puzzle I used to be lacking was that it wasn’t solely the act of writing concepts down but in addition the place these concepts had been captured. Crucially, for those who, like me, try to create a long-term and scalable system for creating content material, then concepts have to be captured in just one place.

Tiago Forte, who wrote the ebook Building a Second Brain about organizing your digital life, shares related recommendation with regards to capturing info, information, or perception. In a summary of the ideas in his ebook, he additionally expressed the necessity for only one place for storing info, “we simply must hold it in a single, centralized place.”

What place you select to make use of to seize concepts is totally as much as you — I might advocate someplace you may entry rapidly at anytime (not bathe markers) and someplace digital as a result of that’s the place this content material shall be shared in its finish state. Just a few good choices for capturing concepts for content material embody:

Whatever the place you select, it’s essential to stay with that one location so that every one your concepts are centralized. By retaining all of your concepts in a single place, you may simply entry them if you’re prepared to show them into content material.

Categorize: Set up concepts by subject and social community

Capturing your concepts in a single place is just the start; the following step to ensure these concepts don’t develop into an amazing pile that’s tough to comb by means of is to categorize them.The best manner I’ve discovered to categorize is by content material pillar, content material sort, and social community.

• Content material Pillar: Your content material pillars are the primary subjects or themes that your content material revolves round. For instance, for those who’re a meals blogger, your content material pillars would possibly embody recipes, meal planning, and cooking ideas.
• Content material Sort: Is your content material text-based, audio, or video? Realizing the content material sort for every concept may help you propose out your content material calendar and be certain that you are creating a wide range of content material sorts.
• Social Community: Lastly, you will need to categorize every concept by the social network the place you propose to share it. Every social community has a singular viewers and particular necessities, so it is essential to customise your content material for every one.

You should utilize tags or shorthand to point the content material pillar, content material sort, and social community for every concept. For instance, you would possibly use the tags #recipes, #video, and #Instagram to point that an concept is a recipe video to be shared on Instagram.

Categorizing your concepts is a key step within the content material creation course of. By sorting your ideas into distinct classes, you may be certain that you do not neglect any essential concepts and may simply entry them when creating content material.

Organizing your concepts may also aid you establish patterns or connections between seemingly unrelated subjects, resulting in much more artistic concepts and a extra cohesive total social media technique. This holds true for Phill Agnew, one among our Product Advertising Managers at Buffer.

Along with his work at Buffer, Phill runs a podcast called Nudge and is nice at persistently posting to social media. When speaking about his system for brainstorming, Phill shared “As soon as I’ve each concept in entrance of me it makes it a lot simpler to brainstorm new issues to give you. I discover my greatest concepts come from piecing various things collectively and discovering patterns.”

Create: Flip concepts into content material

I’ve lengthy wished to submit extra on social media and create extra content material on the whole, however then I additionally had a be aware on my cellphone with concepts I by no means received round to posting. The issue wasn’t an absence of concepts — it was an absence of reminders and motion. Having an enormous, stunning record of content material concepts gained’t get you wherever for those who don’t return and switch these concepts into content material.

You should create methods so that you’re deliberately checking your concepts and turning them into content material. How typically you select to test your concepts and create content material is dependent upon your content calendar, your present objectives, and the technique you’ve got in place.

For me, I’m utilizing social media to proceed constructing a private model. I attempt to submit every day to Twitter and a number of other occasions per week to LinkedIn. I’ve a recurring reminder in my to-do list app to undergo my content material tab in Buffer each Friday to overview the concepts I’ve captured all through the week and schedule them for the upcoming week.

By organizing your concepts into classes, you may plan out your content material calendar upfront and see at a look in case you are creating a wide range of content material sorts throughout your social networks. It’s also possible to use your categorized concepts to batch-create content; for instance, you would movie a number of TikTok movies in a row.

Do all of it once more

Upon getting arrange a system for capturing your concepts in a single place, categorizing them rapidly, and checking them later if you create content material — do it over again. Your system ought to be simply repeatable for you so as to keep constant and profit from the entire concepts you’ve got.

I hope this may help anybody who, like me, has struggled with posting persistently on social media and with turning concepts into social posts.

I’ll go away you with a quote from one among my favourite authors, Julia Cameron, who wrote in The Artist’s Way, “We should belief our course of, look past “outcomes.”