Creating content ideas for your business can be really difficult sometimes.  Honestly, being a business owner generally means we need to snap our fingers and be good at one billion things, magically. It can be completely overwhelming to know where to start, and that’s where creating a business plan comes into play.

 

There are SO MANY facets of a good business plan, including (but not limited to!):

• Ideal Client Summary
• Brand Strategy
• Your Mission Statement
• Competitive analysis and market validation
• Goals and Vision
• Services, Products and Offerings
• Pricing (bleh!)
• Marketing and Content Creation
• Workflows and Processes
• ……so much more.

 

It’s a lot right?! But that’s where making a plan can help us in business by creating a filter.  There’s a process to creating a solid business plan and it starts with finding your ideal client. Once you have this aspect, defining your brand strategy, mission statement, and everything else becomes so much clearer because you begin to have an “ideal” audience to filter your services and offerings to.  You no longer have to be everything to everybody.  

 

I’m going to be sharing so much more brand strategy in a challenge I’m doing with the Rising Tide Society and HoneyBook this month: “The Business Planning Challenge” !! During this three week video based challenge, I’ll be sharing how to create a brand strategy, how to develop a goal setting strategy, and how to define and sustain business growth through a solid growth strategy. You can join us by visiting https://www.honeybook.com/risingtide/ from October 16th-25th! I am SO EXCITED!

 

Today, though, I want to share with you how to develop a content idea creation strategy that isn’t overwhelming, and will speak to your ideal audience!

 

Creating content ideas for your blog or other platforms is a HUGE part of ANY type of creative business.  But for most creatives, creating content, and coming up with ideas for content, can be a very overwhelming undertaking.  So let’s break it down simply so that you can go out and create content more frequently that speaks to your ideal audience.

 

Step 1: Define your categories.

When we’re thinking about content creation, it can be overwhelming because sometimes we can’t think of anything, and sometimes it feels like there are endless possibilities and we get overwhelmed.  When I’m brainstorming content, I like to filter it first through my 4-5 main categories, and then I branch out from there. These categories are determined through your ideal client, brand strategy, mission statement, etc. They are simply the 4-5 things that help make up your brand, and what you do as a company.

 

For example, Laura Lee Creative and Laura Lee Photography have a few categories that are crucial to the brand:

 

• Productivity and Business Tips for Creative Entrepreneurs
• Travel and Adventure
• My core values about which all filter into living your best, intentional life
• Workflow and Systems (for photographers, and for small business owners)
• Wedding, Engagement and Brand Photography
• Personal

 

Once those categories are defined, it’s easy to brainstorm content around them.

 

Step 2: Create a Mindmap

Once your categories are defined, draw each one in it’s own bubble, and then start mind mapping or listing out all the ideas you have for that category. I recommend setting a timer for 5-10 minutes for each category and just jotting down every idea that comes to mind. Once you think of a sub idea, you can create ideas from that too!

 

It might look like this (picture this in map form!)

 

• Photography Workflow
  • Culling
    • 5 part culling system
    • How to cull quickly without overwhelm
    • What software to use for culling
    • Culling for the blog

 

It doesn’t mean every idea will be a winning topic, so this list or map isn’t permanent, but it’s important to get all your ideas out there!

Image via: https://www.vecteezy.com/vector-art/104661-hand-drawn-mind-map-vector

 

Step 3: Highlight the winning ideas, and add them into your content queue or task management system

Once I have my braindump, I add these into Asana, my task management system of choice (It’s free!) I have a separate project for each type of content (Blogs, Newsletters, Instagram, Facebook, Facebook Lives, Instagram Stories, etc.) and my first list in here is the “IDEAS” list. All the winning ideas get added to this list.

 

Step 4: Choose topic days

Once I have my list of ideas, and my categories defined, I schedule them in a content calendar.  I’ve found it helpful to have certain days of the week used for different categories, so I know which category to post each day. *Note, you can color code in Asana so you can easily make a color for each category type and then create a calendar making sure no two categories are ever back to back.

It might look like this:

 

• Monday- Productivity and Systems Tips for Entrepreneurs
• Wednesday- Workflow Wednesday for Photographers
• Friday- Personal

 

All your content can filter around this daily mentality so that you’re never again wondering what to post and when!

 

Step 5: Outline, Write, Collect Images, Edit and Schedule

Once you have your ideas listed, and your content calendar created, then it’s time to get to work and make these ideas come to life! I always, always, outline every blog post or newsletter before I write it. It makes the blinking cursor way less daunting.  You can type your outline or even hand write it- your brain actually goes through a different cognitive process putting pen to paper vs fingers to keyboard.  In studies, it’s been shown to increase concentration- so if that blinking cursor is overwhelming you, try scribbling something on a piece of paper, doodle a bit, and then start outlining.

 

From there, you can flesh it out into a post, collect supporting images, edit your copy and then schedule it!

 

Step 6: Repurpose your content

Once you have a blog post, newsletter, podcast, what have you, all fleshed out, you can use this across your other content platforms and repurpose it! Win!

 

And there you have it! An easy strategy to start brainstorming and mapping out the content for your brand. I can’t wait to see what you put out into the world!

 

1. Don’t forget: I’m going to be leading the charge on our Rising Tide and HoneyBook challenge this month: the Business Planning Challenge. During this three week video based challenge, I’ll be sharing how to create a brand strategy, how to develop a goal setting strategy, and how to define and sustain business growth through a solid growth strategy. You can join us by visiting https://www.honeybook.com/risingtide/ from October 16th-25th! See you there!