8 content creation ideas for crazy times
There are times when life goes a bit crazy busy and content creation is the last thing on your mind. Hopefully, it is a good reason like having lots of enquiries or orders. Other times, it is because you are asked to work from home, homeschool your child and cope with an array of a personal and professional commitments. Sound familiar?
Whatever it may be, it is important to have some back up so that you can continue to market your business and create content consistently, even if a little less regularly. Ideally, in quieter times, you should create content and store it in an ’emergency folder’ ready and waiting for those crisis, busy, crazy moments. However, we know that even these wonderful (and very sensible ideas) don’t always come to fruition.
Below I have recommend 8 areas or ‘content pillars’ that should be both quick wins and still offer effective ways to encourage engagement and tempt leads. They are suggestions that you might want to blog about, post about on social media or stick in a newsletter, as well as time saving strategies.
Read on and let me know what you think…
Content creation ideas
1. Write about yourself
There is a famous saying: “write about what you know”. When you are struggling with content ideas consider what you can share about you and your business. For many of us, we are our business. Think about your passions; why you run your business; who you like working with; what makes you tick. People are essentially nosy and its a good opportunity to give them a little glimpse behind the scenes. You don’t have to share anything personal that you don’t wish to, but equally if you are busy, perhaps a little behind on orders or slower to respond to messages, it is better to be honest and make people aware. Again, this can be done completely professionally.
2. Write about others
Get permission first, of course…but could you share information about your suppliers, clients or customers – who else do you work with?
It can be as simple as sharing testimonials, which are easy to quickly create in to social media posts, through to inviting suppliers to write a guest blog (which saves you writing something). Tagging others gives you instant bigger reach (and, hopefully, they will share too), plus linking to them and their websites also gives backlinks.
If you haven’t even got time to do that, on social media, share interesting content from sources you trust. Add a quick line to make your post unique and rely on a bit of karma that sharing others’ content will lead to them sharing yours.
3. Scroll through your gallery or take a photo
Share a photo of something funny, beautiful or, if you dare, controversial – I have spoken to so many people who have told me that their picture of their cat, some ducks or an onion that looked like it had a paw print in it (!) got the most likes, the most engagement and furthest reach of any post. Try and make it relevant to your business, but sometimes, it is nice to add a little ‘light relief’ to your content and you might be amazed at how many people are then talking about you and “that post”.
‘Real time’ photos are excellent for stories on Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn.
4. What day is it?
Don’t forget to keep an eye out for ‘International’ and ‘National’ days or take a quick look at Twitter on the days you are struggling to see if any good hashtags are trending and jump in on the conversation.
There are specific websites, such as Days of the Year or National Day Calendar – these are great as you can even plan and prep in advance for ones that resonate or link well with your business.
5. Forget writing
I know this may terrify you (and remember how much I love writing), but writing and creating imagery is time consuming. There is no getting away from it. However, jumping in front of the camera and doing a live video is much quicker! You can post videos on all types of different platforms – you can include them in a blog post and embed them in an email. With live video so common, it is widely accepted that they don’t have to be perfectly polished and they don’t have to be very long either. Go on…do it!
6. Repost
We’re are at number 6 and its time for a truth bomb….loads of your followers have never seen lots of your posts and hardly any of your other content. There…I said it. Take a moment to bemoan all of the time you have spent creating those posts, then pull yourself together and take a quick look through past posts and see what you can reuse. You’ll also have new followers so key information and introductions will be useful for them to see too.
You may want to look back at least 6 months, but, genuinely, repetition is not a problem.
7. Rework
If you feel uncomfortable simply reposting, why not consider reworking. This blog itself is a reworking of this blog – Content ideas for busy times !
It doesn’t have to be extensive reworking but things can date quickly. You may have more to add and some things to remove. It’s amazing how you develop your business or best practice advice changes, then past posts and blogs are still relevant, but can also be developed, updated and reworked.
8. Recharge
To finish, remember it is ok to take a bit of a break and to recharge. The pressure to create content can feel like an incessant treadmill. If you feel tired and too busy to create content, this will actually show in the content you produce. You will become lethargic and lazy, which is completely understandable. So take a break. If you can schedule a few posts to keep your platforms active (even if it is a lot less than your usual output), then that’s great. It is also ok to simply state you are taking a short break (but do give a return date and stick to it). Weirdly, I announced I was stopping my Tuesday Lives and that post got some of the most engagement, in recent weeks!
Is it time to outsource?
This sounds like a horrendous, salesy way to finish but, are you feeling that you are too busy to create your content on a regular basis? If so, it may be time to outsource. Could your time be much better spent on other business commitments and leave the content to someone else? Is it something that you don’t really enjoy? If so, then take a look at your finances, consider you budgets and if you want some support with blogs, emails or updating your website – get in touch or book a call.
If you need social media support, I also have some excellent contacts – don’t hesitate to ask.