5 Steps to Creating Content

Creating new content for your business doesn’t have to feel like a chore. Inspiration can strike anywhere, at any time, if you know what you’re looking for.

One thing I always used to struggle with was coming up with new ideas, but what I realized over time is that we don’t necessarily need to come up with completely new ideas or information in order to create new content, we often just need to find new ways to present things that are already happening to us.

I’ve come up with a simple, 5-step process to help you generate new content for your business at any stage, for any platform. Whether it’s an email or a post on social media, these steps can help you hone in on something your audience will want to hear.

Now it’s worth noting that not all 5 steps will apply every time you sit down to work through them. What you choose will vary depending on the platform you’re creating for. For instance, all emails will have a subject line, but for an Instagram post, they’re irrelevant.

With that said, don’t be afraid to tweak one piece of content to suit multiple platforms.

Now without any further rambling, here are the 5 simple steps I use to create content for my business:

• Subject Line or Hook
  Of course, this varies depending on the platform you’re creating for, but it’s important to start off with something that’s going to grab people’s attention. Now, don’t overthink this.  It doesn’t have to be a whopping click-bait-style opening, it just has to be something that’s going to help people connect with you.

• Greeting
  The important thing about your greeting is keeping it consistent. This generates a sense of familiarity that people appreciate and resonate with. Another tip for deciding what your greeting should be is to tailor it to your business personality. Whether it’s “hey team” or “dear Sir/Madam,” be sure it reflects who you are as a business and what sort of relationship you have (or hope to have) with your audience. This way, people will begin to recognize your content over time and identify with that specific greeting.

• Flesh
  This is all about fleshing out the bulk of your message. The best way to do this is to create a story. It sounds a lot harder than it is. All you have to do is think about what you’ve done in the last 7 days and pick one thing to riff off of. Start with a brain dump. Maybe you took your dog for a walk one morning. Maybe that day, on your normal route, you crossed paths with a new dog and the two dogs got along right away.

• Segue
  Once you’ve got your simple story fleshed out a bit, it’s time to segue into how that story relates to your business. Again, it’s often far more simple than you think. Let’s go back to that dog-walking example for a second. Maybe these two dogs who liked each other right off the bat are a metaphor. Maybe this is a segue into a piece of content about new business relationships.

• Call to Action
  The final step to every piece of content is the call to action – telling people exactly what they should do next after this piece of content makes an impression on them. Whether it’s heading to your website, downloading a freebie, or getting in touch, be clear in telling them what the next step is.

The key takeaway from this 5-step process is that it doesn’t really matter what story you tell, rather, the point is that you have a story to share. People relate to that intuitively, and it really helps establish you as a real person standing behind your brand.