Time Saving Tips, Ideas, and Tactics to Brainstorm Your Content

content

As one of the most important elements of online marketing success, content can consume vast amounts of time and energy. It’s not unusual for a business owner to spend several hours a day brainstorming, writing, and publishing their content.

1-timeWhile you can’t really eliminate your need for content, you can reduce the amount of time you spend on it. By embracing tips, tactics, and systems that support you and your business, it’s safe to say that you can cut your content time in half and still create the same great content you’ve been creating.

Your time is precious. By becoming more efficient and productive, you’re able to reallocate that time you saved on content to other profitable tasks. For example, if you’re a coach and you free up 5 hours a week, you can spend those five hours coaching clients and making money.

Of course, if you’re looking for a way to enjoy a shorter work week, you can use those five hours spending time with friends, family and enjoying personal pursuits. So, let’s get to it. The Speedy Content Publishing Tips are divided into the following sections:

  • Brainstorming – learn to brainstorm faster and more efficiently.
  • Writing – Yes, you can write more quickly and still create exceptional content.
  • Researching – Too many people waste precious time researching. Learn how to find what you need quickly and painlessly.
  • Organizing – Proven tips to organize your content for productivity and efficiency.
  • Publishing – You can even save time when you publish your content.

Let’s dive right in and start with what can be the most difficult part of the content process, brainstorming.

Do you have a regular content brainstorming session or do you simply let the ideas come to you? There’s no “right” way to brainstorm content. However, there are steps that you can take to make the process more efficient and also more effective.

 

#1 Be Prepared

Many busy entrepreneurs find that the best content ideas come to them when they’re not working. Maybe you’re at a family picnic or sitting in traffic. You’re thinking about your business and a brilliant idea comes to you.

If you’re not prepared to document the idea, chances are you’ll forget it by the time you get home. And let’s face it, it’s easy to believe you’ll remember the idea – after all, it’s a great one. However, most often the idea fades away.

One of the fastest ways to brainstorm content is to keep a running list of ideas. The ideas may not be complete thoughts, but the concept can help you brainstorm content when it’s time to sit down and get to work.

2-documentSo how do you prepare to capture every content idea when it comes to you?

  • Notebook – yep, good old fashioned pen and paper still work
  • Phone – even a simple note-taking application can be useful
  • Voice mail- leave yourself a voice mail if you don’t have an opportunity to write down  your idea
  • Email – send yourself an email. That way, it’s waiting for you when you get back to your home office.

#2 Monthly or Weekly Ideas Session

Do you find that there is a particular day of the week or the month where you’re usually motivated and inspired? For example, after the weekend, many entrepreneurs are ready to get back to work. Monday and Tuesday are often exciting and motivating days. By the end of the week things can wind down. Identify your best time to brainstorm and capitalize on your energy by scheduling a brainstorming session.

When brainstorming:

  • Set Aside A Moderate Amount Of Time. An hour or two is probably long enough to brainstorm.  Your mind will start to wander and you’ll stop being productive. Don’t worry, once you’ve started the creative process, more ideas will come to you throughout your day.
  • 3-brainstormGo To An Inspiring Location To Brainstorm. Imagine trying to brainstorm content ideas as children are running circles around you as you sit at the kitchen table. Not very productive.

Instead, find a peaceful place where you feel inspired. Put on some music if it’s not distracting; kick your feet back and begin thinking about the various types of content you can create to help your audience.

  • Review Analytics. Great ideas are often inspired by past successes. Look at the content that received the best comments, links, and feedback. Review your analytics to find your most popular articles or posts and brainstorm more ideas on the topics.
  • Use Creativity Tools. There are many different brainstorming tools to consider. For example, mind mapping is quite popular. You can also use a vision board or even creative prompts. You can create your own brainstorming tools, too. For example, you might create a series of flash cards that ask questions like: What problem is my ideal customer facing today?
  • Identify Inspiration. Are there certain blogs, magazines, or websites that frequently inspire you? If so, organize them into a folder on your search engine toolbar. Create a folder to make them easy to access. And yes, your competition may be a key source of content inspiration.

 

#3 Broaden Your Horizons

One of the reasons it can become tricky to brainstorm ideas is because people get stuck in a rut. They create the same type of content over and over again. Remember you can create:

  • Audio
  • Video
  • Lists
  • Tips
  • Content series
  • Worksheets
  • Editorials
  • Q&A
  • Interviews
  • Info graphics
  • How To articles
  • Reviews

And much more. As you’re struggling to come up with ideas, try to create ideas for many different formats. You may find that a “tips” article fits nicely with an interview and create a sense of cohesion and flow on your blog or website.

Brainstorming can often be a frustrating process. Embrace systems and tools that support you to succeed. Additionally, if you find you’re having a tough time coming up with ideas, take a break or consider outsourcing the topic idea research for a month or two. You may simply need to step back and look at your audience and niche from a fresh perspective.

So once you have your list of content ideas and topics, it’s time to sit down and start creating the content. Let’s take a look at a few proven methods for enjoying productive writing sessions.

10 Smart Moves for a Successful Local Marketing Campaign

local-marketing-success

Marketing for local businesses has come a long way. Just 20 years ago, “marketing” meant buying newspaper ads, yellowpage ads or perhaps billboard or radio advertisements. Marketing was costly and often ineffective.

Today, the game has changed. There are literally dozens of tools available to the smart entrepreneur for marketing his or her business. Many of these tools and techniques can drive hundreds of paying customers to your business, without costing you a single dime.

This checklist will help you get the most out of all the tools, technologies and techniques available today.

 

Step 1: Get on Facebook Places

Facebook places allows users to find you through their friends’ checkins. People who like your business can “like” your page or comment on your page and their friends can see that on their walls.

It’s a powerful way of spreading a great business virally. It uses the interconnectivity of Facebook to a local business’s advantage.

Make sure you claim your business so you have the ability to change its information, as well as merge the Facebook Place with the Facebook Page.

Step 2: Get on Google Places

There are many great reasons to get on Google Places.

First, your business will show up ahead of other non-local businesses in the search engines.

Second, people will be able to leave reviews for your physical business.

Third, people will be able to find your place on Google Maps. For example, a user with an iPhone might type in “Pizza” into Google Maps to find all the pizza joints near them. If you’re listed on Google Places, your restaurant will show up.

Step 3: Get on Yelp

Yelp is a user-driven review site with a very active community. People who visit local businesses use Yelp to leave reviews of their experience. Other people who are thinking of going there can use Yelp to see previous reviews.

Yelp is extremely popular in some cities, like San Francisco and New York, while virtually unnoticed in others.

If you’re in a city with a strong Yelp user base, getting to the first 3 or 5 results in Yelp can bring you a huge influx of customers. Many small businesses are packed every day purely from Yelp traffic.

 

Step 4: Give Incentive to Review

checklist

 You’re much more likely to get a lot of reviews if you help the process along by providing a few incentives. That’s especially true if your business is relatively new.

Keep in mind that you can’t incentivize o1thers to post a good or positive review. You can only incentivize them to post a review. What they say is up to them; they get the reward either way. Naturally, if you provide a great service, most reviews you get will be positive.

What are some examples of ways to incentivize reviews?

  • First 10 Yelp reviews gets 50% off their next meal.
  • First 10 Google reviews gets a free coffee.
  • People who have posted a review for our service get 10% off all purchases.
  • Etc

 

Step 5: Host a Meetup

Meetup.com is designed to help bring people with similar interests together. It’s an online site with an offline focus.

One great way to bring more people to your venue is to host an event. The event can be related to what you do, or it can be one or two steps removed. Here are a few examples:

  • A co-working space – Monthly talks on marketing for small business.
  • Classy café – Monthly philosophy discussion group.
  • Dance studio – A free monthly “open floor” dance event.
  • Rock climbing gym – Free “intro to rock climbing” event.
  • Bookstore – Monthly book signings.

The list goes on and on. Talk to your customers and find out what they’re interested in. Then create a meetup to cater to that interest.

 

Step 6: Open Your Space to Other Organizers

comments

If you browse through Craigslist events, Meetup events or other events sites, you’ll find that 5 to 10 event venues tend to be used over and over again in any given city.

You can bring in a lot of business by opening your space to other organizers.

For example, let’s say a restaurant makes its back room available to a Toastmasters meeting (a public speaking group.) They use the back room free of charge, and most members end up ordering food and drink anyway.

The restaurant profits from the food and drink and gets the benefit of being exposed to a whole new audience. The back room probably wouldn’t have been regularly booked out anyway, so there’s no real cost to the restaurant.

Another example might be a shared co-working office. It allows its members to use the conference space for educational events free of charge, provided that all its members can also attend free of charge.

The organizer gets the benefit of having a professional space for free. The shared office space gets the benefit of having more to offer its members. Furthermore, every person who attends that event is a potential customer.

It’s much more efficient to open your space up to many event organizers rather than try to organize many events yourself. Doing so can bring in a lot of new people to your business, as well as build general goodwill in your community.

 

Step 7: Market on Local Mailing Lists

email mkt1

In any moderate to large city, there will be dozens of mailing lists on a variety of different topics.

For example, in San Francisco, there are lists for hikers and runners to meetup, lists for announcements of art events, lists specifically for the yoga & meditation communities, lists specifically for the startup business community, so on and so forth.

Make an effort to ask the people in your target audience what kind of email lists they subscribe to. Write these down and do some research.

Some lists will have “open announcement” policies, meaning anyone can post to the list. Others are curated lists, where events are sent to a single curator who posts approved events all to the lists.

Some lists will have very stringent requirements on what it’s okay to post and what it’s not. Others will be rather lax.

Try to find as many large, active lists in your community as you can. Market to the lists anytime you have something significant to announce. Avoid burning out the list by over-emailing; but use the power of pre-existing communities to your advantage whenever you’re doing a special promotion or event.

 

Step 8: Get a Booth at Events

In person events allow you to market your products directly to your ideal audience, while building connection and rapport through face-to-face interactions.

An “event” can be as sophisticated as a trade show, conference or seminar. Or it could be as simple as a college fair or farmer’s market.

The specific events you choose depends on what market you’re in. If you run a temp agency, you’ll probably want a booth at college job fairs and at trade shows (to find employers.)

If you run a small, organic restaurant, you might want to get a booth at your local farmer’s market and appear at all the “for fun” fairs around. (E.g. The local renaissance fair.)

 

Step 9: Flyering and Other Local Marketing

Leaving flyers at local businesses, putting flyers on walls, putting door hangers and perhaps even mailing postcards all still work. Just because a tactic is old doesn’t mean it’s no longer effective.

When using these tactics, the most important thing is to make sure you’re reaching the right people. If you’re promoting a nightlife event, flyer outside nightlife venues. Don’t leave your flyers in restaurants.

 

Step 10: Negotiate with Groupon or LivingSocial

Groupon, LivingSocial and other group-buying organizations can bring you a lot of business. In fact, it can bring you hundreds of orders in a 48 hour period.

Generally these sites will want to only work with established businesses. They need to know that you can handle the sudden volume that they’ll send you.

They also need to know that you’ll be able to give their users a significant discount, while still paying them a percentage.

Let’s say you run a health and massage spa center. The standard price for a massage is $90, but for Groupon members you’re offering it for $55. In addition, you need to pay Groupon $5 per sale.

If you’re hiring your masseuses’ for $60 an hour, you’re essentially breaking even. If you’re paying them $65 an hour, you’re losing money. You need to know that even if you spend $5 to get someone through the door, you’ll still make money in the long run.

In other words, Groupon is such a high volume business that it takes experience, knowledge of your customer behavior and strong financial muscle before you can work with them.

All that said though, if you can get your business to meet their standards and criteria, the amount of sales you can get from Groupon or LivingSocial is simply astounding.
These are some of the most powerful methods available for marketing an offline business today. Try to apply as many of these tactics as possible, identity the ones that work best for your business, then rinse and repeat.