Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

For me, content is either preplanned or is triggered by something that bothers me and I simply HAVE to blast out a post.

I often ask myself, “What is driving me nuts right now, or what makes me happy just thinking about it?” and that becomes fresh content.

Several ways to keep feeding the beast….

1)  Use a monthly or weekly editorial calendar, particularly to help you write seasonal, holiday-related or event-specific blog/Facebook posts or tweets.

Why do you think that “get organized” articles come up every January, and “get ready for bikini season” stuff arrives in women’s magazines like clockwork in April or May? Soup recipes in November, fruit tart recipes in July and August….all of it is evergreen content, re-done every year. Same with those “how to get the most out of XYZ Conference” posts you see before events, followed by link-heavy “Here’s what I learned at XYZ Conference” afterward.

In our very first Tourism Currents newsletter, we talked about editorial calendars for content planning, because it’s that important to have a strategy for what you publish.

2)  Have some way to track the random insights that pop into your head; they often become popular posts if you move fast to articulate your unique point of view on a topical issue. Some people use electronic services like Evernote to record them; I use a notepad and pen (which always boot up.)

Also keep some notetaking device near your bed, because it’s amazing how many ideas will occur to you as you’re falling asleep.  No, you will not remember them in the morning. Trust me.

3)  Which key words and phrases are people using to discover answers in your industry? What are they asking about on LinkedIn Answers, on Quora, on Twitter, in person at conferences, etc? Your answers to those questions are all potential blog posts. Include the keywords in your headline; that’s great SEO because you are using exactly the same “How do I….?” words that people are typing into search engine boxes, and bots like to bring back results that exactly match queries.

That’s what I did for this post – I did a quick analysis of the phrases people use when they do a search about how to blog, then wrote my title.

4)  Sometimes the best posts are images or video, with just a little text.

Always have a camera with you, and periodically scroll your archives for photos or videos that were buried and never edited. I wrote a post about a simple integrated marketing communication example based on a photo that I’d forgotten I’d taken till I did an archive review.

5)  Never waste content. I took my answer to a blogging question on Quora and it became this blog post.

There’s one more piece of content in the can for me, my thoughts kill two birds, and the gaping maw is pacified for one more day. 

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One of the takeaway points at my SoMeT blogging/content presentation was to spend more time focusing on the small details of your destination. Look at the world through a mental soda straw to shed light on the unique and interesting, rather than only writing list posts (“Top 10 Beaches” blah blah) or broad overviews.

This photo is to illustrate the concept.

It was taken with a Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot camera, but using the Macro (close-up) mode, which can do some really fun stuff for you.

It is part of the patterned door of an antique pie safe at Clyde’s Willow Creek Farm, a unique restaurant and tavern in Broadlands, Virginia which is part of the Washington, DC area’s wine country (and a big thank you, preservationists for keeping our history alive in such places.)

See the poked-up holes?

Those are made by sticking a nail through the thin metal to make decorative patterns that also provide ventilation for the pies stored on shelves within.

Can you now imagine someone laboriously doing that by hand a long time ago….poke-poke-poke, but always with design in mind, like the paisley swirl detail seen in the photo?  It brings joy to an everyday piece of furniture while also serving a purpose.

Takeaway from this:   Soda straw. Get super-close. Use your camera’s Macro setting. Find those little miniature landscapes that tell a story.

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It’s a simple formula, really.

To create and publish great content (blog posts, Facebook Page Wall notes, videos, tweets) you need….

1)  Lots of good ideas about something that interests you, a way to record those ideas and time to do so

2)  An editorial calendar to coherently organize and schedule the ideas – expanded into content – for publication, and time to think about and work on the calendar

3)  Structured blocks of time to create all of the great content that you’ve thought of, then organized and scheduled

Three simple things, and time ties them all together.

Number One is doing fine for me;  I have a whole notebook of blog post ideas that I carry around, and I keep notecards by the bed in case of late-night rockets of brilliance to the brain. Read Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life for more insights into organizing your ideas.

I used to be pretty good with Number Two, then fell off of the planning wagon, got tired of pulling content out of my left ear at the last minute, and stumbled wearily back to the calendar.  The key is to schedule time to think through and craft the calendar, organize the content ideas and fit it all into your workflow. Go read Becky McCray’s post on the six most important things; it will help.

I am not doing so well at Number Three.

My basic schedule for keeping up with 3 blogs means a post for one of them each day, Monday through Friday (this blog is scheduled for every Tuesday and Friday. Ain’t happening, is it?)

This means I need a more functional schedule. It also means I am considering dropping one of the blogs for which I’ve run out of creative energy. In my Navy shipboard engineering days, the electricians called that “load-shedding”….dropping noncritical items off of the power grid to ensure power to vital systems and equipment.

It does not mean I need to “make time.”

You can’t “make time.”  That goose is already cooked. No one gets extra helpings of time or special favors from the Wizard of Time.

24 hours. That’s it.

As usual, strategist and thinker Chris Brogan has a thoughtful take on time. Here is the direct link to his video on YouTube if you can’t see the box below.

I found it helpful, and hope you will, too.