Right now, this blog post is part of a 90 day challenge to publish at least one piece of content every day. I’ve decided to either publish a blog post or a Youtube video, in the hope that if I miss one I can at least produce something everyday.
The last time I attempted anything like this was back in early 2017, and it didn’t go well. It was a 5-day challenge to write every day and I fell flat on my face after day 3. It was a great experience and a lot of fun.
But my lousy excuse is, in my defence the participants were told what to write about on most of the days, and I’m far too rebellious for that.
This new challenge was created by Miles Beckler, who I’ve mentioned a few times in my videos. And this time we can choose the topics to write about, so its game on.
And after 20 years in digital marketing, you already know the what I’m gonna write about, don’t ya?
But something has been bugging me; how do I write 90 articles, while keeping it real and heart-centric?
You see, there’s a temptation to take the lazy-man option and write about the latest news from the digital marketing world. But honestly, I feel like I’d be doing a disservice to my readers. So nope, I gotta make sure all my posts are on-point, and either provide insights or actionable tips.
And I’ve gotta do it all without burning out.
Gulp.
So here’s what I’ve decided to do.
Every piece of content I produce, either as a blog post or a Youtube video, will help my audience achieve something.
And in my niche, there’s A LOT of things my audience wants to achieve.
So in Evernote I wrote down a list of headlines that will appeal to my audience, like this:
“How to SEO your Youtube videos”
“How to promote Black Friday deals”
“When is the best time to email your list?”
You get the idea, right?
As you can see I’ve already made these into Youtube videos.
I figure ‘how-to’ content is going to be the most valuable for my audience, so there’s a heavy focus on that.
But then I thought, ya know what, I can take this one step further.
The framework to generate ideas
Using the escape and arrival product creation framework that Frank Kern teaches, I’ve looked at the entire journey a blogger needs to take – from starting out and finding their passion, to getting traffic and selling their own products.
Then I’ve broken down each major step into smaller ones, and taken a deeper dive into each of those smaller stages.
For example, let’s pretend your blog is all about tropical fish tanks. The escape and arrival framework for your audience might look like this:
- Type of aquarium
- Choose equipment
- Decide which fish species
So you’d drill down into each one of these giant topics, like this:
Type of Aquarium:
- Tropical
- Marine
- Coldwater
- Brackish
You can even break down these further if you want to, and drill down to the smallest component inside that step.
Now suddenly, there’s a whole lot more than just 90 days worth of ideas.
And that’s just from making ‘how to’ content. We’ve got loads of different types of content to choose from.
There are opinion pieces, lists, reviews, interviews, comparisons, round-ups, research posts, case studies, the list just goes on and on.
Now there’s an abundance of ideas that stretch far beyond the initial 90 days.
And the cool thing is, I’m free to mix things up however I like. If I don’t feel like talking about setting the DNS for your domain name (yawn), then I’m able to talk about how I set up my lighting for videos, or whatever else I like.
So instead of being stuck for ideas you’ve now got a clear structure to use, if you want to. And there are no restrictions, no limits, you’re just creating a flood of content that helps your audience progress a little bit further each time.
Cool stuff, right?
If you’ve found this useful, pay it forward and share it with others who can benefit from it too – they might be thankful that you did.