Content Queen Mariah

View Original

217: I have too many content ideas, what do I do?

Mariah MacInnes

I know a lot of people struggle with ideas for content creation...

But what about the ones that have ALL the ideas and don't know where to start?

This is just as hard and confusing.

Whether you are:

1. Starting out

2. Haven't posted in a while

3. Posting consistently

I have an answer and solution for you!

If you LOVED the episode, make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag us @contentqueenmariah.

✨ BUILD YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY NOW - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GET BOOTCAMP⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 👇

  • How to compile your content ideas

  • What to do to get started with your content ideas

  • How to align your content ideas strategically

  • How to categorise content

SHOW RESOURCES 👇

If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @contentqueenmariah⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

Other than that, enjoy - chat next week 💕

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

This is episode 217. And I'm answering the question what do I post if I have too many ideas? Welcome to the content game podcast.

I'm your host Mariah entrepreneur, storyteller, digital nomad, creator of content bootcamp and founder of content queen. I'm here to teach you how to share your unique story, create content and market your business with strategy. So the channels that work for you.

Each week, I'll deliver a story to help you connect to a powerful strategy around marketing, business and content creation. I'll also be joined by amazing souls and entrepreneurs who are here to share their own journey, along with actual steps help you take your business to a whole new level, through amazing storytelling, powerful and marketing content strategy. Let's do it.

Hello again. All right. Very interesting question I received in a workshop.

And I'm going to take you through what I would do if you were starting out hadn't posted in a while or you are posting but you've got too many ideas. So stay tuned for that. I'm very excited.

But one thing that's very clear, is, no matter where you're at in your journey, a content strategy will really help and support you. And I know a lot of us don't have them. I know a lot of us definitely don't document them.

So that is why I created content bootcamp, which is a really hands on approach to creating your own content strategy. It is unlike any other course because it's not just learning and educating. It is actually you doing it as we move through the process.

So you are actually creating the strategy and at the end, you have something tangible that you can use. It is very hands on. There is a live component which we're actually doing at the moment, but regardless of when you join, you will be invited to do the live component.

And that is at no extra cost for the first round that you join. But I just wanted to share this because I think a lot of the times yet we're just we're just posting we're just posting without purpose and that is what I'm trying to help you guys with is to post with more purpose, to create content with more purpose because that's when we actually get the results. And what I've infused in content bootcamp is probably something that I haven't seen in any content strategy, and that is storytelling.

This is backed with my experience as a journalist. I studied journalism I did a double degree journalism and PR, and I worked in journalism, PR, internal comms, so I'm infusing the storytelling element which will make your content super unique. So if you haven't got a strategy, and you're looking to get started in really understanding how content marketing can help your business, it's super affordable and the link is in the show notes if you want to join.

So this is a question that I had from someone in a workshop. And they basically were starting out and she was sort of trying to understand what to post because she had all of these ideas. So she in the workshop that we did, which is free workshop, you can download it, it's on demand now.

So it's not live, it's not run live, but you can check it out in the show notes. But basically, we're on the workshop and she's sort of thinking, thinking thinking like I've just got all these ideas at the time. Her target audience was mum entrepreneurs and she really wanted to support them by helping them with VA work, social media management, things like that.

And so she sort of shared her target audience. And one of the big conversations that came from that was like, Okay, well what is what is the struggle of this target audience? So, while she had all these ideas brewing in her head, I said, Let's just start small, and start with the pain point of your client.

And I'm going to talk about that a little bit more in this episode. So basically, what she went and did was she created some pain point related content, which is what we call the top of funnel. And she got a client from that one post she did on the pain point.

She's, I'll talk about her journey at the end. But basically, she was sort of like had all these really cool creative ideas in her head, which were amazing, but she just needed to start in that one space. So when you build out the ideas and create top of funnel content first, then you'll learn expand and bring your ideas to life.

So I'm gonna go through these three scenarios. So pick your battles, pick your journey, where you're at, and no matter where you're at in your journey. This podcast episode will help you so let's dive in.

The first one is you haven't started yet. But you've got all these ideas happening in your head. So let's go back to the person I spoke about at the start of this workshop.

And what we did is we established her target audience and goals throughout that like she was sort of brainstorming that as she went. So from there, we worked out all what you would do is work out all the ideas and then categorize them. So you work out your target audience, you work out your goals, your goal should be based off your business goals.

So once you understand these two things, and of course, going through the strategy will be a lot better. But anyway, we'll just this is what we're going to do for now. So you work out all the ideas that you have and you categorize them.

So you can categorize these in a few ways. You can categorize these into the content buckets, as I call them, the types of content you talk about and you can also categorize them based off where they are in the funnel, top of funnel, meaning that it's people that don't really know you and are starting to get to know you middle of funnel is where you're building more of that trust and the bottom of funnel is sales type content so you can kind of categorize into topics of content and then categorize where they sit in the funnel. So then what you want to do is from those categories of content, you want to identify the top of funnel, and the idea around that piece of content.

So for example, the person that I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, she had identified her target audience, she had identified one key pain point and she created she tested that idea. So you work with that one idea, you test it and you learn and then you either stay with that idea or you move on. Right.

And if you have heaps and heaps of ideas, there's no point throwing them all out there. We've got to be strategic, right. So we categorize them.

We test them, we learn from them and then we can move on to a different idea or we can stay with that one idea. Unfortunately, with content creation, it can be a little bit repetitive at times, because once you have one thing you want to stick with it. I've been talking storytelling and strategy for so long, but I love it and it's an idea that works and people struggle with so I continue to work with it.

But you can see what I mean, like I talk about a lot, you do really want to love the things that you talk about, right? But you do it in a more creative way. So some of those really cool ideas that might be coming through to you.

How can they be categorized into the content that's currently working for you? So as I said, haven't started yet identify target audience and goals, work out all your ideas, categorize them, and then work with one idea, test it and learn. Right?

And then of course, if you haven't started, I would definitely start with a strategy. The second one is you haven't posted in a while. So you've kind of posted at some point and now you've sort of ghosted your audience and you want to get back on the horse, so to speak.

So the first thing I would do is if you've got heaps of ideas, like again, there's nothing wrong with a brain dump. Brain Dump them, store them somewhere. But what I want you to do first is start with the top of funnel content, you've got to warm this audience back up again.

So engage with them through entertaining content through controversial content through aspirational, motivational, that type of content. So start with the top of the funnel, get the sort of eyes back on you through engaging content, nothing, don't just get back out there and start selling your stuff again. Right because your audience is gonna be like, Oh my God, you left and now you're back and you're selling to me.

Start with the top of funnel, get them warmed up again. Get them laughing at your content. Get them thinking about what you're telling them right.

Then you want to build the trust again. So you can start then want warming them up with some more educational content or some middle funnel content. So you're getting them curious and thinking about what you know and start building your authority again, so top of funnel first and then move down to building more trust before you start selling again.

You know, I know a lot of entrepreneurs that actually go social media and come back on to sell. And I think yes, that worked at some point. But now people are like, we're not buying it.

You can't just leave us and then come back and expect us to buy from you again and again. So once you've started to warm that audience back up because it is about brand awareness and warming your audience and building trust so it's brand awareness and consideration in the marketing funnel. And then you so if you've got all these ideas in your head, dump them all down and categorize them into okay, this is top of funnel content and this is middle funnel.

If you want to dive a little bit into the funnels and you're like, Oh, what is this? I don't know anything about this. I'm confused.

Continue to listen to this episode, and then go and listen to the episode in the show notes with Maddie. From birdcage marketing who talks all about funnel content and that will really help you understand what is top of funnel what is middle funnel but basically, it is content that could be something trendy topic wise, but it could also be your pain point of your audience. Just relating to just relate to your audience again.

So you know, it's not about promoting you and your business. It's about connecting with the audience again, and then the building trust type of content is educational. Just adding value in terms of giving your audience something like giving them advice, giving them something that they can do next.

Then after that you really take a strategy serious and start building out your strategy based off what you've found has worked. And then once you've been posting for a while, you can start building blending in your sales strategy into your content so you can start thinking about okay, these are the products and services that I want to offer. This is the content that's working well how can we now start slowly and gradually sharing what we're offering with our audience?

And it might not even be through social media. It could be through anything could be through email marketing, things like that. Now, what I want to explain here is this could this process can be used across multiple different channels.

But we are sort of thinking here about social media. If it was email marketing I would do the same thing. If it was a podcast, you could probably go more into the educational stuff, but it does depend on the purpose of the channel that you are one starting out on or to getting back into.

So for example, if you had been podcasting and you stopped, what worked really well when you were podcasting and try and test that again, and if it doesn't work, I would start engaging with your audience through just really bite sized pieces of information that they can understand. But this goes the same for if you're email marketing, if you're blogging Of course, it's going to be educational, but I would. The good thing about blogging is unless you had a consistent audience before, they're probably not going to know that you are gone.

So this is very much for social media type of content. And the third one is what if I just have too many ideas and I don't know how to categorize them. I don't know what to do with them.

So this is happens a lot, right? I have clients that are always sharing ideas with me. So always, always always, but it doesn't mean we then have to evaluate okay, what is relevant to us?

Now and what is irrelevant for the future. Now this can be very interesting when you're working with someone that is doing the content for you because of course, they want to get ahead in some aspect. Now this is a conversation I was I've been having a lot lately about batching.

So basically if you batch your own content, and then an idea comes up, you might have wiggle room because you do it yourself. You might go oh well okay, I can probably push that post for another day. And then I can share this because it's super topical.

If you work with a big agency one way you're probably known as a small fish, even though you might be paying big fish pricing. There's no room for that. Unfortunately, they've already created your content unless you have a really good agency.

They might go sorry, it's already been posted. We can't do anything about this. Now this is why in my agency I've always taken a very different approach because I really don't like that part about agencies.

So for me, I never batched too far ahead with clients. In fact, we're usually working the week ahead and so there is room for sharing things. But if there isn't room because we have planned out the feeder always recommend all the content.

I'll always recommend my client we could either you know they could share an extra email, for example, or a they could post on their stories. I always like to think Instagram Stories can be a space where it is a little bit more reactive because it's in the now so there's gonna be channels that you could identify as what we call reactive content. So things I can post now, if an idea comes to me so identify what that channel is for you so that if you do have an idea that you feel like needs to go out and now you have the room and you know when you are looking to outsource your content Have a think about the person you're hiring and where there's room for you know little bits and pieces to be added I you know obviously with respect to their time, but that's for if an idea comes up and you need to like action.

Now we need to get on to this. Just look at your channels and look at what their purpose is and how reactive you can be with those channels. So what you're going to do if you have too many ideas and you don't know where to start, is one note down all these ideas, just brain dump them just get them out.

That's the most important thing. What I do if my clients ever send me things I we have a space in our content strategy where I add all these ideas. And then we can look at where then I'll always review that and look at where they can fit in.

You know any given moment. Oh, yep, that makes sense to this. So then look at all these ideas and again, categorize them, preferably for your content topics.

So for example, it was me I would look okay, is this a strategy related piece of content? Is this a storytelling piece of content? Where does it sit in my overall content buckets?

And then of course, you can also categorize them is this like top of funnel, middle funnel bottom funnel content? And again, there's an episode with Maddie who explains more about this, which I highly recommend to check out. Then what you want to do is you want to match each piece of content with an offering because you're already posting you don't need, like your audience is pretty aware of who you are and what you're doing.

Whereas if you hadn't posted for a while or you're just starting out, you know, you have to build that trust. So then match it with an offering and then this is how you can actually build out your sales plan unless you've already got a sales plan. Then so if you've already got a plan of what you're launching what you're selling, you would then match the content pieces to that sales plan.

If you've got all these content ideas, you can then sit down and look at where they fit and what you're going to be selling. So basically then you want to just match the pieces of content with your selling plan. It doesn't mean that every post has to be a sales type piece.

It just means Oh, okay, well, I'm promoting my content bootcamp. So it makes more sense to do the strategy related content. So all these ideas have to do with content strategy.

I'll make sure that these are in the plan for when I'm talking about content bootcamp. So basically, you just want to match things up. Then if you have things that aren't matched, they just don't make sense to an offer.

Then you can use it as top of funnel content just to engage your audience. You could as I mentioned before, share it on Instagram stories or like where there's reactive social media content that a place where you can do that or make it a good meeting in an email you know, send out a just had this thought that popped into my head. Just because you have a content strategy doesn't mean you can't add in little tidbits of content.

If you feel really energetically aligned to it and you think people are going to really resonate. You don't have to hold on to because it doesn't quote unquote, fit into the plan. Right, unless you've got heaps of emails going out and it's just too much, but where can it quickly fit?

Could you do a little mini burn like if you're really passionate about that piece of content? Use it in any way if you've got a podcast quickly do a podcast episode and have it as a bonus episode, or you know, put out a an extra post on social media. run another newsletter, put it on Instagram Stories, tick tock stories, Facebook stories, share it in our Facebook community group and see if people resonate with it.

Post it like just do something with it. If you've got a really cool idea that you think would work or would resonate with your audience. Don't hold on to it, definitely share it.

But make sure you have all those ideas that are swirling in your head dumped somewhere. So that you can you know, see what's going on in your head and what and where they could fit into any kind of sales plan and time type of content strategy. So that will really help you just, I guess, not feel so blocked when you have so many ideas because even though creative flows creative flow, it can block you if you're not doing anything with them or they're just sitting in your mind.

So as I mentioned, this is these sort of scenarios are probably more relevant when you are on social media, but they can work for you know, your podcast, your blog, your email marketing, whatever it looks like. But the common theme across all these is just get them out of your head so you can see where they fit into what you're trying to do. Then you can categorize them based off your content buckets, the funnel and then if you're, you know, further, like you're already consistently posting how they match to what you want to sell and what you want to offer.

And then if you have a space where they're all brain dumped, you can just tick them off as you've done them and then you feel like all these ideas are getting wasted, and they're actually getting used, but at the end of the day like some ideas might not ever come to life. Some of them, you know, make for great stories down the track. You don't have to use every idea that ever comes to you that you think you could create content about because some of them might feel like a really good idea at the time and then you write it down then you go back over and look at you like oh, that probably doesn't really resonate anymore.

But I love to have a bank of stories, a bank of content that I can always draw on when I'm planning out my content. So to take you through a little bit of my content planning process because I don't batch content a month in advance. What I do though, is every month I sit down and I build out my core podcast topic.

And then once I've built out the core podcast topic, I you know, just leave it there and organize interviews and whatever I have to do and then once a month I build out, you know, roughly what I would like to talk about in my weekly emails and then that could change again, if something comes up like I don't write them, I just plan them. Think about what I'm going to talk about and then on the week that I go to write it, does it still resonate, does it not? And then with social media stuff, I have my strategy so I know what I like what type of content I'm posting on any given day.

And then I just match it to the theme of the podcast every week and I come up with ideas from there and then I write the content and start building it out. But all these ideas that come to me midweek like I get them down I get them out of my head and then I make them fit into the plan. But as I said if something comes up and you feel like you got to post it now have spaces that you can do that.

That's why we have things like the stories on social media. That's why you could film a video and post it on any kind of social media platform. That's what we have the live option as well, like you go live and talk about it.

That's why you know, there's no rules on how much content you can send. It's just based off what your audience resonates with but again, if you have the energy and you're really inspired by what you want to talk about, don't hold on to it because by the time you know you might want to go talk about it. You might not feel the same passion, but also with that depends on your personality type.

If you're really aggravated about something might not be the best idea to hit live and start sharing it on social media. You might want to wait for it to you know CMR and then talk about it but again, it depends on the topic and what it is. An example that came to me was when I was COVID just started.

And I wanted to know I had already sort of planned roughly what my podcast episodes were going to be about but I thought well this might be a really good time to talk about my PR background and talk about what to do in a crisis. So I asked people on my stories if that was the topic that they wanted to hear about. And they said yes, so then I just switched around my podcast topics.

But that's why it's always good to just have a rough plan and things like that so that you can make adjustments and things like that. But you know, wherever you're at in your journey, whether you're starting out whether you haven't personally well or whether you just have too many ideas. Having a strategy is really does help you with this.

It just makes everything concise. And then the more you have a strategy, like when you have a strategy and the more you you know work to it, the more you realize how many things fit in so if you have heaps and heaps of ideas, you can see where they fit in to what you're trying to plan and it does all fit and it does all make sense. So if you've got too many ideas and you don't have a content strategy that really is the best place to start with and then you can, you know, have a place to filter those ideas and they're not just random and they just, they're not like they don't make sense.

That's why it's like important to have intentional purpose led content that makes sense to what you're trying to achieve, but you need to understand what you're trying to achieve before you start doing that. I always have ideas I understand this episode might not resonate with everyone because there's some people are like, I don't have any ideas. Like nothing ever comes to me.

But I know there's lots of people like I always have ideas like what do I do with them? And so that's why I decided to create this episode because I totally feel you on this and actually there's times where like, we can feel uninspired. And that's why it's good to have these ideas written down somewhere so that when you're not feeling inspired, you have somewhere to turn.

So yeah, having some kind of, we actually also have an episode about content libraries and creating content libraries based off ideas and things like that. So check out that episode if you want to be a bit more organized with how you align your content. But I'd love to know where you sit in this if you are struggle with ideas or if you have zero ideas.

Sorry you struggle with ideas or you have too many ideas. If you're listening to it on Spotify, this is really cool poll feature. So I've created a poll.

So do the poll. If you're listening to on Spotify, if you're not and you have me on Instagram, just tell me where you're at. Like I'd love to know if you struggle or if you always have too many ideas and if this episode helped you in any way, so I want to loop back to the story of the woman at the start.

So once she actually explored her niche, and her content and sort of like had all these ideas, but then like brought them to life and started actioning them she actually started to work out and this is a really powerful part of the message because the more you action, those ideas the more you start to learn what you like and what you don't like because if you don't act on them, you don't know. So she started to work out what she likes in terms of who she likes working with and what type of content she likes to create. And she actually shifted her marketing focus.

So while she's still supporting business owners with their bid what with VA work and social media marketing, she's also creates amazing digital products. So she's now using sort of a marketing focus on that area while still being able to serve her clients and not necessarily posting content on social media directly marketing to them. And she's sort of now got this two level dimension business that could go in any way and she's creating some really, really cool creative content.

And she's got all these endless ideas that she can play with. But she learned by doing and I think that's the key thing like whilst at the beginning of the workshop, she was super overwhelmed because like I've got all these ideas, all she had to do was sort of work out who she was speaking to what her goals were that top of funnel content where she started and then she was able to the more she created, the more she started to learn what worked what didn't, but it's just by doing and if you do have are a person that's always got ideas, test them, see what that marketing is all about testing. So see what works, you know, see what works for you and you weren't until you start that's the biggest thing.

And no matter where you're at in your journey, like it's interesting with this because it doesn't matter if you've been consistently posting for, you know, three, four years or whether you're starting out or whether you're a bit of a you know, you post sometimes you don't we all have the same sort of issues of either we have too much ideas and it paralyzes us from using them or we you know, never find the time to action. Every one no matter where you're at in your journey, not alone. It's just a different part of the journey that you're at.

So if you ever do want to have a session together to work out your content strategy, I do strategy sessions. I don't talk about that often. But I do strategy sessions.

I'll put the link in the show notes. The process basically is before we start the session, I send you questions I start to understand more about you and your business and your brand. And then we have a 90 minute dumping session.

So we do this we get all those ideas out. And then what I do is I work out how it fits into your strategy. We do that on the call, but then I go away and I put it all together and present it to you in a strategy that you can implement.

So maybe if you do have all these ideas in your head, it is good just to have a session with someone that can really help you just get them out and make them make sense, you know, so if you want to have a session together, we can totally do that. And I would love to learn more about you and your business. But yeah, I always love to know where everyone's at in their journey so and I love getting messages from you guys on social So continue to send me messages tell me where you're at.

And if you're on Spotify, answer my poll or know where you're at. I love this poll feature on Spotify. It's super fun.

There be a content queen or king and remember that developing your strategy and story develops your business. Thank you so much for joining me today and please don't forget to share this with your business and entrepreneurial friends can do this by adding it to your Instagram stories. It's a little bit of reactive content there and tag us at content Queen Mariah or just tell them about it.

Share it with them, share them the link, let them have a listen. And if you do rate and review it does allow me to get more guests on I get more pictures. A lot of guests coming on have been people that have reached out to me because they see my podcasts in the charts.

I think that's just super cool. So if you want more amazing content, rate and review, that's all I ever ask of you.

That would be amazing. Follow me on Instagram or Tiktok and just let me know if there's any topics you want to talk about. I would love to cover them for you and love to answer your questions.

Otherwise, if you're listening to this live, I will be celebrating this week of turning 30 So I'm going to Machu Picchu so if you follow on social you'll see the updates on all of the digital nomad journey so I will see you over there. Bye!

See this social icon list in the original post