I’ve greatly improved my process for creating social media content in a centralized place.
The basic workflow is this:
Create a Google Doc in a folder called “Social Posts”
Kick off a Make automation that watches that folder, and adds a new entry to my “Social Media content” base in Airtable. A schedule date is also determined.
Then my VA goes in and reviews the documents, creating images as needed, and posting them on the scheduled dates.
They say the best-laid plans of mice and men go awry. Naturally the week I planned to work on my calendars and build in more margin for content, I was sick in bed for 3 days. Though to be fair, this was the first time in 2 years, after successfully avoiding school germs since my kids went back.
My problem, which may be apparent in the content I produced that week, is that it was late or rushed…which is not how I want my content to be. And while I know life happens, there are several ways to be prepared in the event that you can’t produce content when you intend to.
Creating consistent content is hard for a lot of people – but there are a few things you can do to have what I like to call “backup content.”
One of the worst feelings as a content creator is having no ideas for the day/week/month. Coming up with good content can be hard, stress-inducing, and lead to burn out or anxiety that frankly isn’t worth it! But I have some good news: there are no bad ideas in brainstorming, and coming up with ideas is easier when you’re not also putting pressure on yourself.
One of the main topics I speak about in both my Consistent Content YouTube Video and the upcoming videos for Podcast Liftoff is idea capture. Now there are lots of ways to capture ideas. Your phone probably has a built-in app. Your computer definitely does. Pen and paper are always an option. But once you capture, you need to do something with that info, so using the right tool is important. I’ve found the right tool for me. It’s an app called Tot.
Imagine you are taking a test. You are presented with several word problems and are instructed to pick one to solve. Instead what you do is write your own problem – one that you think is a good one to solve, and answer that one. You’re so confident that the teacher will be impressed because you thought of it and you love it and you think it’s a great solution. But when you get the test back, it has a big red F on it. How could that be? Your solution is sound and well thought out. You were invested in it! The teacher explains that while the solution seems like a good one, you didn’t solve any of the problems he asked you to solve. You made up your own based on what you believe. This is a bad way to take tests. But this happens all the time with new products or services. I will come up with an idea I think is great, sink time and money into it, and ultimately it will fail. The reason is I’m trying to solve problems people don’t think they have. The key to a successful product or service is to solve actual problems.
A while back, I bought the domain http://tilpodcast.co somewhat on a whim. I had just started listening to podcasts and felt this would be a good theme for one, whatever the that theme may be. I thought of doing something tech or web development related, but those are a dime a dozen. So I still needed a solid idea for the podcast; then it came to me while talking with two sets of friends on two separate occasions.
The first one was with my friend Nate, who had mentioned to me that he missed the “academic” conversations he’d have in college since getting a full time job; the more intellectual ones with discussion and debate. That planted the seed. The second one was with a group of friends while we were discussing some recent legislation- there was a lot of back and forth, fact checking, and opinion giving. That’s when the idea solidified. This would be a great idea for the podcast. I pitched the idea to my friends right there and they really liked the idea as well. So with that, the TIL Podcast is:
A general knowledge podcast where a group of friends get together and discuss current events, news topics, and technology.
The basic format is this: each week we will have a subject or two and discuss them for about 30-40 minutes (total). We’ll cover what the subject is and some issues surrounding it. We hope to cover a wide gamut of categories from news to tech to whatever seems interesting; we are also up for suggestions.
We had our first recording earlier this week and it will go live on Sunday, December 1st. The topic is the Coin digital card. We are all really excited about the podcast and we hope you like it! All of the podcasts, show notes, and more information are up at tilpodcast.co.
