You want to create more content.
Social media updates, blogs, and guest posts that convey your ideas about the problems you and your audience care about. Content that cultivates connection and community.
Yes, you know content development matters:
You don’t need more convincing, you need more time.
Even if we can’t add more hours to the day, we can carve out time for content development.
Simple steps for consistent content development
It’s embarrassing, really.
I’ve been writing professionally since 2004; I started blogging three years ago.
So, my content creation strategy has always been anchored in my writing.
But I battled to maintain a consistent writing schedule.
At times, it felt like an impossible task.
I was listening to a podcast where the host was talking about how difficult it was to find the time to write. In response, he woke up at 3:30am every day.
My heart sank.
Ask anyone who’s trying to lead a fulfilling life at work—and home.
With two young children and a full-time job, there’s no way I’d get to bed early enough to wake up at 3:30am to write.
Resting is important. Skimping on sleep is out of the question.
Fortunately for us, there are strategies to develop content regularly when you’re juggling competing priorities.
Here’s 4 tactics to keep you consistent.
Establish a content development habit
Establish a habit: a dedicated slot you devote to creating content.
It doesn’t need to be hours long. In fact, most mornings I write for about 25 minutes before I get ready for work. And that’s the caveat, try to do this first thing in the morning.
You don’t need to set a 3:30am alarm. Try rising 30 minutes before you need to start getting ready.
Before long, a 25-minute content development habit will be a firm part of your morning routine.
Habits work best when they’re part of a process.
For instance, when I realised I needed to improve my writing skills if I wanted to succeed as a freelancer, I followed a strict process, which included:
- Reading: about my interests (writing) and other fields. This is great for generating new ideas. (And as Stephen King says On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, “You cannot hope to sweep someone away by the force of your writing until it’s happened to you.”)
- Writing practice: Rewriting writing I admire in my own words
- Blogging: working a blog post I planned to publish that week
- Learning: gaining a deeper understanding into the mechanics of writing. How do I use a comma correctly?
For more on habit development, check our James Clear’s blog and book, Atomic Habits.
To make a habit stick, said Clear, it needs to be:
- Obvious
- Attractive
- Easy
- Satisfying
What this means for content development depends on your routine. Perhaps, you’d set up a space for writing at home (easy). Maybe you’d need to place your content to-do list on your bedside table (obvious). It helps to determine your overarching “why” to fuel your mission (attractive).
Create a content development bubble
The key to getting the most out of your daily content development sessions is to eliminate distractions.
One step to achieve this is to build a focus bubble, suggests Robin Sharma.
Here’s tips:
- Put your phone in another room
- Don’t check our social media or email before you write
- Use a pomodoro timer for brief sessions of deep concentration
Hold yourself accountable
Committing myself to a weekly blog supercharged my consistency. (That, along with writing processes.)
Make it easy on yourself and decide on a publishing frequency you can maintain.
In this enduring 2002 blog post, Mark Bernstein writes:
“If you are inconsistent, readers will conclude you are untrustworthy. If you are absent, readers will conclude you are gone. It’s better to keep religiously to a once-a-week, or once-a-fortnight schedule, than to go dark mysteriously.”
If it all falls apart one morning, don’t fret. Kids get sick. You get tired. Life happens. Get back to your schedule the following day. If it’s repeatedly impossible to put in the time, consider changing your routine.
Plan your content development sessions
It’s happened to all of us.
Suddenly; you have unexpected free time. Sounds great, right? The only problem is you have no idea what to do with yourself.
Now, I don’t think that’s the worst thing in general; however, it’s a bit different when it comes to content creation sessions.
There’ve been mornings where I haven’t written a single word.
Back then, I thought I was short on motivation, but I really lacked clarity.
Plan your content creation projects. Know exactly what you need to do.
An app like Todoist can break up a big content creation project (like writing a blog or creating a weekly content calendar) into smaller chunks.
Consistent content development comes with opportunity.
Opportunity to forge deeper connections with people from across the world, to build a community around a shared mission.
If you’re looking for more, check out my blog post on a simple process for content development.
Featured image credit: Photo by LinkedIn Sales Navigator on Unsplash
