Workout Your Idea Muscles
Treat social media content creation like the gym...
The more you work out, the better the results.
Before I made the commitment to create social media content on a consistent basis, my social media presence was a real shitshow, let me tell you.
There were days, weeks - and even a couple months - where I didn’t post a single thing. I mean, as a photographer, the least I could’ve done was post some damn pictures, right?
Nope.
I found the whole process of creating social media content to be super confusing, frustrating and ultimately, a waste of my time.
I would sit down and want to create something, but, I’d always get in my own way:
Does this sentence even make sense? Does the tone of the caption work with my brand? Should I try to make people laugh? Be more serious? Is one sentence enough for a caption? Does this photo work with what I’m writing in the caption? Hashtags - oh dammit, I forgot to add them!!!! Screw this - I’ll try again later...
Needless to say, “later” became tomorrow, which became next week…
And that cycle of creative paralysis continued for YEARS…
Until I received some game changing advice offered by several marketing, branding and social media experts in my community to start teaching important lessons through storytelling.
And that’s when I created a fool-proof system for generating endless amounts of social media content ideas - I refer to them as “idea nuggets” - that I can tap into when I sit down and create my content for the upcoming month.
But how?
The first step is the hardest - it involves making a commitment to yourself that yes, social media content is important to the growth of my business, and yes, I must make time in my schedule to create the content that will help me gain visibility for my expertise, because, yes, this effort will positively affect my bottom line.
The key to sticking to this line of thinking revolves around repetition.
The more you do it, the easier the process becomes - that’s how you develop strong, idea muscles.
It’s all about conditioning the brain to be more receptive to capturing authentic moments in your life by leveraging your smartphone and knowing your way around the camera.
As a result, I’ve developed into what I refer to as a “content sniper” - always on the lookout to write down interesting thoughts and details that happen throughout my day that I feel I can expand upon, story-wise, in order to teach a lesson to my audience.
In fact, I’ve interrupted just about every single meeting I've had over the past year and a half where I had to stop and write an interesting idea down that come up in conversation.
Since I have created a system for categorizing the types of stories I want to share, the ideas are now narrowed and focused, and flailing around for inspiration is no longer a challenge.
Teaching this system for idea nugget generation is a cornerstone piece of my one-on-one program, the Idea Nugget Incubator.
In addition to learning how to generate, organize and execute ideas and, eventually, develop them into consistent, social media content, the Idea Nugget Incubator program will also teach you how to choose effective and compelling images that visually punctuate the sentiment in those stories you write.
The goal for everyone who participates in the Idea Nugget Incubator program to feel educated and empowered to position themselves as the authority of your given expertise through your social media feeds.
The dread of sitting in front of an empty caption with no clue as to what to write will be a thing of the past!
Interested in learning more about the Idea Nugget Incubator? Go check it out here.
PS - For those of you who aren’t in the know, I mail out these blogs 3x a week, and lemme tell you, they’re a real party, so, if you’d like to get in on this, sign up for it here and I’ll throw in a free gift for you, because I care, :)