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- The Infinite Content Engine
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I’ve been doing this for 15 months (and writing online much longer than that).
The hardest part of that level of consistency?
Generating enough ideas to write every day.
You must constantly fill your content pipeline.
Recently, a few people have asked about my process for finding quality content and generating content ideas.
So today, I want to give an overview of how I think about that.
(Note: This will be high-level. If you find this valuable and want to go deeper, reply to this email and let me know. I may put together a short course on this topic if there’s enough interest.)
1. Identify your audience
Before you start generating ideas or finding quality content to share with your audience, you want to identify WHO you’re writing for.
To me, this is more important than what you write about (which will vary).
A few examples of who you may write for:
B2B SaaS salespeople
Stay-at-home parents
Industrial architects
Software engineers
Golf enthusiasts
It can be anyone.
But it’s essential to be able to visualize the specific archetype you’re writing for.
2. Clarify what they value
Once you know who you’re writing for, you want to think about what they value.
A few ways to think about that:
What are their problems?
What are their passions?
What do they like to learn?
How can you help them?
This is where many get tripped up.
They assume what THEY value is what their audience values.
In a dream scenario, that’s true.
But it’s also often NOT true, and the result is you create content that your audience feels lukewarm about.
So, identify your audience then clarify what they value.
3. Find quality content sources
Once you clarify what your audience values, you can start to find quality content sources around those topics.
There are lots of places you can look for content or inspiration for your own ideas.
The five biggest formats I look at are:
Books
YouTube
Websites
Podcasts
Newsletters
Go to these different platforms and search keywords that fit your audience and what they value.
4. Share what you learn
Once you find quality content sources, then your focus should be on sharing what you learn.
You can consume content and distill the key lessons or insights.
You can summarize a piece of content for your audience, saving them time.
Or you can use the content to spark your own original ideas (here’s my favorite ideation framework).
At this point, you can feel confident that you’re creating quality content that will be valuable to your audience.
Putting it into action
Here’s a quick example of how I may go through this exercise for my audience:
Identify my audience
A large part of my audience are leaders in business (eg. executives) and sports (eg. head coaches).
Clarify what they value
Leaders across business and sports are constantly trying to improve their personal performance, as well as the performance of their teams.
Find quality content sources
A few of my favorite content sources for this audience:
Books: anything on leadership or personal development
YouTube: I love the TED YouTube channel
Website: I love Harvard Business Review
Podcast: The Finding Mastery podcast is great
Newsletter: The Growth Equation is a great newsletter on the science of peak performance
Those are five examples of content sources I use to find valuable content ideas for my audience.
The more sources you can have in each of these formats, the better.
Summary
To recap, here are the steps to build an infinite content engine:
Identify your audience
Clarify what they value
Find quality content sources
Share what you learn
Was this helpful?
What questions do you have?
As I mentioned at the top, we’re just scratching the surface here.
If there’s enough interest, I’ll think of a way to go deeper on this topic and flush out the framework for you.
1:1 Consulting
FYI: I offer a few 1:1 consulting calls each month to help folks:
build their personal brands
grow their social media audience
improve their writing
If you’d like personal help with any of the above — or something else related to writing or social media — reply to this email with “1:1 call.”
Thanks for reading.