A vital part of today’s startup is content marketing. Not only you show that you an industry expert with interesting insights, but over time can share long term vision with others and it becomes easier to lead others. Unfortunately, you cannot get lots of help from copywriters, since they will be telling their version of future, not yours. So how to keep those content ideas coming? Sharing what works for me.
First, always be for lookout for some interesting ideas: whether its a chat with friend, colleague, or news article. The world is full of ideas and as an expert you will naturally react to it. As CEO, you will get privillege of exposure of even more ideas: feedback from customers, employees, industry experts. Some ideas resonate with you, some are b*#&! – either reaction is great. Mark all of them down on the paper so you don’t forget. You will likely discard 90% of the ideas as not newsworthy, but thats ok!
Train you creativity muscle. My friend shared the story of Onion writer, who had to produce 25 content sketches per week. No excuses. Initially it sounds hard or almost impossible, but after few weeks it becomes as normal as brushing your teeth. The awesome side-effect is that this creativity spills into product as well. As long as you can filter out crappy ideas in objective way – you are good!
Finally, some ideas expire. My product and industry (CityNow – real estate interactive map and news outlet) is changing rapidly. Sometimes I look into sketches of content which I started a month ago, and don’t get excited anymore to write about it or the news are no longer relevant to the audience. It feels like fishing – the fun and productive part is 1% of the time spent. But maybe tomorrow you will get inspiration for your best PR idea?
Ready to train your muscle? Write us (info@citynow.org) your 5 ideas, how you would improve CityNow product and help us improve. Also let me know what you would like to hear about and lets make it interactive 🙂 Cheers
