It’s a beautiful, hot Saturday morning in Algarve. I’ve been sitting at this coffee shop for 52 minutes and I’ve just finished planning all my content for the rest of the year. What used to take me an hour or more each week, is done! This is unbelievable. I cannot believe how free and relaxed I feel knowing that the hard part is done. If you’ve been following DIGIPIV on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn this year, you would have seen that I’ve been dedicated to providing you with useful content to help you improve your business online and not get left behind.  

So how did I do it? 

Well, it’s simple. After realising that I wasn’t creating enough content because each week I got busy with client work and never found the time, I decided it was time to block book time. All that meant was that every Monday morning I would wake up, work out, shower, make a cup of coffee, and then sit down at my laptop to think of a content topic to speak about that week. The thinking and writing part took me about 45min. After which I would set up my camera setup and record a video speaking about that topic for a few minutes. By the time I finished all of this, it was usually midday, I was hungry and still needed to edit.  

Why was this still not efficient? 

Well because every week I was spending hours and hours rinsing and repeating the same steps and still my content had no flow. Nothing was planned. What was I going to speak about next week? I didn’t know. What was the outcome and how was this content helping my audience? I wasn’t sure. The problem is that I was thinking of a new topic, recording, editing and posting every week without a long term vision. Don’t get me wrong. At least I was doing more than 90% of other entrepreneurs. Most do not create any content at all. Or if they do they put out a random piece of content once every 3 months. But still, I’m a man of excellence. I like to do things properly. And more than that I like to help people long term. There had to be a better way. And there is.  

What am I trying now? 

My life and my business live by two words. Continuous improvement. I’m not perfect but I always try to improve on everything I do. Content planning and creating is one of them. Yesterday I decided to block time in my calendar to get this done. I knew my girlfriend would be at work and I could invest a bit of time to improve this process. So I woke up, got dressed, got into my car and chose a local coffee shop to sit and think and write in my notebook (yes I am trying to write more and not just type). In my calendar, I had blocked off 4 hours to finish this task. The task was to plan all my content topics and what I wanted to teach in my videos for the rest of the year. What happened was interesting. I did it in only 52 minutes. What!?!? Insane. This is how I did it.  

The content producing machine model 

• Come up with 4 content pillars you want to teach about. Think of these as content category buckets.  
• Work out how many weeks you have left until the end of the year. In my case, there are 21 weeks left in 2021. 

• Divide that number by 4. In my case, 21 / 4 = 5.25. Therefore I only need 5 topics for each one of my categories (plus one extra in any content pillar I choose) to have enough content to last me until the end of the year. Yes baby ? 
• Now go nuts and write a topic/title under each content pillar until you reach your quota.  

I managed to come up with 21 topics in 52 minutes. Insane. And since I have some extra time available this morning, I whipped out my phone and wrote this blog which I’ll post on my website later today. Efficiency. That’s what it’s about. DIGIPIV is a service-based business backed by a small team. That means there is no time to waste so I have to be efficient and effective in everything I do.  

How this helps me…and you. 

Now that I have 21 awesome topics, I can relax knowing that the thinking part is done. I don’t have to worry about coming up with new ideas or suffering from writer’s block. When I sit down to record my next video, I can now sit down in front of my camera, open my notebook, pick one of the topics I wrote down today, hit record and start talking. Usually, I speak for about 12 minutes. But today has saved me hours of stress and research each week.  

I hope this helped you and I invite you to try this technique out for yourself. I suggest getting out of the house or office when you do it. A change of scenery in a new environment is super inspiring and gives you a fresh new set of ideas.  

Let me know if you already use this technique and how it helps you in the comments below. If you haven’t, open your calendar right now and book a timeslot in it to get out, head over to a coffee shop and focus on this task. Good luck?