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9 Content Ideas for When You’re in a Creative Slump
We all have them – creativity slumps. As you know, one of the reasons I’m such a huge proponent of batching is to decrease these slumps, but they still happen. Sometimes it’s time to create content and you just don’t have any ideas on what to talk about or how to serve your people.
So today, I’m giving you 9 different content ideas that you can take with you into those slumps. In fact, if you follow through and do this week’s action step, you’ll have a content bank of 45 different ideas you can save for those days when you just aren’t feeling it.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- If you want your business to grow, effective marketing is crucial. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend a ton of time on your marketing – even if you’re a solopreneur. Do you dream of business growth, but aren’t gaining traction? Does the thought of tackling your marketing feel daunting? Or, do you understand the importance of effective marketing, but simply don’t have the time to get it done? There’s good news! Marketing doesn’t have to be so overwhelming, confusing, and complicated. Say goodbye to the confusion and complexity that has held you back, and say hello to a clear, actionable roadmap for business growth. In my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, I’ll take you on a journey to demystify marketing with simplicity as your guiding principle. You’ll walk away with a clear, concise, and personalized marketing strategy designed specifically for your entrepreneurial journey. You don’t need a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or a background in business to tackle your marketing head-on thanks to the strategies and techniques in this book that deliver real results. No longer will marketing feel like an insurmountable mountain; instead, it will become an easily manageable and integral part of your business. Take your content from non-existent or inconsistent, to a true tool to grow your business by Chasing Simple Marketing. You can grab your own copy by heading to Amazon and searching for Chasing Simple Marketing, or you can hop over to amandawarfield.com/book/ to learn more about buying it for yourself.
- This week’s action step: Take a few minutes and brainstorm 5 different pieces of content for each of these 8 ideas.
- This week’s book recommendation: Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen
- Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield
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Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate
We all have them. Creativity slumps. As you know, one of the reasons I’m such a huge proponent of batching is to decrease these slumps, but they still happen. Sometimes it’s time to create content and you just don’t have any ideas on what to talk about or how to serve your people. So today I’m giving you nine different content ideas that you can take with you into those slumps.
In fact, if you follow through and do this week’s action step, you’ll have a content bank of 45 different ideas that you can save for those days when you just aren’t feeling it. You’re listening to episode 173 of The Chasing Simple Podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own copy at amandawarfield.com / book.
How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?
Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend. This is Chasing Simple Where Practical Marketing Strategy Meets Simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.
I traded in my classroom lesson plan to helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.
When I’m working, you can find me working with one-on-one clients, such as the contract shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or how my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell reading in our hammock watching Gamecock Sports traveling or forcing our cats to snuggle me.
If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really wanna be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.
Which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week offer you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.
So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips and advice on uncomplicated your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just have to share something that I’m really excited about with you.
My book, Chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but without that Master’s of Business Administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing. Overwhelming and frustrating.
Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity focused journey to improve your content marketing, and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amanda warfield.com/book.
I’ll see you there. The first type of content that you could put out when you’re in a slump is to create some kind of collaboration. So that would mean going to a friend or another industry expert and saying, Hey, I would love for you to write a. Guest blog post for my website. I would love for you to be a guest on my podcast.
I would love for you to come be a guest on my YouTube channel or do an Instagram live with me, whatever that would look like. The beauty of collaborations is that typically the guest is doing the heavy lifting as far as coming up what to talk about or they should be. And that is why when we are pitching ourselves for collaborations, We really should be doing the heavy lifting.
If you haven’t already, go listen to episode 164, how to write a successful pitch for podcasts. We should be doing the heavy lifting though when we’re pitching ourselves for collaborations because all of us get into these slumps and coming up with what to say feels excruciating sometimes. It just is the way it is, especially when you’re, you know, 200 blog posts in 200 episodes in it can be hard to know.
What else can I talk about? In fact, I have a client who I think literally works with me because. She’s created so much content that she just doesn’t even know what to say anymore. And that’s a large part of why that we work together. But it can be really hard. And so when you can say, Hey, let me come in and take the heavy lifting off your plate, they’re so much more likely to say yes.
So when you are wanting to work with someone, a lot of times if there’s someone who. They’re already focused on speaking engagements. They probably have different ideas on their website of things that you can talk about, but you can also go to someone else’s content. What have they’ve written blog posts about?
What have their own podcast episodes been about? Is there anything that you’ve seen them talk about that you would love to see them talk about on your show? Or you could just straight up ask them, Hey, I would love to have you on my podcast, my YouTube channel. I would love to have you write a blog post.
Here’s a little bit about my audience. What do you think that you could talk about that would serve them best? And just ask them. So collaboration’s a really easy way to get out of a slump and not have to come up with brand new things to say. Another thing that you can do, another content idea would be writing a review or speaking a review of a.
Product, service or event that you have used or been to and your audience would also benefit from. So if you’re, you took a course on copywriting, but your audience is busy moms, they’re probably not gonna be interested in your review of that, right? Because it’s not something that they need or want or care about.
But what is something that you could review that they would care about and give them the good, the bad, the ugly? What did you love? What did you wish you could see differently? That’s why we love reviews is because we love to know, okay, here’s what. People liked about it and here’s what they didn’t like, and you can decide whether or not what they didn’t like actually matters to you too.
And if it’s a deal breaker for you, you know it’s not right for you. But if it’s something that you’re like, oh, I don’t care about that, that that doesn’t bother me, I’m getting this for a totally different reason, then. That’s great. So make sure you include all of the things in the review. I wouldn’t trash anything you’re trying to be an affiliate of, but if you do have an affiliate link for said thing, that is a great opportunity to plug it and potentially make a little side income through that affiliate link.
With that review, the next content idea I’ve got for you is behind the scenes. So open up the curtains and take people behind the scenes of. Your month, your week, your day, or a specific project that you’re working on. For example, um, my quarterly. Coffee and conversations episodes, that’s a whole peek behind the scenes of what’s happening in the last quarter of my life and my business.
When I share the behind the scenes of batch week on Instagram, that is a behind the scenes of my week, there are podcast episodes I’ve done where I give the behind the scenes of a launch and really take you and say, okay, this is what I wanted. This is what happened. This is what I thought was gonna happen.
This is what actually happened. This is how. I can improve this thing that I didn’t love this time. This is what I’m gonna make sure I do again, and just sharing what went well and what didn’t, and just what is happening behind the scenes. The fourth content idea I have for you is a roundup list. This can be done in two different ways, so you can do it in a way where it’s also a collaboration where you go to multiple experts in your industry and say, Hey, I’m doing an episode, or writing a blog post about the specific topic.
Can you give me your best tip for this topic? And then you gather all of their tips and all of their information, and you just. Mash it all together into one piece of content. You can also do this without collaborators. You can just do this on your own and you can write a post that rounds up all of the different tools.
That your audience should know about or all of your favorite ways to do a certain thing or, well, for example, this episode is a roundup list. I have nine different content ideas for you for when you’re in a slump, so I just round it up all of the different ideas that I could come up with of simple and easy content types that don’t really have to be thought a whole lot about.
The fifth content idea I have for you is to talk about something that you’ve learned this year. Now, this one will require. A little bit more thinking than some of these other ones, but we’re all always learning. And so what’s one thing that you learned this year that would be helpful for your audience?
And then give them an overview of that. The next idea is a how to guide. So how to plan a garden this spring. How to manage your time well in the summer when your kids are out of school, how to. Create a content marketing strategy and just give simple, here are 10 steps, here are five steps, here are three steps.
Here’s what you need to do to make this happen. Here’s how you get this done. The next idea is a q and a. And this can be done in a few different ways. You can. You know, put up a question box on your Instagram, send out an email to your list and say, Hey, I’m gonna do a q and a episode. What are all your questions on this specific topic?
Or you can do a, Hey, I’m gonna do an ask me anything episode, anything goes, or I’ll take topics, or I’ll take questions around this certain topic or these specific topics. What do you wanna know? Let me know. And so ask for questions. And then all you have to do is choose the ones you wanna answer and answer them.
The eighth of the content ideas is to create a challenge for yourself. Now, again, this one will be a little bit more work than some of the other ones. So if you’re in the kind of slump where you’re just playing burnout and you don’t. Want to do any work. This may not be the one for you, but if you’re just in a creative slump, this could actually be really great for you to bring you out of that slump.
So create a small challenge that you’re gonna do for yourself that your audience would be interested in following along with. So maybe that means that you’re gonna do. A month of decluttering and you’re gonna put out a new podcast episode or a blog post each week about what you decluttered or YouTube video.
You’re gonna put out long form content each week, specifically around what you decluttered and what you got done. Maybe you’re going to, it makes me think of Gresham Rubin, um, and her book, I mean, really all of her books. She sets these challenges for herself and then she writes entire books about them.
Um, It can be small, it can be week long, it can be month long. It can be quarterly. It can be weekly for whatever that may look like. Maybe it’s just a three day challenge for yourself of something you’re gonna do. I did this last year when I first was getting started on TikTok, and I didn’t create this big official challenge or anything, but I personally challenged myself to show up on TikTok for a certain amount of time, in a certain number of days.
I did, I believe, three times a day for 30 days. No breaks for the weekend, and that was this challenge that I set for myself. And then I did the challenge and I also shared what I was finding through Instagram and here on the podcast. And so that was a really easy way for me to come up with something new to talk about and just gimme a little different take on things.
Now the final content idea I have for you is to ask AI when you are struggling to come up with things to say, you can go to chat g BT, or Game of Magic, or whichever AI tool you use, and you can say, Hey, give me 10 content ideas around this certain topic, and that will help. You brainstorm and maybe help give you something that you hadn’t thought of before that you could talk about.
They’re not always great ideas, but it’ll give you a bit of a jumpstart when you just don’t know what to talk about. So real quick, those nine different content ideas, again for when you’re in a slump. One. Collaborations two reviews, three behind the scenes, four Roundup posts. Five, something that you’ve learned this year.
Six, how to guide seven, a q and a eight, create a challenge for yourself. Or nine, ask ai. Your action step for this week is to take a few minutes and I want you to brainstorm five different pieces of content. For each of those different nine ideas. Now the Ask AI is really easy because you just say, Hey, give me five different ideas, or you could come up with five different prompts.
So maybe you ask ai, give me 10 different content ideas for topic one, topic two, topic three, topic four, topic five. Maybe that’s a better way to do it. But that’s your action step this week. Just set aside 30 minutes and brainstorm those five different pieces for each of these nine content ideas. And then you’re gonna have a whole list in your content bank that you can easily refer back to when you need some new ideas.
This week’s book recommendation is Counterfeit by Kirsten Chin, and this book was very interesting. Highly recommend. It is about these two women that end up getting into this illegal business together with counterfeit purses. And I don’t wanna spoil anything, so I’m not gonna go any farther and. Really explain anything else because I hate spoilers, but highly recommend Counterfeit by Kirsten Chin.
I will link that in the show notes so that you can check it out, and until next time, my friend, I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.
Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing over@amandawarfield.com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.
Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, not go out and uncomplicated your marketing and business.
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