Own the social content creation process rather than it owning you
Many of us love social content, we show up for it, and we often make attempts at creating it. We often don’t make it work for us with a longer term mindset.
We post away on social, get hooked like a slot machine, it’s only later that we realise that we should’ve put more effort into owning the content.
This is not new news. And I’ve been very guilty and frustrated with myself for not doing something about it. For years I kept writing on the fly. I’ve been meaning to create something more structured, a permanent space of my own to create, to benefit from email lists and SEO, but I never got around to it.
Until now, or at least I’m trying.
Goals, intention, organisation and accumulation
I’ve switched up my process for writing shortform content and at the core it involves:
- goal - having a clear and long term path of creating value
- intention - creating a space to collect and write
- organisation - creating a clear structure
- accumulation - benefit from SEO and email subscribers
The goal, for me, is thinking longer term to creating a consistent output that is not just about throwing stuff out there. It is more about creating a place that people appreciate, where I can point people to instead of repeating myself and also long term it’s about supporting my work, financially or simply through awareness of a ‘personal brand’.
Having intention is about creating a habit of writing my content in my own place.
I keep ending back at Notion as my main tool for writing. It works for me as not only can I create there, but I can also sell them as info products.
My mind goes to this place when I have ideas worth logging before I forget them. The drafts database is a mess, full of ideas that come to me, screenshots, links and half written things that I find in my day to day activities.
The organisation comes into play when I have to think about how to structure the content.
My current process is that I have a Notion database of draft pieces of writing where once I’ve completed a short piece I move it over to another more public database that I also sell as an info product. This is my source of truth of short form content and it looks something like this.
All of these posts are intentionally very social friendly. Meaning they are short and generally focus on one single thing. I kinda love creating this type of content.
Accumulation means making the content brings more value by working a bit harder.
This could be by posting the content on a blog or website. The goal here is accumulate more rewards through SEO, email subscribers and followers.
My tool of choice is Substack, mostly because I already use it, it’s super quick and easy to post, it’s free and the network effect is decent enough with my existing reach. I’ve been taking posts from my Notion database and posting daily on Continuous Community.
Because the Susbtack is public and my Notion product isn’t, I cross post the Substack posts to LinkedIn and (sometimes to) X/Twitter. It gives me a great excuse to share and link back to Continuous Community which in turn slowly benefits many other things I do.
I haven’t yet promoted my info product on the Continuous Community, I will do soon. I will also likely switch on subscriptions to the Substack at some point. I’ll likely keep the content free and open as that generally brings me much more joy.
Social posts are the last step in the journey
What this means is that I’m flipping my writing process upside down.
I’ve been moving away from the habit of posting on social first and making that the last part of the process, and it feels good! I know I’ve created value along in many places along the way even if no one “likes'“ the social post.
The upside of a social post also means that there is a potential upside back to Continuous Community too and this is something that I have a bit more control over compared to social media.
I’m also a believer in looking for the win-wins.