How to Create Content That Serves Your Strategy and Your Community
At every turn in life, we have a decision to make – to go or not go, to do or not do, to create this or that. A Harvard Business Review article states that the average adult makes 33,000-35,000 decisions each day. The majority of those are made by our subconscious mind. However, in order to be intentional with our actions and live a life by design rather than by default, we must find ways to make conscious strategic decisions in order to grow and improve. One simple strategy Amanda Reill, the author of this article, says can help? Writing.
When we write down what we are thinking, we activate both the logical and emotional sides of our brain. Then we prevent one or the other from taking over. That way they can work together harmoniously to come up with a decision that will help us – and our business – in the best, most balanced way. We get clarity on complex decisions and feel more confident in making them because we have thought them through by writing them down first.
Julia Cameron’s morning pages (writing 3 pages of whatever you like, stream-of-consciousness style upon waking) as outlined in her book, The Artist’s Way, is one method for creating a daily writing routine to help with your decision-making. It encourages a download, or dump, of your thoughts first thing before your rational mind has really kicked in. This can help you access deeper creativity and tap into your intuition in a direct way.
Another way we can use writing to help us is to create a gains journal, as recommended by Dan Sullivan in The Gap and the Gain. In a gains journal, each night you write down what you gained, or accomplished, that day and list what you hope to accomplish the next day. This keeps your mind focused on what you are aiming for and is an easy way to practice gratitude and maintain a growth mindset.
If adding a daily writing routine feels too overwhelming for you, perhaps simply try taking five minutes to jot down a pros and cons list. Or do one page of freewriting on a hard decision you are facing right now. Writing can be used as a daily practice or as an in-the-moment panacea for confusion or indecision.
By the logic above, the first content to create in order to most effectively implement your business strategy is your own private, personal writing. If you are anything like me, you won’t have any trouble writing whatever is flowing through your mind. However, I acknowledge that for some, making the time to write feels hard, being vulnerable on the page feels hard, writing itself may feel hard. Don’t overthink it; just begin. Your first few times may be gobbledygook, but you will get better and better the more you write. Ideas will flow from your head to the page more freely as you go on.
A few tips to help you get in the writing zone are:
Choose a journal or notebook you find beautiful or that inspires you to write.
Set a timer for a set amount of time so you don’t feel like you have to watch the clock or check your phone every two minutes. Ten minutes is a great start.
Perhaps play gentle music without lyrics to help you “drop in” to a more thoughtful mode.
Once you have written down your ideas about whatever has been going through your head, try moving your body. Get up and stretch, go for a walk or dance in your office to a song you love. Then, when you are ready, return to what you wrote and pull anything valuable out of it to use in your decisions that day. I often pull my Critical 3 list for the day from my morning journaling. Perhaps you realize that you need to shift your attention or energy to a different task, project or person that day in order to better meet your goals.
So how does journaling for improved decision-making relate to content creation? When you have honed in on what you are truly thinking and feeling, you can adjust your strategy – for the day, the week, the month or even the quarter – accordingly. Then you can decide what content to create to serve your strategy. Otherwise, if you don’t do this foundational work, you may waste valuable time creating content that is serving a different strategy, an old strategy (default mode), or is –gulp – serving someone else’s strategy.
Strategy is not a one-and-done thing. Any business can attest to this. As entrepreneurs, we do not say, “This is my strategy and I’m sticking to it!” (Or at least not often.) Typically, we create a business strategy, implement it and make adjustments to it as we go. The strategy morphs and changes as we learn more about our market, our abilities, our resources and our results. Adaptability is key. An ability to pivot is paramount.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines strategy as: “a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.” If the aim shifts, the strategy must shift also. If the plan proves to have holes in it or new variables come to our attention, the strategy must shift.
Therefore, a daily writing practice can be an excellent tool for helping you adapt your strategy to fit changes you are seeing and pivot your content as needed. The content you create, whether internal (employee-facing) or external (outward and client-facing), communicates your culture, your values and the direction you are headed. It is, in short, your brand on the move. The key is to find consistent ways to write meaningful messaging that speaks to your audience AND adapts as your strategy shifts.
It is important with any content you create to bring your audience, your community, with you each step of the way. What do they value? What do they want? Which words and stories speak to them?
High quality content serves one or more of the following three purposes. It:
Engages and entertains
Educates
Evokes emotion and action
Let’s take an example. A client of mine was eager to drive more action when people visited her site. The third bullet point was her goal: evoke emotion and action. She also needed to educate her community on what she did. As a hair stylist and yoga instructor, her site had two aims–to get people to book a hair appointment and/or to get them to schedule a yoga class. The content had gotten muddy and tended to confuse people rather than get them to act.
In order to keep the messaging clear and simple, I wrote two simple imperative headings for her two home pages that pop up every few seconds, one after the other: “Find Your Look” and “Find Your Peace,” along with a simple descriptive sentence right below each. These words connected the two areas of her brand and helped it flow more naturally. They also made it easy for her clients and prospects to find which part of her site they wanted to book on. In addition, they brought awareness to the fact that she offers two services, driving more interest and signups across both.
“To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.”― Aristotle
A big part of writing effective content is keeping it simple and easy to read. In Aristotle’s words, “express yourself like the common people.” Alex Hormozi, an entrepreneur who specializes in scaling companies and helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses, recommends writing all marketing copy at a 3rd grade reading level for this very reason. In general, we want to make it as easy as possible for the people we are writing for to see where we are directing them to act. Any roadblock or deterrent to action, including fanciful or excessive language, will lower conversion rates.
All of us are inundated daily with a barrage of information. The kindest thing you can do for your prospects is offer them simplicity:
Easy steps to follow
Simple language to understand the benefits
Content that directly answers their questions
Writing this way, however, only becomes easy with a lot of practice. It takes significant behind-the-scenes work: journaling to determine and fine-tune your strategy, getting to know your audience and what makes them tick, writing compelling content on a regular basis, then editing and simplifying that down to serve your strategy. This is intentional content creation.
While it is a process, I can guarantee from going through it with my clients, it is worth it. The results–clarity in your brand and voice, consistency across all platforms, increased leads and higher conversion rates–speak for themselves. However, one of the best results that is somewhat immeasurable is the peace and joy you feel as a business owner knowing you’ve communicated your message clearly and your people get it.
After all, in its simplest terms, business comes down to individuals giving and receiving love, understanding each other and being understood. This is what we all ultimately want. And when the content you create serves your strategy and your community, everyone benefits.
