Content Ideation

Create A Quarter's Worth Of Content

How To Create A Quarter’s Worth Of Content In 10 Minutes

Let’s talk about content! Content marketing is huge. A perfect example is knowing that 82% of shoppers want a brand’s values to align with theirs (which comes from the content they create). And it’s only getting bigger as algorithms improve, new platforms are being created, and consumers are leaning more into the online world. 

But just because consumers are hanging out online and consuming more content than ever before, that doesn’t mean that you need to create content…Right?

Wrong. You need to be where your target audience is. You need to be creating content that they want to consume (whether they know it or not). 

But beyond publishing content, the reason goes beyond that. “Year-over-year growth in unique site traffic is 7.8x higher for content marketing leaders compared to followers (19.7% vs 2.5%)” (Neil Patel). 

Whether you are a law firm, health and wellness coach, eCommerce shop, or financial consulting firm, your customers are searching for you online (as much as 76%). 

Ready to skip the overwhelm that often follows content creation? Follow this process to create a quarter’s worth of content in 10 minutes. 

Why You Need To Plan Your Content On A Quarterly Basis

Simply put, you do not have enough time to think about content creation on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis. Trust me…I own a copywriting and content writing firm where we literally create content on a daily basis for clients. But when it comes to marketing FocusCopy, it would not happen if we don’t plan our content on a quarterly basis. 

This process is what we use to not have to think about what we want to write and get us right into writing at the get-go. 

6 Steps To Create A Quarter’s Worth Of Content In 10 Minutes

Sure, this process isn’t guaranteed to be done within 10 minutes at first. Like most things, it takes practice to perfect. But I can assure you that after creating content for over 8 years, this process simply works

1. Remind Yourself Of The Details

First, you need to remind yourself of your business. You work hard to operate your business, but you sometimes need to come up for air to see what your brand looks like from the rooftops. 

There are several things that you need to look at when reminding yourself of your brand:

  • Your core message
  • Your goals and values
  • What actually performs
  • Your content pillars

Be sure to write it all down to save time when it comes to planning the next quarter’s worth of content. 

Your Brand

What is your company about? When you’re working so closely with your business, it’s good to remind yourself of your:

  • Mission and vision statements
  • Core message
  • Target audience
  • Core offer

Your Goals

Then get into what your quarterly or annual goals are. How are you currently measuring up against them as you complete this process? 

Your Performance

What content has traditionally performed in the past? You may be able to extrapolate content ideas directly from this. 

If you haven’t created content before, read through your sales and meeting notes. What messages do your clients typically respond to? 

Your Content Pillars

Content pillars are the overarching themes that your brand can speak on. For example, FocusCopy’s pillars include: copywriting, marketing, and entrepreneurship. Everything we publish falls into one of those 3 categories. 

You want to keep these specific enough for someone to identify your brand with it, but broad enough to capture a variety of topics. We suggest working with 3-5 pillars. 

2. Brain Dump Every Idea

We like to use mind maps or even rolling lists for brain dumping. Go ahead and write every topic that you could write about for that given content pillar. Within 5 minutes, you should have a good list that covers more than a quarter’s worth of content. Keep in mind that the more you do this, the easier it will be. Great questions to ask yourself include:

  • What pain points are your customers facing? 
  • Are there any questions they are asking or should be asking? 
  • What would transform your customers’ lives?
  • What’s going on in your industry that customers should be aware of?

Now, this isn’t an exhaustive list, but it should get you thinking. 

3. Evaluate Ideas & Schedule Them

After you brain dump, it’s time to evaluate your ideas. Not everyone is going to hit it out of the park, but you should land with a pretty good list of content topics that you want to pursue. 

Then schedule them out for the quarter. In what order are you going to publish them? Can you build those ideas into a series? 

The key here is not to overthink it. 

4. Outline The Topics

If you’re feeling really into the content creation process, go ahead and start outlining it. We use ClickUp to schedule all our blogs, for example. In the description, we go ahead and outline what we want to talk about within that given blog. This makes it so much easier to remind myself what I was thinking about or gives the assigned writer an idea of where I want them to take the blog. 

5. Outsource The Writing

Writing takes time. And although we now have access to AI tools like ChatGPT, it still requires a human to comb through the content to make it actually effective. There are several different ways you can outsource your writing:

  • Delegate to an employee 
  • Outsource to a freelancer (but they may not have the processes to write with your voice or your dialect)
  • Partner with a copywriting firm that specializes in brand voice and content creation (i.e. FocusCopy)

Regardless of what you choose, it’s imperative that the writer understands your brand, your voice, and your goals behind the content. 

6. Repurpose The Content

Finally, content written only for one purpose (i.e. blogs) is a waste of marketing dollars. Every single piece of written content can be repurposed into:

  • Email copy
  • Reels or short form videos
  • Long form videos
  • Infographics
  • Social posts

Take Your Content Marketing To The Next Level 

We all know that when you’re more visible, you build your credibility (Forbes). And that ultimately leads to business growth – which, who doesn’t want that?!If you’re ready to take your content marketing to the next level, schedule a discovery call with our team to explore how to give you back more time while creating more opportunities for you to grow your business.

Focus Your Copy On Conversation & Conversion

Let’s Grab A Virtual Coffee With Us To Discover How To Boost Your Words
generate blog topics

4 Questions To Ask To Generate 20 Blog Topics In <15 Minutes

Inspiration is a funny thing. It’s everywhere and can leave you dreaming of possibilities for hours, especially if you’re a business owner. 

Your entire business model might come from a streak of inspiration you decided was worth pursuing. However, the not-so-great thing about inspiration is that it doesn’t occur on command…at least not for most people.

When you’re thinking about blog topics for your business, you may feel stuck about what to write. 

You think…Do I simply talk about my business and what I know? Do I need to be creative and go outside of my comfort zone? Is it okay to discuss other things related to my business?

These are good to think about when you sit down to write, but they aren’t particular enough to help with content creation. Strong blog topic ideas should be specific enough to answer a question your audience might have. At the same time, you should make sure the topic is relevant to your brand and can tie into your business offerings. Creating blog topics based on this notion alone can quickly become confusing. So, it’s an even better idea to ask yourself these 4 specific questions, which helps you generate 20 blog topics in less than 15 minutes.

Need to pick up your blogging pace? We can help! Contact FocusCopy to get your blogs written, approved, and published.

Create 20 Blog Topics In 15 Minutes Or Less By Asking 4 Simple Questions

If it sounds too good to be true, all I have to say is give it a try! Even if you spend the next 5 minutes reading AND brainstorming, you’ll get something valuable out of it – you simply have to trust me. Let’s generate blog topics!

1. What Questions Does My Audience Have Right Now?

This should be an easy one! Take a second to think about potential sales calls, meetings, and client feedback you’ve heard. What are the questions you repeat the answers to most?

For example, as copywriters, we often hear…

  • What is SEO and how does it work?
  • What type of content needs to be on my website?
  • How can hiring a copywriter save me time?
  • What’s the problem with me doing my own copywriting?
  • How long does it take for a copywriter to write a website, blog, etc.?

We have answers for all of these commonly asked questions. We also have a knack for turning these questions into conversation pieces, which gives the answers enough oomph to become a relevant blog for our brand.

So, do you have any questions at top of mind? Write them down! You can easily come up with 5 (or more) questions that you can turn into blog topics.

If your audience doesn’t have too many questions up front, here’s another one you should ask.

2. What Problems Does My Audience Encounter?

To answer this question, we’re first going to get into what you do, why you do it, and why your audience cares.

Our own example is…We’re a cost-effective digital copywriting firm supporting small to medium-sized businesses because it saves business owners time, money, and the extra stress of having to write their copy themselves.

Did you see that?

Right there in our own answer are a few problems we can pick out right away, which includes:

  • Small to medium-sized businesses don’t typically have a huge budget for their digital marketing efforts
  • Supporting small businesses is critical to our collective success
  • Business owners don’t have the time to write for themselves
  • Writing stresses most people and business owners out
  • Business owners don’t have time for marketing when they have more important responsibilities to attend to

And just like that, we have 5 new topics of discussion for our blog. We’ll even take it one step further to show you how you can create headlines for these points, turning them into digestible nuggets of information.

  • 10 Beneficial Effects Copywriting Has On Your Small Business
  • Why Digital Marketing Is Important For Small & Medium-Sized Businesses
  • How Hiring A Copywriter Can Save Your Business Time & Money
  • 5 Tips From A Copywriter To Help Relieve Your DIY Writing Stress
  • Why Quality Content Rules Over Quick Copy That Doesn’t Deliver

By now, you should be able to see how fast and easy it is to come up with new blog topics by answering questions about your business – which brings us to our next question to ask to generate blog topics without breaking a sweat.

Still struggling to come up with topics for your business? Hire the experts to hash out the details and come up with an effective copywriting strategy.

3. What Advice Does My Audience Need To Hear? 

This question may seem too general to answer, but try looking at it a different way. When customers or clients call your business after…

  • Attempting to do what you do themselves
  • Hiring someone less qualified
  • Hiring someone whose services are cheaper
  • Letting their problem exist for too long

What happens?

If you focus on what your audience has complained about in the past, you’ll find your advice neatly folded into your answers. We’ll switch it up and use a hypothetical client as an example here.

Texas Plumbing Company (a fictitious company) hears from customers all day, every day. And if they could tell their audience crucial information that could save them time and money, here’s what that could look like…

  • 7 Major Hazards Of DIY Plumbing
  • Why Hiring A Certified Plumbing Professional Matters
  • 5 Reasons Why Expert Routine Pipe Maintenance Matters For Your Home Or Business
  • Top 10 Common Mistakes Homeowners Make With Their Plumbing System
  • Here’s What Can Happen If You Ignore A Leak For Too Long

If you’re a plumbing pro, each of these blogs is full of information you already know about and could probably recite in your sleep. But your audience doesn’t know anything about plumbing, so it helps to offer your expert advice.

4. What Lessons Have I Learned That Would Be Helpful For My Audience To Know?

Have you ever watched Gilmore Girls? Stay with me here because I promise there’s a point.

So, there’s a scene where small town diner owner, Luke, is being yelled at by his ungrateful and reckless teenage nephew, Jess (skip to 1:05). Jess attacks his uncle by throwing Luke’s job and business in his face in an attempt to make Luke feel small and unimportant. 

Sure, Luke only has one other employee. And there isn’t a special parking spot in his name or a mahogany desk for him to sit at. But he doesn’t let Jess get to him for a second and defends himself by saying, “Hey! I own this business. I built it, kid. This is mine!”

The only reason I’m diving into this is to point something out. Entrepreneurs like you have something special that other people will never be able to relate to. You have moxie, my friend! And in case no one has told you lately, you don’t need to downplay your accomplishments or your business. Chances are, you didn’t get to where you are without learning a few hard lessons along the way.

Ask yourself…What have I learned?

The best part about this exercise is that you only need to think of about 5 things you’ve learned. Maybe you learned more about how to value yourself and your services. Perhaps you reached a breaking point when it came to dealing with certain clients. Or maybe you have a story about investing in something that didn’t work out. All of these can be great blog topics for your audience, which should bring your total number of topics to 20.

Find A True Writing Partner With FocusCopy

Don’t have enough time to write for your business (or even generate blog topics)? That’s okay! Many business owners don’t. But that doesn’t mean you should let it affect your digital marketing or brand awareness.

Reach your marketing goals with the team at FocusCopy.

Focus Your Copy On Conversation & Conversion

Let’s Grab A Virtual Coffee With Us To Discover How To Boost Your Words